ENVIRONMENT-BRITAIN: Storms Take Climate Change Issues Out Of Seminar Rooms

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Nov 10 2000 (IPS) - It has proverbially rained and rained in England but rain has never taken England by storm as it has this year.

The British are no more talking of bad weather; they speak instead of climate change. The storms of the past few weeks has brought that idea out of the seminar rooms of environmentalists and into British homes.

In one way or another, as environment minister Michael Meacher said, the floods have taught the British more about global warming than a million political speeches could.

As the storms die out the Prime Minister, the deputy Prime Minister and the Prince of Wales are knocking on English doors to warn of the dangers that lie ahead.

This week the Foreign Office opened a new department to talk to other countries about global warming. The new climate diplomacy was launched after a report suggested that Britain will be hit by the new changes harder than southern Europe.

Britain sees new dangers from the seas around it. The sceptred isle is now the threatened island.

“Of course we cannot link one storm to global warming,” a spokesperson for the Department of the Environment told IPS. “But obviously climate change is developing a pattern and the storms have brought home to people that this is happening.”

The Thames barrier has been tested three times already by heavy seas that would have flooded London if unchecked. It will now be strengthened further at heavy expense.

What were quaint rivers through quiet meadows have been heavily sandbagged in scenes that everyone thought belonged to Bangladesh. Global warming itself hit Britain some time back; now the British have woken up to see what’s hit them. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott called the storms a “wake up call” for the British.

Scientists are suddenly being taken seriously. A study by the Jackson Environment Institute of the University of East Anglia has made a to individual companies to charge what they consider appropriate for insuring a property,” a spokeswoman for ABI told IPS. “And every insurance cover carries a risk assessment.”

Three years ago proposals for a flood defence were voted out of the local council at Shrewsbury on the ground they would be too ugly. Now this town like many others will keep barricades ready to keep the floods out.

British farmers are now being asked to change their crop cycles to cut down the danger from flooding. Farmers are being asked to go back to planting in the spring so that water can be better absorbed into the ground through fresh furrows.

Scientists at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire say that as traditional treatment like manuring have declined, the soil has begun to develop a hard cap that fails to absorb enough water. In fields, at home, in government offices the unseen threat has come home.