Three neighbourhood tales tell a story about how we’re responding to the climate challenge

I spend so much of my time at work thinking about the national challenge we have on the environment, but last weekend I didn’t need to read another climate report. While much of Europe has spent the summer watching devastating wildfires consume forests, homes and communities, all I had to do was walk around my own neighbourhood to see the changing climate quietly reshaping our streets in ways that are easier to overlook, but still vitally important.

Three moments summed up the current climate challenge better than any policy paper could.

First, a neighbour is currently in the process of cutting down a string of mature trees because (when I asked) they didn’t like the look of them and they were too hard to control. In their place? A bare concrete wall. At precisely the moment we’re being told our towns and cities need more trees, more shade and more urban cooling if we’re going to cope with increasingly extreme heat, people up and down the country are making decisions with very little understanding of the ramifications.

Second, hearing an elderly neighbour’s thoughts on the hosepipe ban, brought on by her concern about keeping her trees alive and the fact she can’t carry watering cans. Her view? They’ll matter far more to future generations than a neatly observed restriction and she blames businesses who, in her view, have prioritised short term shareholder returns over investing in long term resilience, leaving individuals with impossible choices.

Finally, the street WhatsApp group has been popping off with stories of trees and branches randomly falling in our local parks and the benches that have been marked off limits as a result. No storm. No high winds. Just the cumulative effects of prolonged heat and drought having a big impact on the trees and a small but significant impact on our shared spaces.

Three stories. Three different responses to the same reality.

What they all have in common is a lack of a coherent message about what living with climate change looks like and the expectations we have of individuals and communities. We talk endlessly about the ‘new normal’, but we’re leaving people to work out for themselves what that means in practice and the consequences of getting it wrong are increasingly being felt by everyone else.

The new government has put localism and devolution back on the political agenda. But perhaps this is where those ideas will be really tested. Climate adaptation won’t happen because of actions taken by Whitehall alone; it will happen on streets, in gardens, in parks and in neighbourhoods. If we’re serious about devolving power, we should also be devolving knowledge, capability and responsibility, giving communities the tools, confidence and leadership to make decisions that build our resilience to these threats rather than undermine it.

The wildfires across Europe may feel like someone else’s crisis. But the decisions made on our own streets – whether we plant a tree, cut one down, protect a green space or let it disappear – will determine how well our own communities can cope with the changed climate that’s already here.