Belgium's Heat Deaths Expose Europe's Dangerous Unpreparedness

In June, Belgium and its northern European neighbors encountered a heat wave that their infrastructure, hospitals, and public health systems were never designed to meet — and people died as a result. Nations long accustomed to cold as their seasonal adversary found themselves without cooling centers, without early warning systems, without any playbook for a threat they had not believed was theirs to face. The deaths were not merely a local tragedy; they were a signal, arriving at the intersection of a changing climate and the slow, incomplete work of human adaptation. As another heat wave move