CLIMATE CHANGE & INFRASTRUCTURE

The impact of flooding on infrastructure has been highlighted again by events in Cumbria, including the tragic loss a policeman's life due to collapse of a road bridge. The danger of similar collapses have made travel around the County extremely difficult, and a motorist interviewed on the radio this morning identified the particular difficulty of access to Sellafield, the location of Britain's major civilian nuclear waste installation.

Further capacity is proposed for Cumbria and the Sellafield area. and it is the task of the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) to assess issues arising from this and other proposed increases in British nuclear power capacity.

Now although the Government's Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has suggested that the flooding in Cumbria is on the scale of a once in a millennium event, I question whether he can really know this. Indeed, I would invite Mr Hilary Benn and some colleagues - weather permitting - to accompany me on a historical climate change tour of Britain, which will include site visits to areas which have experienced significant changes in sea levels.

Returning to the IPC and the need for "tough and fair" decision-making in public policy at the present time, highlighted in my previous post, I would remind the Chairman, Sir Michael Pitt, and his colleagues of the ruthless manipulation of the facts in which promoters of major infrastructure projects sometimes engage, historically leaving objectors to rely on "tough and fair" planning inspectors to hear their challenges.

I have to say in this context that my low estimation of the characters of political and business leaders (see below) would improve if resources were made available to those challenging the Government's proposed nuclear and other major infrastructure programmes, such as strategic road and bridge construction, which may well end up making this country more vulnerable to climate change, when local adaptation strategies are really what are most urgently required.