Letter to subscribers | July 2026

My monthly letter to subscribers, where we go behind the scenes at The Berenson Report and talk about editorial plans and other exciting projects.

Dear Subscriber,

Welcome to my personal letter to subscribers, where we look each month behind the scenes at The Berenson Report and I share insights and experiences from my own journey towards climate adaptation and resilience.

We’ve had some rather warm weather here in the UK over the last few weeks, with record temperatures across much of the country. This has got a lot of people thinking about how to cope in the heat, especially given that what we’ve seen is unlikely to be a one-off occurrence.

Thankfully, my wife and I had already given some thought to how we can adapt our home to the weather-related impacts of climate change.

We’ve fitted solar film to the south-facing front windows, for example, which reduce significantly the heat, glare and ultraviolet radiation coming in through the glass. My wife also had the good sense to order two large tower fans when they came back in stock after the last heatwave.

We’ve adapted our behaviour, too, by getting up earlier to take advantage of the relative cool of the morning, moving our workspaces downstairs into the cooler parts of the house and shifting the dogs’ afternoon walks back into the late evening.

In the garden, we have water butts connected up to every available surface, from the roof of the house to the sheds and the greenhouse. These provide us with enough water to supply the vegetable garden through a couple of weeks of drought. We’ve also recently planted some more trees around the growing spaces, to provide shade for the crops growing beneath them.

In addition, we’ve created more shade over the (rather small) ‘living’ area of the garden, with a range of parasols and shade sails to keep the air relatively cool. And with a large paddling pool for the dogs, which they love.

The productive element of the garden is, though, struggling with the heat and lack of rain. Some of the salads, in particular, go almost directly to seed. And the growth of many other things is stunted, although they may yet recover.

My thoughts, however, are turning to alternative crops that are more likely to thrive in our future weather conditions. A topic for a fortnightly newsletter at some point, perhaps, or maybe even a quarterly deep-dive.

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Talking of the fortnightly newsletter, we’ve covered some interesting topics in the last few issues. We’ve talked about climate scenarios, for example, as well as the distinction between electricity and energy – and why this is important for the way we approach climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience.

I also published my very first quarterly deep-dive report, which looks at who’s doing what in the field of climate adaptation and resilience. I’ll admit that I researched and wrote this primarily to satisfy my own interest, but if you’ve had a chance to read it then I hope you found it useful, too.

The ‘electricity vs. energy’ article, in particular, contains a lot of data analysis and visualisations. In pulling this together, I found invaluable the Energy Institute’s Statistical review of world energy, 2026. If you’re into energy statistics, you can download the report, together with the underlying data, from the Energy Institute’s website.

In preparing the data visualisations, I used Datawrapper. It’s an online tool that makes it really easy to create tables, charts and maps and to publish them online. Sure, it’s not a patch on specialist software like Tableau (which I love), but it has the essential functionality that I need for things like this. And, given that it’s free, it’s also a lot cheaper.

In the next few issues of the fortnightly newsletter, we’ll be looking at the impact of warmer weather on those who work outdoors (and on those for whom they work), the national security implications of climate change, and the impact of extreme heat on energy generation. I’m also working on recommendations for my summer reading list, which is scheduled for publication on Tuesday 28^th July.

I’m looking ahead to the next quarterly deep-dive report, too, which I’m looking to publish in September. Inspired by the past few weeks, I’m planning to look in more depth at how we can make our homes (both new and existing) more resilient to extreme heat, taking inspiration from the latest in cooling technologies and from those living in parts of the world that have coped with such temperatures for generations.

* * *

Thinking now about how we can be more resilient to the impacts of climate change in the future makes excellent sense. In fact, many of us are no doubt wishing we’d though more about it sooner. But it’s far from easy to know what to do for the best.

My wife and I have done the obvious – and reasonably cheap and easy – things. But we’re probably going to have to take more extreme measures in the future. We’ve discussed some sort of shading on the front of the house, whether that’s through growing wisteria (or, better, grapes!) across the façade of the house or installing some sort of awning.

We’ve also considered adding an additional layer onto the ground-floor extension at the back of our house, so that it creates extra space on the first floor, too. That way, the cooler north-facing upstairs room on that side of the house would become bigger and we could adopt it as our bedroom. This is clearly going to be expensive, though.

We’ve also discussed whether it might be more sensible to simply move somewhere that doesn’t get so hot, such as southern Scotland. We’d get cooler summers, for sure, but also darker winters. And, I suspect, a lot more rain. But it’s a trade-off that might well prove worthwhile in time.

We wouldn’t be the first climate refugees. And I doubt very much that we’d be the last.

Until next time,

Simon.

Simon Perks | Founder & Editor-in-Chief | The Berenson Report