We All Pay For Polluting Ways

New UK report warns of massive economic implications of global warming

5th May 2000

A recent Department of Environment assessment of the cost of global warming suggests Britain will be forced to spend £95 million a year over a 50 year period just to keep the sea and rivers from overflowing existing flood defences.

Working on predictions that there will be a 20% shortfall in water supplies (though some experts believe it will be more), the DoE have also estimated that providing water supplies to cope with the predicted water shortage could cost an extra £5 billion over the next 30 years with a similar sum required to design buildings which will withstand associated wind storms.

Official acknowledgement that we now face irrefutabley major changes in climate have only just begun emerging. Michael Meacher, the environment minister, could hardly have been more unequivical in light of his department's costings: 'Even if the international community succeeded in cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by 60% to 70% we would still face these costs because of the greenhouse gases we have already put into the atmosphere."

Global climate changes we are witnessing today were produced as a result of pollution emitted during the second world war. The ramification of pollution since then have yet to be felt. A Friends of the Earth spokesman reiterated what environmental activists have been saying for the last ten years: "This report should be a wake up call on the need for urgent action prevent a global catastrophe."