After a summer of misery will the public now get the message?
Published 26 July 2007
In the good old days, when gentlemen held doors open for ladies and families went for tea at Joe Lyons, visitors to the UK would marvel at our obsession with the weather. It was not that we talked so much about it, "Nice day today, Ethel", "Can't complain, Doris", it was that nothing actually happened. Britons would repair to the seaside in August in the hope that some days they could warm themselves on the beach, but more often than not they would sit in their cars, eating their picnics, as the windscreen wipers pushed away the drizzle. Not now. Britain has joined the family of nations with extreme weather.
The events of June and July in Yorkshire, Humberside, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and elsewhere - which in some places saw a month's worth of rain in a few hours - suggest that freak events are becoming more commonplace. The wettest two summer months on record follow unseasonably hot temperatures in April (remember that?). All this in a period when nine of the ten hottest European summers on record have occurred since 1989. The trend is set: drought mixed with floods, long periods of heat and brief cold snaps.
As Mark Lynas points out on page 24, the deniers keep denying, even though the evidence points strongly in one direction. The changing weather patterns at home and abroad (such as the dangerously high temperatures currently in south-east Europe), appear consistent with repeated predictions of the consequences of climate change. Polling suggests the public remains unmoved. Even those who accept climate change as fact rather than supposition have tended to see it as ushering in a new Britain of palm trees and al-fresco dining. And yet, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in February, even where conditions are drier and warmer, rainfall will occur, but with a new ferocity.
While the long-term strategy remains to seek agreement on and implementation of carbon-emission reduction, the short-term need to prepare has been exposed as flawed. Spending on flood defences has been cut, while warnings have gone unheeded. The most egregious failure was not to act on the Foresight Future Flooding report, commissioned by ministers in 2004, which said the risk of flooding would rise by up to 20 times by the 2080s.
The Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, was right to call for independent investigations into the floods. Two conclusions are already obvious: to ensure that proper investment is made in flood defences and other measures, and for one central organisation to co-ordinate future responses to emergencies.
Once the TV cameras have departed, the danger is that attention will turn to other issues. The new law of averages suggests that Britons will next year luxuriate in more Continental-style temperatures. They will complain not about Victorian drains but high rates of tax. Modernising so much of the UK's neglected infrastructure will cost billions, but it is surely money well spent.
Gordon Brown has emerged unscathed by the events. Indeed, as Martin Bright reports in our cover story on page 10, the new PM has enjoyed an astoundingly successful first month, leaving David Cameron floundering. (One can imagine the opprobrium that would have been heaped on Tony Blair had the floods occurred on his watch). But Brown, who obstructed a number of environmental initiatives while chancellor, still gives the impression of being a reluctant green. He talks of "coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding climate change", instead of taking the argument more vigorously to a sceptical public and media.
In January 2004, the government's chief scientist, Sir David King, said: "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism." His remarks infuriated Blair who was a year into his mission of madness in Iraq. King also said: "If we don't do enough [to cut carbon emissions] there could be floods every few years causing tens of billions of pounds worth of damage in the south of England." The best hope to draw from this miserable summer is that perhaps now the public, and politicians, will get the message.
Who dares call me a tyrant?
Might he be referring to us, we wondered, following the announcement by Hugo Chávez that any foreigner who criticised his government would be deported? When we published a cover article two weeks ago ("Chávez: from hero to tyrant") by our arts editor, Alice O'Keeffe, we expected a strong reaction. But still it was gratifying to see what looked like a response from the Venezuelan president himself. "How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant?" he said.
The speculation was that his comments were aimed at Manuel Espino, a Mexican politician who had the temerity to question Chávez's policies during a recent visit. Whoever Chávez had in mind, his threats are consistent with his government's increasingly intolerant attitude towards dissent. The same could be said for many of his supporters, who inundated the NS letters page and website. Some of these responses were considered. Many were little more than rants, accusing our writer of being middle-class (guilty as charged) and a CIA stooge (not guilty), among other crimes.
The debate about Venezuela is inevitably fierce. However, a robust democracy should be able to defend itself against criticism without resorting to threats. Chávez's latest comments might make even his most hardened fans stop to ponder their hero's democratic credentials.
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