‘It is not only a future certainty – the disaster is already here’: why we need climate fiction

Nurses collapsing, builders with heatstroke, bus drivers in cabs that reach 44C. The new PM wanted to spend the summer talking about the cost of living – he should change his plans I don’t think I have ever written before about a British strike directly related to the climate emergency. But that’s exactly what began late last week in north London, with a zeitgeisty connection to Andy Burnham’s fixation on buses: picket lines outside depots and massed walkouts, while the temperatures in the relevant parts of the capital and its suburbs hovered at about 34C (93F). Last Friday, more than 1,500 drivers employed by the transport giant Arriva began a planned run of 26 stoppages through to October, affecting bus routes spread between London and Essex. Everything is being led by the union Unite, whose recent grievances include alleged company union-busting and assaults by the public on staff. But the fundamental basis of the dispute is at the heart of the national condition: the near-impossibility for millions of people of working through another insanely hot summer. John Harris is a Guardian columnist..

Largest recorded wildfire in Belgium forces 600 residents to evacuate as blaze spreads towards German border towns.

As parts of Beth Chatto’s visionary drought-tolerant gardens in Essex turn brown, the head gardener offers advice Her debut book, in 1978, was titled The Dry Garden. Since then, the late Beth Chatto created a rich legacy with her expertise as a plantswoman and by setting up one of the oldest unwatered public gardens in England. Once a car park but transformed in 1992 into an experiment to test what plants were drought-tolerant in Essex, the driest county in the UK, Chatto’s gravel gardens south of Clacton are being visibly tested this year...