1666. London’s burning.
2026. London is burning again.
As children, we learnt the history.
A warning from another century. A story of flames consuming streets, homes and lives. A disaster that London survived, rebuilt from and promised never to forget.
But perhaps we remembered the fire and forgot the warning.
Because 360 years later, London is burning again.
But this time, the fire is in the air.
It rises from concrete streets. It settles inside overcrowded classrooms. It becomes trapped in homes built to hold heat but not release it. It follows us onto buses and trains, where shade is scarce and relief is even scarcer.
And for many people, particularly those living with chronic illnesses, this heat is not simply uncomfortable.
It is dangerous.
For some, a heatwave means an ice cream, a day in the park or turning on a fan.
For others, it’s Dehydration. Exhaustion. Dizziness. Pain. Medication becoming harder to manage. Existing illnesses becoming more severe.
I know that because I live it.
I have lived with Type 1 diabetes for most of my life. When temperatures rise, managing my health becomes harder. My body does not get to experience extreme heat as a minor inconvenience.
The climate crisis does not stay outside my window.
It enters through my body.
And that is what we too often forget.
Climate change is discussed through graphs, percentages and targets.
But behind every statistic is a person.
A child trying to learn in a classroom that has become unbearably hot.
An older person trapped inside a home built to retain heat, with no safe way to escape it.
A disabled person whose symptoms worsen as temperatures rise.
A family forced to choose between paying rising bills and finding some relief from the heat.
Because climate change does not affect everyone equally.
When the temperature rises, inequality rises with it.
And yet, those most affected are too often the least heard.
We are spoken about in climate policy, but rarely spoken with.
We are called “vulnerable groups”, as though vulnerability simply exists inside us.
But people are not born vulnerable to climate change.
They are made vulnerable by the systems that fail to protect them.
And yet, despite all of this, you tell young people that the future belongs to us while continuing to make decisions that threaten the future we are expected to inherit.
You praise young people for speaking out, then ask us to be patient.
But the climate crisis is not patient.
And people cannot live inside promises.
You cannot cool a city with speeches.
You cannot protect disabled people with sympathy alone.
You cannot call extreme heat “unprecedented” every year and continue responding as though it is unexpected.
Climate justice is not charity. It is responsibility.
We need homes, schools, hospitals and public transport designed for the climate we live in now, not the climate Britain had decades ago.
We need heat plans that include disabled people from the beginning, not as an afterthought.
We need healthcare systems prepared for the growing pressure that extreme weather places on patients.
And we need those most affected by climate change in the rooms where climate decisions are made.
Because lived experience is not just a story.
Lived experience is evidence.
The alarm has already been raised.
Scientists have raised it.
Young people have raised it.
Disabled people and people living with chronic illnesses have raised it.
The question is no longer whether those in power can hear the alarm.
The question is why so many continue to ignore the fire.
London is burning.
Britain is overheating.
And across the world, people are already living through consequences they did little to create.
But this is not a speech about hopelessness.
Because fires can be contained. Cities can adapt.
Systems can change. And choices can still save lives.
But only when we stop treating climate action as something that would be nice to achieve and start treating it as what it truly is:
A matter of health.
A matter of equality.
And a matter of survival.
London is burning.
The alarm is sounding.
And this time, history will not ask whether we knew.
History will ask what we did when we knew.
