Greens on UK Flooding: "We need to talk about Climate Change"

One of the South East of Englands MEPs is demanding that the UK Government and mainstream media 'wake up' to the links between flooding and climate change.

Keith Taylor MEP, whose constituency has been hit hard by flooding, is demanding that the threat of increased extreme weather is taken seriously.

"Though individual weather events can't be explicitly linked to climate change the evidence suggests that we can expect more of this kind of extreme weather in the future. It is, therefore, amazing that there have been so few mentions of climate change in the media as thousands of people are hit hard by this unusually wet weather.

The Government and the media need to wake up to the links between weather like we're seeing and the global climate change that our fossil fuelled economy is causing. Though better planning and flood defenses will help us mitigate the risks of climate change the only way to properly protect ourselves is to take radical action to lower of reliance on fossil fuels.

If the Government is serious about protecting the UK from flooding, and wants to live up to it's claim of being the 'Greenest Government Ever' then it will end it's obsession with climate change causing energy production like fracking.

We know that widespread fracking would see us pumping evermore harmful emissions into our atmosphere when we should be drastically cutting levels of greenhouse gases, yet the Government are falsely touting shale as some sort of 'green' solution. It's time to expose this fallacy and move towards using sustainable sources of energy that don't lead to increases in extreme weather."

 

Yesterday Keith Taylor called for cuts to the Environment Agency to be reversed and for the Environment Secretary to be sacked. He said:

"The Government's planning for this flooding, and their response since it began, has been utterly inadequate. We have known for a long time that climate change will cause more events like this, yet we were utterly underprepared for these devastating floods.

Though individual weather events can't be explicitly linked to climate change the evidence suggests that we can expect more of this kind of extreme weather in the future.

If the Government is serious about tackling flooding in the future than they must both work to develop flood defences and, crucially, do everything in their power to cut our addiction to climate changing fossil fuels.

The fact is that the Government's Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, has cut funding on measures aimed at protecting Britain from global warming and he repeatedly fails to take climate change seriously.

In the short term the Government can do two things to help the fight against flooding. Firstly they should reverse cuts to the Environment Agency and secondly they should sack Owen Paterson, an Environment Secretary who just isn't up to the job of protecting our environment."

Mr Taylor call for Owen Paterson be sacked comes after he was accused by environmental groups of 'incompetency' after slashing spending on measures to help Britain cope with global warming.