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.