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The UK is unprepared for the devastating consequences of global warming in the coming years, the Government’s climate advisers warned today.
Rising seas, flooding, landslides, power cuts, food shortages, droughts, heatwaves and destruction of natural habitats such as freshwater lakes and rivers are all predicted to become more common as temperatures rise.
Our planning for such events has been ‘genuinely poor’, the Climate Change Committee warns today in a damning 1,500-page report exposing the risks of global warning to Britain.
The report – produced by 450 scientists and experts – suggests the Government’s focus on reaching ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050 could be derailed as the plans do not take account of rising temperatures.
It found average temperatures in Britain have risen by 1.2C since the 19th century and another 0.5C is expected – even with ambitious action to curb greenhouse gases.
The report comes as Britain prepares to host the UN’s climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow in November, seeking renewed global commitments to prevent a catastrophic rise in the world’s temperature.
The report said that by 2050, the heatwave of 2018 will fall every other year on average, summers will be 10 per cent drier, winters 5 per cent wetter, heavy rainfall could increase by 10 per cent and sea levels will be 10-30cm (4-12 inch) higher than in 1981-2000.
The committee said urgent protective measures are needed across many different areas to prevent disaster. This includes heatwave planning, improved water efficiency and the restoration of upland peat, vital for helping stop or slow the spread of flood waters.
Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Government advisory group, said: ‘We really want to get across the extent of climate risks we now face in the UK and the genuinely poor extent of planning we see for many of them.’
‘Our preparations are not keeping pace with the extent of the risks we face in this country.
‘That is a very concerning conclusion, particularly since we’ve been raising our concerns consistently with the Government for some time and, they’ve found it far too easy to dismiss those concerns and we would like to see that change.’
Government inaction since the committee’s last report five years ago has seen 570,000 homes being built which are not prepared for heatwaves, the report said.
It also highlighted how there have been more than 4,000 heat-related deaths in England since 2018.
The committee’s latest study assessed 61 areas of risk in the UK from nature to infrastructure, health, cultural heritage, businesses and food production and found more action was needed in more than half of them.
Without adaptation, risks with annual costs totalling billions of pounds are set to triple by 2080 even if temperature rises stay below 2C, the report warns.
The committee calls for action within the next two years from Government in eight key areas, including guarding against power failures.
The UK will increasingly rely on electricity as it switches to electric vehicles and uses electricity to heat homes, while floods or storms causing power cuts could also hit transport and communications.
Solutions could include urging people to charge their cars ahead of bad weather so they have transport or can use the batteries to power their home in a blackout.
Urgent action is also needed on risks to crops and livestock, and the supply of food, goods and services as well as threats to human health, well-being and productivity from too-hot homes and buildings.
Heat exposure in homes will increase as businesses and workers adopt greater homeworking as a result of the pandemic, and retrofitting measures is much more expensive than building into new homes now.
Baroness Brown, chairwoman of the Adaptation Committee, said the Government’s national action plan that followed the committee’s last risk assessment was inadequate.
She said: ‘The overall level of risk facing the UK has increased over the last five years, and adaptation is not keeping pace with the rate at which the climate is changing.
‘The focus on net zero, which requires reducing pollution as much as possible and using measures such as planting trees to absorb remaining carbon, would not solve the problem as the climate would go on changing for decades.
‘There’s a really significant additional element of inevitable change that will continue and to which we need to adapt in order to protect people, nature and the economy in the UK,’ she said.
‘Our message to government is this has got to be a priority, we’ve got to get on with it, and we need to see much stronger government leadership.’
The CCC, an independent body formed under Britain’s Climate Change Act to advise the government on tackling global warming, said preparations for changes brought about by climate change were also vital.
‘New evidence shows that the gap between the level of risk we face and the level of adaptation under way has widened,’ it said in the report. ‘Adaptation action has failed to keep pace with the worsening reality of climate risk.’
Panel member Julia King warned ‘the severity of the risks we face must not be underestimated’ and would not disappear as the world moves towards net zero carbon emissions, adding: ‘Many of them are already locked in.’
