Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 18, 2023 18:04:22 GMT
Heat-related deaths will triple over coming decades without government action on overheating in our homes, warn its advisors on climate change.
The alert comes amid the first UK red extreme heat warning, with potentially life-threatening record highs near 40C expected as far north as York.
As many as 4.6 million homes overheat, according to a recent survey - and that's just in England.
But until this summer no rules governed overheating in new buildings.
"We've been telling the government for over 10 years that we are nothing like well enough prepared in the UK for the really hot weather we are seeing now," Baroness Brown, deputy chair of the Climate Change Committee, told the BBC.
"We really do need to address the overheating risk in peoples' homes."
The Climate Change Committee says that more than half a million new homes liable to overheating have been built in the UK since it first raised the issue almost a decade ago.
While the Met Office classes heatwaves as "extreme weather events", scientific research shows that climate change is making them more likely.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62179678
The alert comes amid the first UK red extreme heat warning, with potentially life-threatening record highs near 40C expected as far north as York.
As many as 4.6 million homes overheat, according to a recent survey - and that's just in England.
But until this summer no rules governed overheating in new buildings.
"We've been telling the government for over 10 years that we are nothing like well enough prepared in the UK for the really hot weather we are seeing now," Baroness Brown, deputy chair of the Climate Change Committee, told the BBC.
"We really do need to address the overheating risk in peoples' homes."
The Climate Change Committee says that more than half a million new homes liable to overheating have been built in the UK since it first raised the issue almost a decade ago.
While the Met Office classes heatwaves as "extreme weather events", scientific research shows that climate change is making them more likely.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62179678