Michael Edwards

The news of this week's floods (in South Yorkshire and the Midlands), the damage caused and the lives lost is very sad.  

Reports of a month's rain in one day & the unusual nature of such floods of the River Severn in the summer are not deterring the media from starting to wind up a "why didn't the Gov't / local council do more about this?" campaign.  

I visited “Exposed - Climate Change in Britain’s Backyard” at Nottingham Castle yesterday.  It's an exhibition of photographs showing the impact of climate change on Britain already; sponsored by the National Trust.  Its opening words were "The numbers of storms in Britain has doubled in the last 50 years."  The images are stark and include those of the problems large medieval properties like stately homes face cos they were not designed to withstand the kind of storms we’re having now.  

We way we have chosen to live, produce and consume is the reason why we face these problems.  

Even calls not to build on flood plains in the future should be tempered by the knowledge that such building is taking place in the Netherlands - it's just that there, they build houses that can float or are on stilts above the predicted flood levels.  We have a park & ride on the flood plain in Nottingham.  Our view was that simply, we were prepared to let it be flooded every now and again.   Amazingly for years, it didn't flood at all even though stats suggested it would have been many times.  But in recent years it's changed and been flooded more often that predicted.  

We need to adapt to the future, not defy it. 

And we need to re-visit what the Stern Report said and draw on his conclusions, that a £1 milllion invested now on mitigating climate change, saves £5 million of damage in the future.