Climate change: English country floods
Our weather is no longer natural. The oil produced by companies like Esso, BP, Shell, Texaco and JET now has a hand in every freak weather event. With 10,000 households in the UK still drying out from the recent floods, the relationship between these bouts of extreme weather and fossil fuel pollution can no longer be ignored. Flood defences may keep some of us dry, some of the time, but its only getting wetter. If the oil companies carry on unchecked, Britain is set to experience more storms and floods.
The fossil fuels produced by the oil industry are affecting people around the world. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and in the last 3 years have killed 100,000 people. UN and UK government scientists predict that by 2080 94 million will be at risk from flooding every year as a result of global warming. 290 million additional people will be at risk from malaria. Increasing drought will mean that five billion will lack sufficient water and millions more will starve.
The world�s top climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have recently confirmed the urgency of the situation. Their reports paint a stark picture of the greenhouse world.
- We will experience more storms and floods; in Europe river flooding will increase over much of the continent.
- Glaciers and polar ice are set to continue melting, so that we may lose the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets completely. This could add around 6m to global sea level, with catastrophic effects.
- The greatest impacts will be on the world�s poorest people in parts of Africa and Asia - those least able to protect themselves from rising sea levels and increased drought and disease. Tens of millions of people will lose their homes as a result of flooding and tropical cyclones.
Oil is killing people. We urgently need to end our addiction to fossil fuels, and switch on to a renewable future powered by green fuels.