The Climate Change Committee said in its report that the earth is warming, with ‘clear evidence linking this warming to human activities’, adding that the above graph shows the last six years have been the six warmest on record globally
The CCC said observations document several clear recent trends in different aspects of the UK’s weather and climate, such as a warmer average temperature (top), changed precipitation extremes (middle) and higher average sea levels (bottom)
The report said changes in global temperature over the next few decades ‘do not significantly differ across the range of possible global emissions pathways’ – but added that beyond 2050, changes in global and UK climate ‘strongly depend on the future trajectory’ of global greenhouse gas emissions
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas urged for the report to be seen as a ‘call to action’, saying: ‘[It lays] out in forensic detail the cost of successive governments’ failure to take the necessary action on the climate emergency.
‘Almost every warning light on the climate dashboard is going from amber to red. This has to serve as a call to action, far beyond the piecemeal policies and programmes the government has put in place.’
How the Climate Change Committee includes a former Wetherspoon legal boss among experts
Baroness Brown of Cambridge: Engineer who has held senior roles in industry and academia
Michael Davies: Professor of building physics and environment at University College London
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (left) and Michael Davies (right)
Richard Dawson: Professor of earth systems engineering at Newcastle University
Ece Özdemiroğlu: Founding director of Economics For The Environment Consultancy (Eftec)
Richard Dawson (left) and Ece Özdemiroğlu (right)
Rosalyn Schofield: Solicitor who was JD Wetherspoon’s legal director and worked for Associated British Foods
Piers Forster: Professor of physical climate change at the University of Leeds
Kate James: Professor of ecology and biodiversity at University College London
Doug Parr, policy director and chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, told the Independent: ‘Change is now inevitable and it’s time the government pulls its finger out to ensure we’re ready to face the challenges the climate crisis poses.’
‘That means bringing forward detailed, well-funded measures on everything from proper housing standards making them fit for living in a warmer world, to investment in soils and nature restoration.
‘Putting money behind good action now will see us paid back many times through the benefits our society will reap.’
Government officials said UK action to adapt to the effects of climate change was integrated across departments, covering the natural environment, infrastructure, buildings, people and industry, with efforts including putting nature at the heart of its approach with new tree and peat action plans, and building resilience to flooding.
A Government spokesman said: ‘The UK was the first major world economy to set a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
‘Our plan to further reduce emissions in 2035 by at least 78 per cent compared to 1990 levels is the highest reduction target by a major economy to date.
‘As we work to eliminate the UK’s contribution to climate change and build back greener after the pandemic we will increase biodiversity, protect and restore our peatlands, clean up our country’s air and help protect our waterways through our landmark Environment Bill.
‘We welcome this report and will consider its recommendations closely as we continue to demonstrate global leadership on climate change ahead of Cop26 in November.’
Cop26 is billed as the most important climate change conference since 2015, when countries pledged to limit global temperature rises to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to go down to 1.5 degrees.
Experts believe this can be achieved only by the world reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a goal which was reaffirmed by the G7 on Sunday.
The club of the world’s richest nations also agreed to halve collective emissions by 2030 compared with the level in 2010.
But the CCC warned that further warming was ‘inevitable, even on the most ambitious pathways for the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.’
Meanwhile today, a new unrelated report has found river flood defences prevent losses of £568 million a year, showing the vital need to maintain them.
The study for ABI and insurers Flood Re by flood risk specialists at JBA Risk Management looked at the benefits of flood protection upkeep over a 30-year period under different spending scenarios.
It found that without flood defences in place along rivers, losses could total £956 million a year, which was reduced to £388million with defences, showing they delivered a benefit of £568 million a year.
The report also found that increasing current maintenance spending by 50% could extend the lifespan of defences by an average of eight years and that every £1 spent on maintaining existing schemes can save up to £7 in spending on new defences.
It highlighted that well-funded flood defences do not breach, but if maintenance spending is cut the lifespan of the defences will reduce and overall annual costs will rise.
The joint review has been released ahead of the Government’s comprehensive spending review later this year.
Simon Waller, executive chair at JBA Risk Management, said: ‘The effectiveness of flood defences plays a significant role in the resilience of our communities and will continue to do so, especially with research suggesting that flooding is likely to increase in frequency and severity.’
James Dalton, ABI’s director of general insurance policy, said: ‘At the upcoming comprehensive spending review, we urge the Government to ensure that adequate investment is allocated to flood defence maintenance projects as well as capital as part of the new funding cycle.
‘The flood risk in the UK is only going to worsen as a result of climate change, so it is vital that investment in flood defences keeps pace.’
