Heat costs $3.9trn yearly; UK unprepared, MPs warn

Heat stress is already extracting $3.9 trillion annually from global productivity. That's not a forecast – that's the current tax on an overheating world. A UK parliamentary report flags the country as dangerously unprepared for cascading heat impacts: workforce capacity erosion, infrastructure strain, supply chain disruption. The report identifies institutional gaps across government, health, and business continuity planning. No specifics yet on which departments own adaptation responsibility or what funding gap exists. But here's the tension: adaptation spending remains a fraction of mitigation investment globally, despite heat being an immediate threat to bottom-line performance. UK organisations face a hard choice – wait for government direction or embed heat resilience into operational planning now. The question isn't whether heat will disrupt business; it's whether boards have already priced that disruption into their risk registers.

Heat costs global economy $3.9trn a year as MPs warn UK is unprepared

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