11/07/2026
I’m far too hot to be productive, inside or outside, and find myself taking shelter in my not-so-very-cool living room to read the news. It’s a big sporting day with tennis and football and I’ve just read a headline about the world cup that has me worried and it’s not about whether England will win or lose the game.
With thousands of fans flying out to Miami to watch the game the headline has quoted someone saying, ‘What’s the point of working if you can’t do this?’ a question which has prompted me to write this.
As someone deeply concerned by the threat of the climate emergency my first, doomsayer, thought is about the huge number of flights and the mammoth carbon footprint this one match will have generated. But I’m also bothered by the headline, not because of the specific quote, but because of what it says about our first world lifestyles: it suggests the reason we work is so when we are not working, we can enjoy ourselves and this often means flying a long distance to get away from it all.
A few days ago, I was engaged with a group of wonderful teachers discussing climate change and there was plenty of focus on the problems of teaching during a heatwave whilst also thinking about how best to teach climate change.
But as we examined our carbon footprints it was clear that everyone was yearning for the Summer holidays so they could get away from both work and home and have some recovery time. In fact, it became apparent that each holiday in the school calendar was an opportunity to get away, with multiple holidays being the norm and flying being an accepted mode of transport which was massively increasing everyone’s carbon footprints.
Now I’m not questioning whether we need recovery time from work as so many people feel the stress of a heavy workload, but if the means of recovery is literally fuelling climate change then this may well be a false recovery as a hotter world will mean greater stress for everyone. Even the places we like to holiday, such as Spain and Southern France, are literally on fire.
To have time to rethink our work/life balance and to reconsider our ‘quick getaway’ approach to relaxation is itself a challenge. We may understand that taking the train is a brilliant way of cutting excessive travel emissions, but it stills costs more than air travel and with hot, buckling tracks, UK trains themselves are struggling with the warmer world.
So the question remains how can we allow ourselves to embrace a slower, less stressful getaway? I'm thinking we really need to have a culture shift and the no-flight movement has started this journey which, is likely to become more mainstream as the climate crisis persists: after all the current worldwide heatwaves make travelling somewhere warmer a lot less appealing.
And with that in mind it is worth remembering that both Miami and Manchester are currently feeling the same heat levels.
