What water companies have done to our waterways will be dwarfed by what the oil and gas industries are doing to our planet - Andy Brown

What actually happened is that the shares gradually got concentrated into fewer and fewer hands as distant owners saw an opportunity to receive increasingly hefty dividends at the expense of the customer whilst investment in improved pipes and new systems was neglected. Senior managers paid themselves eye watering salaries as they loaded debt onto the balance sheets with little thought for problems that would happen after their own comfortable retirement.

Now the costs of that short term thinking are beginning to emerge. It is only necessary to look at your water bill to see who is paying the cost for someone else’s greed and short sightedness.

A third of all the money you pay goes on servicing the debts of Yorkshire Water or on paying dividends to its shareholders. You are being asked to shell out a great deal of money to put right problems that someone else profited from for years.

Bear that in mind when you next read a report on what the oil and gas industries are doing to our planet. Because what happened to our waterways is bad enough, but it is going to be dwarfed by the costs of the much bigger scandal of what is happening to the atmosphere and the oceans across our entire planet. A few companies are making a great deal of money out of dumping problems on the future and employing very skilled marketing and misinformation companies to try and cover up their actions.

For those who care to look, the evidence of damage is accumulating relentlessly. Each winter scientists measure the amount of ice in the Arctic. This year the ice levels were once again at historic lows. You will find that news buried on the science pages where few will notice.

The reason for the melting of glaciers and ice sheets isn’t some natural variation in the earth’s climate that has always taken place and is of no great concern. It is directly down to the fact that fossil fuels are being burnt at record levels and they are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Any respectable scientist will tell you that this traps heat and their instruments have recorded a rise from 280 to 422 parts per million in the amount of that gas in the atmosphere since industrial times.

The costs of that are only just starting to accumulate and hit us in our pockets. Car insurance is going up fast. Those cars that got washed down the streets of Valencia with their drivers clinging to the roofs have to be paid for.

House insurance is heading the same way. The increased ferocity of fires and floods also has to be covered. Yet those early impacts are nothing compared to the consequences of longer delays in acting. Low lying parts of cities like London are incredibly vulnerable to sea level rises and storm surges and the costs of any failure of the Thames barrier would be phenomenal. It gets raised more frequently every year. There are strict limits to how much water it can hold back.

That is why some of us get very worried whenever we are told that climate change is a low priority problem that we shouldn’t waste too much money on trying to solve. It is an existential problem that won’t go away just because politicians like Donald Trump would like it to.

Drill baby drill politics are deeply dangerous. It is not wise to dither and delay when problems are continuing to accumulate that we know will eventually reach crisis point. The only sensible approach is to see the change in technology which we need to adopt as an opportunity rather than a threat and to embrace the chance to help individuals and companies to invest in reducing their use of energy and their cost of living or running costs.

We have some excellent technology at our finger tips. If we want to cushion the blow of those rapidly increasing household bills then we need to support more of us to install solar panels, battery systems and better insulation.

If, by contrast, we choose to listen to the supporters of fossilised technology who want us to burn baby burn then don’t be surprised if we end up with problems and costs that will dwarf those that the water companies left us with.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.