The Guardian view on extreme heat: its scale should be a wake-up call to us all | Editorial

With thousands dead across Europe this summer, it’s time to recognise heatwaves as the major natural disasters they are The numbers are now trickling in: nearly 2,900 dead in the UK, at least 35,000 dead across Europe.

That’s how many people are believed to have lost their lives in this year’s early-summer heatwaves – the death tolls for the August heatwaves have yet to be counted. In a sense, these people died in a series of natural disasters,…