Protection from extreme weather is a democratic question

The main impact of climate change on the UK will be more frequent and extensive floods. That is the conclusion of every single report and study for the last decade, including the government's own major risk assessment published by the Environment Agency (EA) in 2012

So why is the key agency responsible for flood planning being cut? And how come the ConDems are lying about the amount being spent on flood prevention?

The EA is to lose 1700 jobs to cuts this year, on top of 1150 lost since 2009 – 23% of its workforce – and more than 300 flood defence schemes have been halted to save money.

Research by Friends of the Earth shows ministers are including estimated spending by local authorities and businesses in their totals. And the amount they are claiming has been spent by businesses is just an over-optimistic guess.

Prime Minister David Cameron admitted (to boos and hisses from Conservative climate change sceptics – and abuse from The Sun) that global warming is the underlying cause of the current floods.

But the EA has calculated that because of climate change, the government needs to spend an extra £20m per year every year up to 2035 on flood defences to have any chance of mitigating the impact on people, land, water supplies and wildlife.

Coastal erosion has speeded up and could make some areas uninhabitable, or at the very least, uninsurable. But some people in the worst affected areas have not even had time to recover from the last major floods in 2012. Insurers estimate paying out £400m so far. Even the lesser floods of 2012 cost the country £600m.

However, a new insurance scheme agreed between government and the insurance industry to help people in the areas most at risk to get some cover, takes no account of the impact of climate change. It is going to be capped at 500,000 properties even though the EA has estimated that between 1.7 and 3.6 million people will be affected by floods by 2050.

Given that there are currently 360 flood warnings in place across the UK, the lower end of that figure must have been reached already, if all impacts are taken into account.

The same jet stream fluctuation that has trapped the UK in a persistent low pressure area, is causing extreme cold and snow in the United states, where temperatures as low as -50 have been recorded. Winter in Ontario is always cold but even Canadians struggle to cope with -30C. It was -17C (-33C with wind chill) in the town of Hell, Michigan, prompting online jokes that Hell had frozen over.

Hell will certainly freeze over before governments take action to halt these frightening climate transformations. The truth is that even when leaders like David Cameron and Barack Obama accept the existence of climate change, capitalist states will do nothing to halt the rise in greenhouse gas emissions (up again by 2.1% in 2013). And it seems that in this time of austerity, they will do little or nothing to help people cope with the disastrous results.

Most greenhouse gas emissions, are due to - in order of impact - land use change (clearing forest and wilderness for agriculture or building on formerly agricultural land); burning coal, oil, gas, cement making and gas flaring.

And just 90 entities are responsible for 63% of all emissions:

- 50 investor-owned companies such as Chevron, Peabody, Shell, and BHP Billiton

- 31 state-owned companies such as Saudi Aramco and Statoil

- 9 state-run industries in China, Poland and the former Soviet Union.

The positive message for 2014, therefore, must be that the area for action is actually well defined and relatively narrow.  To halt climate change we need to take political, social and economic action to slow these  specific activities and then stop some of them entirely.

But to achieve that we need to find ways to replace our hollowed out democracies, operating only in the interests of those 90 entities, with a popular decision-making process that defends the interests of the 99% and their life on planet earth.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Climate change brings extreme rain and flooding

As many as 5.2m UK properties are already at risk of flooding, with 2.4m threatened by rivers and the sea, and a further 2.8 million at risk from surface water from overflowing drains. This number will rise significantly as climate change increases the volume of winter rains.

Statistics from the National Climate Information Centre now show that days of extreme rain have become more common since 1960. This is defined as the sort of downpour expected once in 100 days. Last year, extreme rain fell around once every 70 days.

Scientists say that as the world has warmed by 0.7C, the atmosphere is able to hold 4% more moisture, which means more potential rain. Last year was the wettest in England's recorded history.  

The flood misery in large areas of England, Wales and Scotland is far from over. Huge bands of rain from the Atlantic are forecast until mid-January affecting many areas but particularly the south-west of England.

Thousands of homes, shops and businesses have flooded and disrupted rail and road journeys mean it’s been anything but a fun holiday for hundreds of thousands of people.

Once the floods recede, the clean up begins. As Americans whose homes were flooded In Hurricane Sandy are discovering, the post-flood period is a nightmare.

Blankets of black mould up to two inches thick flourish on walls causing respiratory illnesses that could harm people long term. Many thousands of New Yorkers have found their insurance policies don’t cover flood damage. It turns out only 18% of Americans have flood insurance.

In the UK some areas may become uninsurable, as the government and insurance industry wrangle over a protection plan. Environment minister Richard Benyon said: “It’s rather a shame it’s been raised at this particular moment when there are a lot of people with flooded homes.” But surely this is the best time to talk about it and sort it?

If anyone doubts the cause of the floods, here is a map published by the European Environment Agency in November. It shows the increase in winter rain in north-west Europe, resulting from climate change, alongside that other key risk factor for floods – building on flood plains and concreting over the land.

