When I returned from the United States and colleagues, future correspondents, came to ask me for advice for the day they could go to work there, I told them – and I tell them – that knowing American history or the political system of checks and balances is all well and good, but that the most important thing is that they be in shape. That they would experience a lot of heat and a lot of cold, that they would be subjected to extreme climatic conditions: scorching temperatures, monstrous snowfalls, and months with frozen sidewalks and without being able to have a coffee on a terrace, tornadoes, gales, that the electricity would go out, meaning the refrigerator and air conditioning. Or the heating… and that, in addition to suffering it, they would have to go and explain it on the front lines. And that if they didn't make themselves physically and mentally strong, it would be very hard for them.Well, this has already arrived here, in Catalonia. You only have to look at the records that are being broken these days:“Barcelona breaks its heat record in 113 years. The Fabra Observatory registers a temperature of 40.9 degrees”. In Vinebre, temperatures exceeded 44 degrees. And we have it for another week.It is not adventurous to think that the usual September downpours may be particularly dangerous this year, taking into account the amount of heat that the land and sea will have stored. All these extreme phenomena have a cost in health, physical and mental, in lifestyles, in leisure, but also, in the functioning of basic services and the maintenance of infrastructure. Increasingly, governments will have to drop everything they are doing to deal with emergencies and, in general, to adapt public spaces and services (streets, natural parks, schools, hospitals, residences) to the new climatic conditions. And us, too.

It’s not a race, but if it were, the climate emergency wouldn’t just be winning—it would be doing so with one feat after another. “It’s as if every year a new runner appeared and broke a record, and did so by a wide margin, and the following year it was broken again—that wouldn’t be normal,” says Francisco Doblas, head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), in a vivid analogy. The paradox is that, in this case, record highs are not achievements to applaud, let alone celebrate.

The commercial sector in Catalonia has half-heartedly rolled out the new energy saving measures that came into force this Wednesday, which limits the minimum temperature air conditioning can be set at (27ºC) and forces shops to turn off shop window lights after 10 pm, which some establishments in the centre and began to do last night.

There are several scientists who point out that as long as greenhouse gas emissions cause an increase in global temperatures, people's health will be at risk. Now, however, a study by the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre promoted by the Fundació "la Caixa", reveals that if the necessary measures to mitigate the effects of climate change are not taken urgently, the number of deaths from heat will grow exponentially in the coming decades. The research, published in the scientific journal The Lancet Planetary Health shows that global warming will inevitably lead to a decrease in cold-related mortality and an increase in heat-related deaths, an effect that could be controlled if measures are implemented to reduce the number of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.