Voters may feel hotter summers are ‘too much’ but they appear to tolerate roll-back of policies to stop global heating

“It’s just too much, isn’t it?” says Julie, a retiree in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, about the 42C (107.6F) heat that her brother had seen scorch Spain last week. The former local government worker has felt summers get hotter over her lifetime and says she “couldn’t stand” such high heat herself.

But like many who experienced Europe’s first heatwave of the summer, Julie does not sound overly alarmed. She worries about climate breakdown for young people, but is not concerned about herself. She thinks more climate action would be nice, but does not know what can be done about it. She does not have much faith in the government.

Eni has filed at least six defamation suits against journalists and NGOs since 2019 in what critics say is intimidation campaign

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When Antonio Tricarico was summoned to his local police station in October and told he was being investigated for defamation, he was stressed but not shocked. Months earlier, Tricarico, the director of the Italian environment NGO ReCommon, had filed a joint legal challenge against the country’s biggest oil company, Eni, which he knew had a history of using lawyers to clamp down on critics.

The company had previously limited itself to civil defamation lawsuits, including against ReCommon, but in Tricarico’s case it initiated criminal proceedings over statements he had made in a television interview.