The weekly email in my inbox from Peter Landshoff on behalf of Natural Cambridgeshire is always a worthwhile read.
Some particularly interesting links in this week’s email, from which I’d recommend these if I could choose only three.
(1) The UK’s critical national infrastructure is very vulnerable to extreme weather and other effects of climate change. We touched upon this at local level yesterday in discussions in Huntingdon with the National Infrastructure Commission, where I raised the issue of the sudden and profound effects of drought damage on so many of our local fen roads. But other critical infrastructure is also at risk. “Major power outages, landslides onto roads, buckling train lines and flooding of infrastructure sites: these are all realistic scenarios, and can lead to ‘cascading’ risks affecting other CNI [critical national infrastructure] sectors.”
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/30507/documents/175976/default/
(2) Environmental targets have been delayed, meaning the Government will breach the Environment Act and will not be ready to present its targets at COP27 this month. The ongoing reality TV show that passes for government in the UK at the moment has left many important issues hanging for months and more. We still don’t know what it’s intending to do about planning policy, for example. Or East West Rail or the Ely Area Capacity Enhancements for rail services, which have a national impact. But the climate crisis isn’t hanging around waiting for the government to get its act together.
(3) The economic consequences of man-made climate change fall most heavily on those nations least responsible for heating the planet. Cumulative 1992–2013 losses from anthropogenic extreme heat likely fall between $5 trillion and $29.3 trillion globally. Losses amount to 6.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product per capita per year for regions in the bottom income decile, but only 1.5 per cent for regions in the top income decile. Global inequality is both a cause and consequence of the unequal burden of climate change. (And of course much of the movement of millions of people around the world, decried by populist politicians and populist press, is about their need to escape the severe effects of climate change for which they are not responsible.)