District Matters

Climate Change subject matter

February 2020

Climate change is a hot topic at the moment. However, despite all the rhetoric there seems to be many things about it people fail to grasp. So this month's column does come with a ‘health warning' as the subject matter is complicated and technical.

I first began looking closely at climate change in 2007, and my initial thought was the impact of this was way off in the future; by the time we finished the work in 2009 I realised just how wrong I was. My current view is that the impacts will be much bigger and come much faster than most people realise.

There is no doubt that global warming is substantially enhanced by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide. In 1995 the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the aim should be to restrict emissions to keep global temperature rise to 2°c. In the 25 years since then there has been a remorseless, and in some cases, an accelerating rise in the concentration of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

On 5 December 2019 The Economist, widely regarded as a reputable source published a briefing on climate change. It said ‘Hitting 2°c can no longer be done by mitigation alone. It requires between 100bn and 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 removing from the atmosphere by the end of the century (Median is 730 billion tonnes).'

Furthermore, ‘In some IPCC scenarios planting a forest the size of Russia would only absorb 200 billion tonnes of CO2.'

And finally: ‘…….gains from negative emissions. It is a trick that comes perilously close to magical thinking.'

There is, I think, an emerging view that, on current trends, global warming will be 3°c and a realistic planning assumption would be 4°c. What is perhaps more disturbing is the frequent upward revisions in estimated sea level rise. IPCC now estimates 80+cms, again there appears to be an emerging view that sea level rise could top 1 metre by 2100, and some think it could hit 2 metres. Sea level rises will continue for centuries beyond 2100.

I appreciate that many environmentalists may find this challenging; however, global warming is a global issue and requires massive global scale solutions. Whilst the UK is doing relatively well on emissions reductions what will matter more is what, China, USA, India and Russia do. Consumption of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas is still increasing.

So, what are we as a District Council doing? We have declared a climate emergency which aims to be carbon neutral by 2030. We have prepared a Supplementary Planning Document on climate change adaptation and mitigation which aims to ensure that new development whether commercial, housing, changes of use or householder extensions, incorporate measures to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change. The draft guidance is currently out for consultation, this ends on 21 February and after taking on board comments received we aim to adopt the final version by the summer.

What we have yet to do is fully understand and then take action on what impact global warming will have on the district.

The most likely outcomes are:

• Summers will be much hotter - so keeping buildings cool will become a much bigger issue. By the 2070s summers could be 5.8°C hotter.
• Summers will be drier which, coupled with higher temperatures means that droughts will be much more likely. By the 2070s up to 57% drier. This will lead to potential issues with water supplies. (This is already recognised by the Committee on Climate Change).
• Winters will be much wetter, which means more frequent and more significant flooding. By the 2070s up to 33% wetter.

Up to now focus has been largely on mitigation, whilst we will not take the eye off that ball, we need to put more effort into adaptation.

We are far from alone in this. The Committee on Climate Change reported to Parliament in 2019: ‘England is still not prepared for even a 2°C rise in global temperature, let alone more extreme levels of warming. Only a handful of sectors have plans that consider a minimum of 2°C global warming – water supply, road and rail, flood defences and flood risk planning for infrastructure."

We see our Core Strategy review, starting later this year as the perfect vehicle to get to grips with adaptation to a much different climate. The sooner we get started the better. We want houses designed and built now that can cope with higher temperatures; we want to prevent houses being built on what will be very much larger flood plains and we want to prevent houses being built where water supply may be an issue. The next Core Strategy will run through to 2045/50, by then I would expect the impact of global warming to be very noticeable.

By the time our next Core Strategy is published, our aim is to be seen as leaders in thinking and action on adaptation to the substantial impacts of global warming. We want to increase significantly the resilience of our district to cope with what is inevitably coming. I see this as responsible and strategic community leadership.