Summer, 2060 June 22, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Green in the City , trackbackWhen I was a child, in Auckland, my grandmother had a passionfruit vine climbing the rails beside the steps to her front door. I remember sultry summer evenings, cat’s melting in the humidity, hibiscus and the song of cicadas. I love that balmy sub-tropical weather. The low 30s (Celsius) are the way summers ought to be.
Looking at the new projections for London’s climate later this century, it really doesn’t sound too bad. If I get to spend my old age in the climate of my childhood, while staying here in London, I’ll be quite happy. It sounds like the sea may even be a lot closer (or at least the Thames rather wider).
And perhaps this is why its so hard to get anyone to understand the urgency of the situation we face. If London is like Auckland, that’s not so bad, even if the tube floods, and the capital decamps to Leeds (the suggestion that the industrial revolution was a Yorkist plot is one of the more bizarre, and best, I’ve heard lately. It’s worth spreading:-) )
But if our summer temperatures rise by 4-5 degrees, people in the South will be dying in their millions. There will be no more ice, and the sea level will rise inexorably. Those who can least cope will be most effected. Having done so little to reduce the risk of global warming, our government seems to have quietly moved to an ‘adapt’ strategy. That may be realistic, but is there really no way to motivate people to cut down their energy use and address the problem that’s staring us in the face?
What will it take to make us realise the ferocious urgency of today?
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“What will it take to make us realise the ferocious urgency of today?”
If the gulf stream goes and the opposite happens to the climate of London, it will seem pretty ferocious…