This remarkable report from the EEA is an in-depth study of all the varied impacts likely to result from climate change on different EU member states. Here’s a summary map:

As can be seen, the dangers to European society and economy are more than matched by the risks to precious eco-systems.

Last year was a dangerous turning point: unprecedented melting of the ice caps, droughts, storms and hurricanes and for the UK, the wettest summer on record and now the floods. The US is currently hit by snow storms but believe it or not, 15 inches of snow is not enough to ease the Midwest drought. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota are still in the two worst drought categories. But the Democrats and Republicans agreed not to mention climate change during the Presidential election.

We can’t halt climate change entirely now – the emissions already in the atmosphere are going to have big effects. But we need to remove all future decisions from the paralysed profit-focused governments and corporations and instead form a network of People’s Assemblies.

The network could take steps to start cutting emissions now, perhaps holding warming below 2 degrees in the best-case scenario and adopt and emergency plan to mitigate unavoidable impacts, for example by

•  Improving natural flood defences on coasts and river mouths Halting construction on flood plains
•  Encouraging communities to remove the concrete carapace that is strangling drainage, freeing up as much land as possible.

AA global network of People’s Assemblies could quickly put together a binding agreement on emissions reductions, and open the way for a new era of sustainable production. Acting how to achieve this should become the focus for meetings up and down the country early in the New Year.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Tale of a catastrophe foretold

Welcome to the weather of the 21st century. That’s the message from the floods that have overwhelmed whole areas of the West of England, leaving hundreds of thousands without power, without water and with damaged homes. And the government, despite many warnings, is totally unprepared for the consequences of a Hurricane Katrina-New Orleans type of event. Then people scoffed at how incompetent the American authorities were in dealing with the aftermath of an unprecedented hurricane. Now the British state has demonstrated that it has no real plans to cope with similar events, which are inextricably linked to climate change, and that the emergency services have been overwhelmed.

Prime Minister Brown has said there will be a "review", but the New Labour government has repeatedly ignored warnings about what could happen. It has emerged that the government was warned in two separate reports that the plans in place to tackle flood risks were "complex, confusing and distressing for the public". In July 2004 the government said it needed to improve co-ordination between water companies, councils and the Environment Agency; then in 2005, the government also agreed to "work towards giving" the agency "an overarching strategic overview across all flooding and coastal erosion risks". Nothing happened. Actually, something did take place. The government cut the Environment Agency’s budget, despite pleas that this would weaken flood defence work. As Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said: "The government has been looking at an integrated approach for more than three years, but did not act on its own analysis in 2005. Ministers have been in and out of the revolving door at the department, and now we are to have another review to look at exactly the same issues again." Yesterday the government promised an extra £200m to the Environment Agency over the next three years, but the agency has said that at least £1000m a year is needed.

The floods are the worst in history, exceeding the spring of 1947 – themselves said to be the worst for 200 years - when a hard winter was followed by a rapid thaw. "We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before," said the agency yesterday. "The benchmark was 1947, and this has already exceeded it." The floods were caused by a single day’s rainfall, which delivered a month’s worth in 24 hours. Extreme weather is a feature of climate change resulting from global warming. The Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in a paper published this week, identifies "human fingerprint" in rainfall increases in recent decades in the Northern hemisphere. Brown has acknowledged that the floods crisis is probably linked to climate change. But his response is limited to improving drains and flood defences. In other words, the message is: Adapt and survive. This is a hopeless position. All the flood defences in the world will not stop low-lying areas near rivers being overwhelmed by monsoon-type events like those seen in the North last month and the West of England last week. Action to halt global warming has to start now, not tomorrow.

An emergency action plan has to include:

• an end to building in flood plains and concreting over fields and gardens
• rationalisation of existing use of housing and buildings, use of empty properties
• massive research and development of alternative fuel and power systems
• overhaul of public transport to provide cheap and reliable bus, rail, and water services
• upper limit on airmiles and end to airport expansion
• food production and transport to be made ecologically sustainable
• protection of trees and green areas

Come to tonight’s open forum, Reject greenwash - compost the corporations! 6.30pm at the Diorama Arts Centre, to discuss these issues.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Flood victims abandoned

From Mount Everest to Hull, the evidence of climate change is before our very eyes, as well as in the homes of thousands of people in the north of England. Yet the British government sees nothing and hears nothing, with its response to the floods little better than the White House’s inaction when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. It took New Labour ministers nine days to reach some of the north’s flood-hit cities – and then all they could offer were words and more words. As for compensation and financial support, people like Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, were their mealy-mouthed selves. Although she was pressed during her visit to Sheffield about compensation, Blears provided no clear indication of government intentions. The government can find endless sums of money for the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the renewal of Trident nuclear missiles and tax breaks for their asset-stripper friends who run private equity funds. Ask them about compensation and financial support for flood victims and all you get is double-talk.

