We must all face up to the reality of worsening climate catastrophes
I thought I knew all about the dangers of climate breakdown, but I was in for a shock when I attended Bill McGuire’s talk about his book, ‘Hothouse Earth’ on the 30th March. I had lulled myself into thinking that we had time to put things right so that my son would be spared a future of unstoppable environmental catastrophe. But that danger is still very much alive. Bill McGuire writes: “this is the hothouse earth we are committed to living on; one that would be utterly alien to our grandparents…A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world than its grandparents. Compared with someone lucky enough to be born in 1960, one study estimates that – on average – they will experience seven times more heatwaves, twice as many droughts and three times as many floods and harvest failures. The reality could very well be far worse, and it will be for the billions of vulnerable people living in the majority world.”
Bill McGuire represents a scientific consensus that keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees centigrade is now very unlikely – in fact, probably, this point will be passed within the next decade. So, very rapid action is needed to limit the severity and regularity of the catastrophes already upon us. Every fraction of a degree above 1.5 matters so we have to try to all act with urgency to do things differently. I should have already faced up to the implications of the flooding in Pakistan, leaving a third of the country under water and the fifty-degree temperatures last summer in both Pakistan and India. I should have absorbed the implications of the trend here in Cambridge with temperatures of 37 degrees and 40 degrees in the last three years. Bill McGuire pointed out the added complication that 2023 is an El Nino year so the temperature rise will be speeded up. In Cambridgeshire and all the low-lying areas around the world there is the added threat and promise of sea level rises. A massive change in our coastline is inevitable by the end of the century given the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere and this may be much sooner because of the worsening rate at which ice is melting in Greenland and Antarctica.
The talk was hosted by Friends of the River Cam who campaign against the killing of our precious river through over-abstraction, pollution – including the regular illegal dumping in it of raw sewage by Anglian Water and the massive unsustainable growth of our City which compounds both the water shortage and the pollution of the river.
A couple of days before the talk, Cambridgeshire County Councillors voted to support the Cambourne to Cambridge busway so seeming to turn away from our dire predicament. Jean Glasberg, Green Candidate in Newnham has called the proposal: “environmental vandalism”. If it finally goes ahead, this busway will involve pouring millions of tons of concrete – embodying high levels of CO2 in its production – and plough through our precious greenbelt, cutting down 800 carbon-absorbing trees in one of the oldest traditional orchards in the country. Cllr Hannah Copley argues that the alternative proposal from Smarter Cambridge Transport and Cambridge Past, Present and Future, which involves relatively minor changes to existing roads to deliver excellent bus connectivity without huge embodied emissions makes much more sense. It will not only save the cash-strapped councils around £200 million but will preserve biodiversity and the green spaces that we so desperately need. Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party oppose this scheme and stand with the many Cambridge residents who reject it and made their feelings known during a flawed consultation process which packaged the busways along with other transport proposals. We Greens oppose all the Council proposals for busways as well as the road expansion happening in our area. All this is to provide connectivity for development which feeds an addiction to unsustainable growth. If our planet is to continue to sustain life, then we must radically revise our approach to building and infrastructure.
It can only be positive to spend time with others, facing the reality of climate breakdown and discussing what we must do to limit it. We should all seek out the openings that are available to do this in our workplaces, unions, friendship groups, and political parties. I feel even more determined now, to campaign for policy change locally and to join with others in London on April 21st at the “Big One” as we carry the message to central government.
