I think recent floods in the UK and the very obvious signs of climate change across the world might just create a tipping point when it comes to policy to tackle these issues. What is being witnessed is very obviously serious, tangible and for sufficient numbers threatening enough that others (not least, politicians) might appreciate and even share their concern.
I have for some years been a member if the Green New Deal group. We have argued that if there is to be 'growth' in the UK it should come from investing in the sustainability of our future. In that way we reconcile the green conundrum of more economic activity whilst constraining environmental damage to the planet. I believe that all political parties will find that they do, eventually, have little choice but adopt this approach.
There are though, I admit, problems to address. It is very clear that if some problems are to be tackled - such as the very real threat of much of the enormously important farmland of East Anglia and the fens being lost to the sea, including vast acreages currently very many miles inland - then token gestures will not be enough. We may, for example, need to barrage the Wash.
Ideas such as this create cries of horror from the likes of the RSPB as a result of the loss of some habitats and yet I was at their Titchwell reserve in North Norfolk very recently and they candidly admit this will be lost to the sea within fifty years, and maybe sooner. If they're also candid, many bird reserves are now entirely artificial man made landscapes and it is time they realised that change embraces more such opportunities.
The point I am making is a relatively simple but fundamental one. Dealing with flooding requires us to re-embrace ideas of community, as I mentioned yesterday. It also requires us to realise that change is inevitable. And we now have all the warning signs we need that this change is required. What is necessary is that we take the actions soon, and do not delay. In that case, as I also explained yesterday, the pace of change is one we can manage. Leave it too late and that will not be the case; the second differential will be too big.
This though requires people to recognise that the case for change has been made. Are recent events enough to persuade not just ordinary people but government and those collective mindsets that organisations like the RSPB represent that this is the case and that embracing real change now is the route to survival?
For my children's sake, I hope so.
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Could we not pay for such defences by printing physical notes to cover the cost but with demurrage inbuilt? Say the project’s to last one year, then the notes would expire after 15 months, for example. As a community we get the wealth, the flood defences, without the inflation.
This could equally easily be achieved by pressing buttons at the Central Bank, in the first instance to create the money and in the second to destroy it, but I think the general population, uninformed in these matters, would take more easily to the idea of demurrage once introduced to it.
You could also just have the CB or the Treasury create the necessary currency and tell people to get on with it without causing inflation providing only appropriate amount of money were created but that’d probably be too much for an uninformed electorate or government to swallow.
Flooding, planning for same and flood protection is an EU competence.
See: EU Directive 2007/60/EC
The government has been required to improve flood defences for some years.
It isn´t something they can refuse to do either.
Mind you, neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband are likely to tell about that.
With a sea rise of some 1.7mm/Yr (UK) I think Titchwell is going to be around for some time, and some years the rise is in minus figures!
Nice place, been there. There is a nice place to stay just down the road at Thornham!
This is a really important and interesting post, and I completely agree with it.
Bill has missed the point in thinking that it’s about us mistakenly feeling that we can’t afford flood defences, and JohnM has badly missed the point in two different ways.
The RSPB is a very good guinea pig (or is it a canary in the coal mine??) – they would of course object strenuously to a Wash barrage on a reflex. The officers of the society would probably feel obliged to do this to reflect the views of their members. Their members are by definition people with an interest and level of understanding of the natural world. Yet, like everybody else in society psychological denial is so easy to slip into – this might take the form of “yes I know sea levels and storm surge intensities are increasing, and in my head I know that the Wash’s wetlands are doomed, but in my gut I don’t want to anything to change in a nature reserve I love.”
Big flood protection options studies need to be done in public with strenuous efforts to make all members of the public and of voluntary organisations such as RSPB take ownership of the shared problem and of the best available (but inevitably imperfect and expensive) response.
I actually don’t blame politicians from walking away from starting a fight against the likes of the RSPB and their members if they know that RSPB and their members are in effect trying to shirk their own responsibilities and push all the burden of helping people accept the uncomfortable truth onto the politicians’ shoulders.
Thanks
You got it
Thankyou.
You missed my point.
Flooding and assessment of risk of same is not under the remit of the UK government.
It is an EU competence.
The EU directive above has to be incorporated into UK law.
THAT is what will, to a larger extent, drive any defences.
Any Wash or Severn barrage would have to be approved by the EU before any construction started.
Which brings us back to environmental issues, also under the EU directive cosh.
And you can check inland or coastal risk on the EA website:
http://tinyurl.com/p3c7ty7
A great post and I hope you are right – it is about time.
But I wonder. The recent little burst of blaming green taxes for the rising cost of energy and fuel (instead of energy company profiteering) and the attack on renewables seems to suggest otherwise.
At least there is a strong regard action deploying distractors and scapegoats, rather than beginning to tackle the causes of climate change, even as the waters lap around our feet.
Changes to the financing of flood defences, apparently, have as their quid pro quo permissions to build more houses on flood plains – at least, according to Private Eye.