Opinion | Editorials
Redirect funds to global warming
For once there was justification for people in Britain to talk about the weather. It was inescapable, sometimes literally.
- Gulf News
- Published: 23:05 July 24, 2007
For once there was justification for people in Britain to talk about the weather. It was inescapable, sometimes literally.
There was a time when the weather was seen as off-limits. Nothing could be done about it. Storms, floods, lightning strikes, all out of man's influence. Not any longer. It may be that the floods hitting Britain are a blip in the international weather system, a rare occurrence that would have happened anyway.
But the chances are, and scientists tend to back this theory, the floods were the latest result of global warming. Large swathes of England suffered torrential rain, many areas were flooded, thousands of people were forced into emergency accommodation and hundreds of thousands had to endure interrupted water supplies.
If this is a result of global warming, of unusual weather resulting from carbon emissions, then the issue has to be tackled as an emergency that is happening rather than a possibility of what might happen if we don't change our ways.
Of course Britain has experienced terrible weather before. But the incidents where weather disrupts daily life are becoming more frequent. It is clear that land once deemed suitable for housing is no longer safe from frequent flooding. It will get worse, not just in Britain, as the world heats up, injecting more energy into the climatic system and evaporating more water from the sea which leads to heavier rainfall.
The weather is going to have a profound impact on our lives and the political benefits for the organisation that realises this will be enormous. Some countries are sending billions of dollars to fight the so-called war on terror but if humanity is threatened by the weather then should not the resources be re-directed? Weather can terrify. It is a global problem crying out for a global response.
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