Time is short and the stakes are high: we must keep talking about climate change
It is now widely understood that climate change poses two distinct but related challenges for London. On the one hand, there is the need to mitigate:- London needs, as does every other settlement, to reduce the greenhouse emissions that occur as a result of the activities that take place in the city. On the basis of current targets, the scale of reduction is dramatic, with reductions of at least 80% required by 2050.
On the other hand, and at the same time, the city needs to adapt. An unavoidable degree of change to London's climate is already in the pipeline, and even if we were to halt our GHG emissions completely tomorrow we would still experience those changes over the next fifty or so years.
Official scenarios suggest that the changes in London‘s climate will consist primarily of: more extreme weather events (storms, heat waves and so forth) happening with greater frequency; wetter winters; and hotter summers. It is predicted that the kinds of extreme summer experienced in 2003 will be ’normal' by 2050.
Adapting to these changes will pose many challenges, in the short, medium and longer term. Most of the buildings in our city, for example, are - quite rationally - designed for the temperate climate to which we have been used in the past. They are not, by and large, particularly good at dealing with extreme heat.
What should we do about this? If we simply use air conditioning we will simply be consuming more energy. Or take flash flooding: more extreme and frequent storms will put even more pressure on localised drainage systems. Whose job is it to think about this? And when? Whose job is it to respond? Councils? Developers? Householders?
Similar questions can be posed in terms of mitigation. Many of the ‘easy’ things to do - reduce energy consumption, eliminate inefficient electrical equipment, improve insulation, produce more efficient cars and so on - are either already underway or have been done or are in the immediate pipeline.
Some of the harder things - change how our energy is produced, for example, or change the way our food is procured - are either still in the foothills or barely on the planning board. It is still not clear what is the balance of responsibility between government, businesses, communities and individuals.
Worse, add together the easy things and the hard things and it‘s still nowhere near enough. No-one has yet figured out how London could possibly function on 80% less carbon dioxide emissions (or, if they have, they’re marginalised as mad or scary). Yet 2050 is now well within sight. Those sitting their A levels this summer will be the CEOs and cabinet ministers and internet personalities of 2050.
We need to start talking about this. The first rule of climate change is - you must talk about climate change. We need to remove our head from the sand. Our lifestyles may need to change significantly. Our entire economy may need to be re-engineered: we may need to shift from our present economy of ‘more’ not just to a ‘low carbon economy’ but to a sustainable economy of ‘enough’. We cannot wait until it is too late. We still have time to change, but we need to work it out soon.