Ignoring climate change is unwise because our children’s lives could be at risk - Andy Brown
There are few greater pleasures in life than lying by the pool in the warmth of the sun taking it easy. Working in England in 30 degree heat is a lot less fun. As is trying to grow food on ground that one year is completely soaking and the next bone dry.
There are, of course, those who deny the mounting evidence that something unusual is happening to our weather and try to tell us that we don’t need to worry too much because the climate has always changed, and Britain could do with a bit of warming.
Few ideas could be further from the truth or more irresponsible. What is driving the changes to our weather systems is that humanity has changed the entire atmosphere of our planet in ways that are clearly measurable.
When scientists check the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere using air trapped in ice cores they find that back in 1800 there were 283 parts per million.
Ten years ago, in 2015, that figure went over 400ppm for the first time in many thousands of years. Since then it has risen by another 28 parts to reach 428ppm. Instead of falling, the level of carbon emissions is still rising fast.
It is scientifically impossible to inject that amount of extra carbon dioxide into the air without trapping increased amounts of heat. Although CO2 is a very small proportion of the atmosphere, increasing the amount of it has severe consequences.
Extra heat generates extra energy and it has to go somewhere. That doesn’t necessarily mean that storms will significantly increase in frequency. It does necessarily mean they will increase in severity.
Last summer it was the people of Valencia who saw torrential floods that washed away cars with people still clinging to the roofs. This year it was children in Texas being drowned as they slept in a summer camp.
It is, of course, true that there have always been extreme weather events and hot summers. It is not true that they are just the same as they were in the past.
The wonderful summer of 1976 is often quoted as evidence of previous very warm summers in Britain.
It was indeed an extreme summer which broke many temperature records as the sun beat down for weeks.
The peak temperature recorded in that exceptional summer was 35.9 degrees centigrade. Three years ago we had a much shorter spell of hot weather. The thermometer recorded 40.3 degrees centigrade.
In other words, it is a matter of factual record that hot British summers are getting significantly hotter. An increase of peak summer temperatures of over four degrees centigrade in a single lifetime is a serious problem.
That kind of change impacts on people’s health and it impacts on farming and food production.
Yet that is far from being the most worrying aspect of climate change. The central concern is that the climate changes are only just beginning and many of them are baked in by past actions and the slow pace of change to new and better technology.
If we stopped pumping any new carbon into the atmosphere this year it would take ten to 20 years before we might begin to see the beneficial impacts on living conditions.
The plan that world leaders agreed on in Paris was intended to help us stop increasing the amount of CO2 by 2050 which means 25 years before we stop making things worse and a recovery might begin.
I say might because when it comes to climate change what goes up doesn’t have to come back down. There have been switchovers to new global climates recorded in the geological record.
At one period our planet was almost entirely covered by ice. At another it was mainly a baking desert.
It is therefore true that the climate has always changed. What is not true is that this means that we don’t need to worry about it happening.
The best we can hope for from any switch from one set of global weather systems to another is immense disruption. To date no human civilisation has succeeded in surviving intact through a period of rapid climate change.
Hungry refugees moving over borders in search of food and water is a very real prospect if we continue to cut down forests that draw gentle rain towards the invaluable places where we grow food.
There is no guarantee that it won’t be our children who are trying to move as cities like London are incredibly vulnerable to sea level rise. As are most of our nuclear power stations. Including the new ones.
We have a choice. We can ignore the evidence and hope everything turns out all right as we drill baby drill every last drop of oil. Or we can move rapidly away from fossilised technology.
Letting the fossil fuel companies who profit from these risks to drive much of our policy making does not seem wise. Being at the forefront of a change to new technology is.
Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.