{"id":6592,"date":"2026-09-04T15:25:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6592"},"modified":"2026-09-04T15:25:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:25:37","slug":"bbc-summer-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2026-09-04\/bbc-summer-26\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC asks: \u2018What will you tell your grandkids about the summer of \u201926?\u2019 How much I miss it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The BBC suggests 2026 will replace 1976 as the \u2018benchmark\u2019 for a hot summer. It could not be more wrong. We will look back on this year\u2019s succession of heatwaves with unbearable nostalgia<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A BBC headline asks<\/a>: \u201cWhat will you tell your grandchildren about the summer of \u201826?\u201d<\/p>\n

The British state broadcaster believes we will be talking about this summer for \u201cyears to come\u201d, with 2026 supposedly replacing 1976 as the \u201cbenchmark\u201d for an exceptionally hot and calamitous summer.<\/p>\n

But the truth is, in a few years\u2019 time, 2026 will not be remembered for its summer heat. In fact, unlike 1976, it will not be remembered at all.<\/p>\n

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But if, as the BBC imagines, I do talk to my grandchildren about 2026, what will I tell them?<\/p>\n

I will tell them how, in those days, we did not have to shelter indoors, in air-conditioned rooms, all summer long. How there was a time before we lived like bats, emerging only as night fell.<\/p>\n

I will tell them how almost no one died of heat stress. And that, back then, the mass-casualty climate \u201cevents\u201d they see regularly on the news were only just beginning. That the scenes of a tidal wave of flood water sweeping away a huge building in Nepal looked unworldly to us then, like a Hollywood disaster movie.<\/p>\n

I will tell them how food was plentiful before the crops started failing. How rationing was something we associated with wars. How fresh fruit and vegetables were affordable for ordinary people, not just the lab-grown slop that is now the mainstay of their diet.<\/p>\n

I will tell them how, in those far-off days, the taps didn\u2019t run dry for months on end. How we barely gave a thought to water, or how to access it. How we could have long showers whenever we wanted. Even baths, if we preferred. And we watered our gardens and washed our clothes regularly too.<\/p>\n

I will tell them how we didn\u2019t have to live in constant fear of our homes being lost to (summer) wild fires or (winter) storms and floods. How these disasters were so rare that there were firms that would insure us against any loss.<\/p>\n

I will tell them how, decades ago, homeless people were few in number, at least compared to the large number of unfortunates now living in tent cities \u2013 refugees from the waves of destruction.<\/p>\n

I will tell my grandchildren how much I now miss the reliability of public services like healthcare and schools, which were left to crumble year after year as tax revenues declined and more and more public money had to be spent on mitigating the worst of the climate shocks.<\/p>\n

I will tell them how I regret not having done more to raise the alarm, to persuade people that they could not afford to go on pretending there was no price to pay for drilling, fracking and burning so much of the stored energy beneath the Earth\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

I will tell my grandchildren how their grandparents\u2019 generation, my generation, lived in a collective delusion, fed by a God-complex<\/a> that assumed humans could rise above the laws of nature, that the planet was ours to plunder, that there should be no limits on our ambition, on our greed.<\/p>\n

I will tell them that the climate coverage in state-corporate media like the BBC deceived us into thinking a day of reckoning would never arrive.<\/p>\n

Perhaps to underscore my point, I will dust off an old BBC article, published on the last day of August 2026, headlined: \u201cWhat will you tell your grandchildren about the summer of \u201826?\u201d<\/p>\n