Many of the households flooded out in Sheffield, Doncaster and Hull are too poor to afford insurance so will have lost everything in the floods, which resulted from extreme weather patterns that are a feature of climate change. Infrastructure is severely damaged and Hull’s council leader Carl Minns was right when said: “Quite frankly, if this was Chelsea or Fulham, this would have been plastered over the front pages for weeks. The government needs to help this city with a large injection of capital, otherwise this city will not recover." He called Hull the disaster’s forgotten city, where 17,000 properties have been affected and nearly 11,000 homes evacuated. Damage to schools alone tops £100m. But don’t worry, the very British response of a “disaster relief fund” is on the way. They have been set up in South Yorkshire and the city council in Hull has launched the Hull Flood Fund. In other words, the local authorities have to go cap in hand to ordinary members of the public for hand-outs and donations so that they can put their towns back together again while the government thinks the matter over.

Extreme weather will become more frequent as climate change intensifies. Evidence of the changes well under way have come from Peter Hillary and Jamling Tenzing, the sons of the first men to scale Everest in 1953. They say the mountain is now so ravaged by climate change that their fathers would no longer recognise it. The glacier on which it stands, and those around it, are melting at such a rate that scientists believe the mountain could be barren rock by 2050. Hillary, who has himself twice reached Everest's summit, said: "Climate change is happening. This is a fact. Base camp used to sit at 5,320 metres. This year it was at 5,280 metres because the ice is melting from the top and side. Base camp is sinking each year. For Sherpas living on Mount Everest this is something they can see every day but they can't do anything about it on their own." Up to 40,000 Sherpas who live at the base of the Himalayas face devastation if vast new lakes formed by the melted ice burst and send a torrent of millions of tons of water down the slopes. Hillary said: "I've seen the result of glacial lakes bursting their banks and it's just catastrophic. It's like an atomic bomb has gone off. Everywhere is rubble. The floods of the past are unfortunately nothing compared with the size of what we are currently threatened with." But fear not, our great new leader in Downing Street is working out new market-led “solutions” to global warming, which, as the Stern report said, represents the greatest market failure of all time! So just be patient, even if your TV just floated past the window. Gordon Brown is on the case.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Climate change takes its toll in Asia

As torrential rains continue to sweep across South China and Bangladesh, Sir David King, the UK government's chief scientist told a committee of MPs that global warming has already altered the climate and the country will have to prepare for extreme weather such as heat waves and "torrential downpours". Flash floods in Britain are likely to be the biggest immediate problem caused by climate change, he warned. In China, roads have been turned into rushing rivers, flooding cities, towns and villages in the provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Jiangxi and Fujian. The death toll has risen to at least 76 and three-quarters of a million people have been forced from their homes, with rain forecast to continue to the end of the week. Nine million people are affected by the worst flooding in 50 years. In some areas the torrential rain has triggered land and mudslides, destroying crops, roads and houses. Meanwhile, some northern regions of China are being hit by heatwaves, with temperatures in parts likely to reach 40 degrees. And to add to the country’s predicament, the glaciers which feed China's great waterways, the Yellow River and the Yangtze, are beginning to melt. The Chinese government says the glacier area around Mount Everest has shrunk by some 21%. In the short term, glacier melt will increase flooding downstream, but in the long term it will lead to drought as the source of the great rivers of Asia dries up.

In Bangladesh, predicted to be among the countries worst affected by global warming, heavy rain caused further havoc in the port city of Chittagong on Tuesday where rescuers have recovered at least 87 bodies but more feared missing following the biggest storm in decades. Officials and witnesses said the deaths were caused mostly by landslides and the collapse of ramshackle dwellings in the city of nearly 5 million. The flooding was so extensive that survivors were having difficulty finding dry ground to bury the dead. A Chittagong survivor said Monday's landslides struck so quickly that nobody had time to react. "The hills just came crushing down on us," one said. "It looks like we are living in a ghost city," a rescuer said. "Never before in my life have I confronted such a calamity," said another. Millions living on the banks of other rivers are also threatened. In Australia, where the ‘thousand-year’ drought led Prime Minister John Howard to threaten a ban on irrigation for farming and to ‘hope and pray for rain’ in April, a major storm has battered the east coast for days, causing the worst flooding in the Hunter Valley for 30 years, beaching a coal ship and flooding coastal towns. In Tajikistan, Central Asia’s poorest country, temperatures have risen and glaciers are melting - causing floods, pollution, disease, landslides and migration. Tajik glaciers provide water for the whole of Central Asia.

Just in case you think this is someone else’s problem, a report this week said London’s flood defences would only cope for another 20 years and that £20 billion would have to be spent to keep rising sea levels at bay. In the meantime, having announced the world’s highest profits earlier this year, Exxonmobil continues to fund the climate change denial industry - to the tune of $22 million since 1998. And while the rest of us are trying to reduce energy use, the company is counting on global oil consumption rising by 50% by 2030. Despite all the talk at the G8 and elsewhere, there can be no action on climate change until the grip of the corporations is broken.

Gerry Gold, economics editor