Your article sets out the stark picture we’re dealing with (Hottest year on record sent planet past 1.5C of heating for first time in 2024, 10 January). Climate change is causing more extreme weather, and if we don’t speed up our global transition to clean energy, it will only get worse.
Making societies more resilient is mentioned, briefly. This is a topic that should be given much more prominence. Despite warnings from the Climate Change Committee and the United Nations, rising temperatures, and more extreme weather events all over the world, we have yet to take decisive action to adapt the UK’s infrastructure.
In the same week that fires ravaged parts of Los Angeles, more than 150 flood alerts/warnings have been active in England alone, and a similar number of schools and nurseries were closed in Scotland because of extreme weather.
Our roads, rail networks and other infrastructure are not ready for climate change, and the economic and safety risks can’t even be estimated without more information. Adaptation measures must move up the government agenda.
To gather the information needed, the Institution of Civil Engineers recommends that the UK government should make the adaptation reporting power of the UK Climate Change Act mandatory for infrastructure owners and operators (so they must inform government of their progress), include a list of climate hazards and desired standard of protection for selected climate scenarios in national policy statements, and undertake a national review of the economics of adaptation. Adapting our infrastructure will require significant investment, but doing nothing will cost us far more.
Dr Janet Young
Institution of Civil Engineers
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