Skip to content

What-If

Explore what could change.

Choose a place, a documented issue and one of its documented interventions, then set how far it goes.

ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — NOT A SCIENTIFIC PREDICTION. Built from documented causes, impacts and solutions plus general qualitative patterns. It contains no modelled numbers.

3 · Intervention
PilotScaledTransformative

Adopted across much of the area, with dedicated budgets and enforcement.

Illustrative scenario

What if France took a scaled approach to “National heatwave plan”?

Starting point · documented

ClimateSeverity: High
Heatwaves, drought and wildfire in southern France

Mediterranean France is facing hotter summers, drier soils and a widening wildfire season.

The intervention · documented

National heatwave plan

Alerts, checks on vulnerable people and cooling measures introduced after 2003.

Reduces heat mortality.

Schematic direction of change

Adaptation reduces exposure and harm, but the underlying hazard continues to be shaped by global greenhouse gas emissions.

Schematic, unitless illustration: relative pressure over time without the intervention compared with the intervention in place. Not based on measured data.NowLonger term →Relative pressure (unitless)
Without the intervention With the interventionSchematic shape only — no data, units or dates.

Causes this could address

This intervention works indirectly — it does not map onto a single documented cause, but supports the wider response to the issue.

Impacts that could ease

  • Heat-related deathsHeatwaves cause excess mortality, especially among older people.
  • WildfiresFires threaten forests, homes and tourism.

Wider reach at higher intensity is an assumption of this illustration.

How change might unfold

  1. Near term

    Early warning and preparedness measures can reduce harm quickly.

  2. Medium term

    Infrastructure and urban design changes reduce exposure as they are built out.

  3. Long term

    Protection must keep pace with a hazard that continues to intensify unless global emissions fall.

Faded stages are less likely to be reached at scaled intensity.

What this would not change

Local action cannot stop global warming; without global emission cuts the baseline pressure keeps rising.

What it depends on

  • Sustained funding and institutional capacity
  • Consistent enforcement and monitoring
  • Local stakeholder support
  • Participation of affected communities

ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — NOT A SCIENTIFIC PREDICTION. Built from documented causes, impacts and solutions plus general qualitative patterns. It contains no modelled numbers.

Read the sources for this issue