A new climate-focused campaign group, 4 Billion Dead, has launched in response to a buried report that its name could become reality. It urges people to wake up to our impending disaster of untold proportions. The climate crisis is hitting Europe hard in 2026, warming twice as fast as any other continent – and the consequences are deadly. Record-breaking heatwaves have triggered severe droughts, flooding and fires across the continent. The heatwaves triggered exceptional wildfires across western Europe and led to smoke haze from Canadian blazes blanketing large swathes of the US northeast and midwest. Amid a prolonged dry season, the biggest wildfires in Indonesia since the 2015 El Niño have blanketed parts of Southeast Asia in acrid smoke, while India faces its weakest monsoon in two decades