ABI and Flood Re say that flooding is the greatest natural disaster risk in the UK, suggesting an estimated one in six properties in England and Wales, one in 11 properties in Scotland and one in 34 properties in Northern Ireland are now at risk of flooding.
Since 2015, the UK Government has been investing £2.6 billion towards flooding protection in flood and coastal defence schemes.
In the 2020 Budget, it announced that it will double that amount to £5.2 billion over the next six years.
‘Our primary concern must be to protect communities and families from the impact of flooding. Today’s report shows that it is also financially reckless to do otherwise,’ said Flood Re chief executive Andy Bord.
‘The Government must embrace the opportunity to commit additional budget to maintain our flood defences.
‘If maintained, flood defences provide long-term security for communities which may otherwise be devastated by flooding.
‘Protecting against flood risk is also critical to ensuring the long-term availability of affordable home insurance for those living in flood-prone areas.’
Also today, a survey has found more than 80 per cent of Britons want the Government to make refillable products a central part of its strategy for tackling the plastic pollution crisis.
Released on World Refill Day, the research found more than two-thirds (73 per cent) of respondents think plastic pollution is as bad or worse than it was before the onset of the pandemic.
A third have had a reusable container such as a coffee cup rejected in the last 12 months, despite guidance stating they are Covid-safe for servers to handle as long as basic hygiene practice is followed.
The survey of 2,000 adults conducted in May this year found 80 per cent were taking steps to reduce their consumption of single-use plastic.
Commissioned by Friends of the Earth and anti-plastic pollution charity City to Sea, the research found 81% wanted the Government to prioritise making refillable products more widely available.
It found 74 per cent would like to see more refill options for items such as dried foods, laundry detergents and take-away coffee.
Three in four reported feelings of ‘anxiety, frustration or hopelessness’ at the amount of plastic packaging that comes with their shopping.
More than half of those surveyed (55 per cent) think supermarkets and big name brands are not doing enough to address plastic pollution.
A further 59 per cent said supermarkets were not offering enough refillable, reusable or packaging-free products.
World Refill Day, a campaign set up by City to Sea, aims to prevent plastic pollution by helping people live with less waste by making small changes to their everyday shopping.
It directs people to businesses offering refill and reuse options on their goods via the Refill app, which has 200,000 refill stations logged globally.
City to Sea and Friends of the Earth are calling on the Government to make refill and reuse a central plank of the post-pandemic recovery, as well as introducing legally binding targets on plastic pollution.
They are also calling on retailers to make it easier for customers to make plastic-free choices by introducing refillable products and creating packaging-free aisles.
The two organisations want to see similar plans to those proposed in France, where 20% of shelf space would be dedicated to refill stations by 2030.
Jo Morley, City to Sea’s head of campaigns, said: ‘These latest figures support what organisations like City to Sea and Friends of the Earth have been long saying – we need nothing short of a refill revolution.’
She continued: ‘This is about putting action behind the words that have long been promised to implement the waste hierarchy that clearly puts recycling as a last resort after all efforts to reduce, reuse and refill have been exhausted.
‘As a global movement, we have the power to create a wave of change and show businesses, brands and governments that we still want to see action on plastic and reuse is the solution.’
Friends of the Earth plastics campaigner Camilla Zerr said: ‘The results are in and couldn’t be clearer – public support for a world where plastic pollution isn’t choking our oceans, landscapes and wildlife is resounding.
‘But so far, Government promises on plastic have been all bluff and bluster, with little guarantee of a real reduction in plastic pollution.’
She continued: ‘There is now a fantastic opportunity to craft a new, ambitious vision for plastic pollution enshrined in law through the Environment Bill.
‘The Government should use it to really listen to what the public wants and put reuse and refill at the heart of this much-needed legislation.’
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spokesperson said: ‘The UK is a global leader in tackling plastic pollution. Recycling and reusing more of our waste is key to leaving the environment in a better state for future generations.
‘We welcome refill initiatives and want companies to take more responsibility for their packaging waste, with consumers incentivised to reuse and recycle the billions of drinks bottles and cans purchased every year.
‘That’s why we have brought forward our landmark proposals for packaging reform and a deposit return scheme, which will boost recycling, step up our war on plastic pollution and reduce litter in our communities and countryside.’
