As this episode was recorded, Europe was in the middle of a heatwave. More than 1,300 people had died in a single week. France alone recorded around 1,000 excess deaths. Red heat alerts were issued simultaneously across six countries.

This happens every summer now. Europe has known about this risk for over 20 years since the 2003 heatwave that killed more than 70,000 people in a single season.

So why are people still dying at scale?

A conflict in the Persian Gulf closes a shipping route. China bans the export of a chemical most people have never heard of. A copper mine in Chile runs short of a critical input. Wind turbines in Europe get more expensive. EV charging stations in Norway take longer to build.Nobody designed this chain. Nobody saw it coming. And nobody is reporting it as a single story.In this episode of The Cascade, we follow the wire. Copper is the metal that makes the green transition possible. Every EV, wind turbine, grid cable, and data center relies on it. But demand is set to triple by 2045, new mines take 16 to 17 years to build, ore grades are declining, and right now a little-known chemical called sulphuric acid is quietly limiting output from the world's largest copper producer.A 50 percent US tariff distorted global copper flows, causing prices to spike and then collapse within weeks. It also pushed manufacturers to reroute supply chains through other countries instead of building the domestic capacity the policy was meant to encourage.We explore why good intentions in complex systems often lead to unexpected results. We also examine why the most important decade for the green transition may be facing a supply problem that no one can solve on their own.The Cascade breaks down the system behind the headlines. This is what real-world complexity looks like.