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Shortly after the June heat wave, Rome’s city authorities announced a new, science-based action plan to prepare for a hotter world. Like other similar initiatives in Europe, this heat response plan includes emergency assistance for vulnerable populations, the creation of green public spaces, the installation of additional drinking fountains, the establishment of climate shelters, investments to improve the resilience of the energy grid, and so on.
This is not the “Eternal City’s” first initiative to combat heat. Earlier, in 2002, Rome implemented a heat-related health warning system in time for the 2003 heat wave, which claimed the lives of 70,000 people across Europe (including more than 1,000 in Rome). Following that, Rome and many other cities adopted emergency response plans that included establishing early warning systems, registering vulnerable populations, and preparing hospitals.
However, when a massive heat wave struck in 2022, those two decades of planning proved insufficient. Another 60,000 people died.
Once again, governments announced structural measures, such as closing schools, canceling events, and imposing restrictions on outdoor work. But while these measures had some positive effect, this year’s heatwave showed that Europe is still significantly behind the curve.
The problem is that we are chasing a moving target. Heat waves are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting, and more intense, and this trend exacerbates other risks.
For example, heat waves create ideal conditions for wildfires, which have now engulfed several countries in southern Europe.
They also cause us to lose sight of the increasingly frequent extreme precipitation events, while frequent and devastating floods are becoming an everyday reality, often in the very same places suffering from heat waves.
The Path to Stabilization
Since all of this is caused by human-induced climate change, the path to stabilization lies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero. But until then, current conditions will continue to deteriorate.
After the major floods of 2023, I argued that a new threshold was looming on the horizon. Europe would need to coordinate constitutional measures in response to changing material conditions by implementing a government program for economic transformation.
Three years later, during which time there have been numerous floods and heat waves, that threshold has already been reached, yet we continue to act as if nothing has changed.
Focusing exclusively on emergency planning, disaster response, and recovery after each catastrophe may fit the definition of “sustainability” as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; however, resilience alone is no longer enough.
That is precisely why I have long been paying attention to the broader, constantly evolving interrelationships between economic development and the environment. Over the years, one country after another has written the story of its future by transforming its landscape.
Consider the hydraulic transformation of the American West during the Progressive Era; Sun Yat-sen’s plan to modernize China along the Yangtze River; the large-scale land reclamation and hydropower development projects in Italy to support industrialization; Jawaharlal Nehru’s dams—the “modern temples of India”—which served as symbols of economic liberation; as well as the spatial reorganization of the South Korean economy carried out by Park Chung-hee in the interest of export-oriented growth.
In my book *The Ecological Republic*, I argue that, despite all their mistakes and distorting consequences, these efforts contain a crucial lesson. In changing material conditions, sustainability cannot be reduced merely to “weathering the storm.” It must be an integral feature of our development.
The transformations made necessary by climate change will be comparable in scale and scope to those carried out over the past century.
We must change our material conditions
Let’s consider the energy system. During the heat wave in June 2026, the use of air conditioners caused Rome to approach its daily peak electricity consumption of 2.1 GW, followed by localized power outages.
The power grid proved unable to handle the load, despite Italy ’s investments in it. Reserve capacity remains too low; natural gas dominates electricity generation; the share of hydropower in generation is inherently vulnerable to climate change; and a significant portion of the distribution network runs underground, where thermal loads from accumulated heat damage the cables.
The solution lies not simply in addressing each of these individual problems. It requires the development of a plan for Italy’s long-term energy future.
Like many European economies, Italy is suffering from a decline in competitiveness. It needs to find room for innovation and comparative advantages in a global economy that is adopting the tools of 21st-century industrialization: electrification, renewable energy, automation, and artificial intelligence.
The geographical distribution of this transformation will determine the future economy’s needs for networks, which will serve as both the driving force behind the modernization of the energy system and a source of funding for it.
Europe faces similar challenges at every turn. The average age of its population is currently 45, with one pensioner for every worker. By the end of the century, one-third of Europeans will be over 65—the age group most vulnerable to heat-related mortality.
However, a shrinking workforce with declining productivity will clearly be unable to sustain the social security system on the scale to which people have become accustomed. The solution must lie in significantly higher productivity, an increase in the working-age population, or a combination of these two factors.
Strangely enough, the average age in Africa—located directly on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea—is less than 20 years, and by 2050, the continent’s total population will grow to 2.5 billion people.
Leaving politics aside, the conditions for an extremely beneficial partnership are already in place. However, accepting migrants on a large scale and sustaining the growth of related trade will have serious territorial consequences.
New social housing, transportation infrastructure, and services will exacerbate the problems already facing cities such as Rome, Vienna, and Paris. These metropolises, which have become open-air museums reflecting Europe’s cultural heritage, were modernized with infrastructure designed for a different society, a different economy, and different material conditions.
When asked what made Singapore—which transformed itself in a single generation from a resource-poor local port into a global hub—so successful, its founder, Lee Kuan Yew, gave his famous answer: “Air conditioning.” He understood that the most significant gift of the modern age was the ability to manage material conditions.
Europe can no longer afford to view climate change as a background trend that unfolds while we make other plans.
Changing material conditions are the new normal. History teaches us that such challenges can only be overcome through society-wide transformations.
Europe must think much more broadly, striving not merely for sustainability, but for sustainable growth.
Giulio Boccaletti,
author of *The Ecological Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World* (Princeton University Press, 2026), *Water: A Biography* (Pantheon Books, 2021), *Siccità* (Mondadori, 2023), and *Il Futuro della Natura* (Mondadori, 2025).
© Project Syndicate, 2026.
www.project-syndicate.org
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