Source: BBC Radio 4: Today
URL: N/A
Date: 12/07/2016
Event: Lord Krebs: "climate models suggest that flooding is going to increase..."
Credit: BBC Radio 4
People:
John Humphrys: If the effect of global warming is to produce the sort of flooding we've been warned to expect, there will be a "domino effect" on electricity supplies, gas, IT connections, even food production; that's what the Committee on Climate Change is going to tell us today. Lord Krebs is Chair of the Adaptation Subcommittee at the Committee on Climate Change, and he's with me - good morning to you.
Lord Krebs: Good morning.
John Humphrys: Now, the "domino effect", meaning what? Let's assume - the scenario is that waters rise, there's severe flooding across the country. What does that do, apart from cause enormous inconvenience?
Lord Krebs: Well, this report, which is coming out today, is the most comprehensive summary of all the evidence we've got, up to date - it's involved over 80 authors, taken three years to produce, is 2000 pages long. So what I'm going to say is a very simple, condensed summary, but what we're saying here is: out of the 60 or so risks and opportunities that will arise from climate change, there are six that are urgent for the government to take action on, now, and one of those is flooding. The government's really taking flooding seriously, after - particularly after last winter -
John Humphrys: What, Lancashire and Yorkshire -
Lord Krebs: Lancashire and Yorkshire floods, but they're not the only ones - remember Dawlish Warren, a few years ago. We had even flash flooding in London, just a couple of weeks back, where cars were floating in the streets and people were flooded out of their basements.
John Humphrys: But people will say we've always had floods.
Lord Krebs: We have always had floods but the climate models suggest that flooding is going to increase in intensity and frequency, in the future. And so, coming back to your point, we've got to look at the impact of flooding on individual properties but also on infrastructure. And one of the points we've out is that infrastructure like electricity, communications, transport are all interconnected. And so one of the things that the government needs to look at is to look at how these different bits of the infrastructure could, through a cascade effect, be brought down.
John Humphrys: And that cascade effect would work how, then?
Lord Krebs: Well, just a simple example: if there was a bridge that was washed out in the flood, and that bridge carried in it communications cables, telecoms and electricity, then not only would the transport be affected but that particular community may lose its power and may lose its telecommunications. Flooding is not the only risk we draw attention to, for urgent action, and I'll just mention a couple of others. One is food production, because we know that we are dependent partly on international trade for our food - and therefore, climate change in other countries, where we get our food from -
John Humphrys: But also our own soil.
Lord Krebs: But also our own soil, and the sad fact is that we're not managing our soil sustainably. If you look at the peat soil in East Anglia - that's the most fertile soil in England - 85% of that soil has disappeared since the middle of the last century. If you go to a place just south of Peterborough, there's a giant metal post sticking out of the ground that marked the top of the peat soil in the middle of the last century, and that's now sticking way up in the air. If we carry on as we are, we'll have lost all that soil within a generation.
John Humphrys: Right, now you're drawing attention to what are potentially cataclysmic effects. What you're not doing, I assume, is saying "This is what government must do now".
Lord Krebs: We're saying that these are long-term effects but some of them require action urgently, to -
John Humphrys: You specify the action?
Lord Krebs: We don't specify the action -we just say "These are the risks that we know, if you don't act now, you'll regret it in 10, 20, 30, 40 years' time." We've got to take the long-term view, because it takes a long time to shift things around. If we're going to manage our soil sustainably, we need to start now. The government has an ambition to do that - they should, on the basis of this risk assessment, tell us precisely how they're going to do it.
John Humphrys: Lord Krebs, many thanks.
Lord Krebs: Thank you.