The one-in-a-thousand-years event at Cockermouth and Workington, as Hilary Benn has described it, starkly reveals the cataclysmic power of natural phenomena in their more extreme manifestations. Torrential rainfall of 12.4 inches within just 24 hours is unprecedented in England, and combined with waterlogged ground and swollen rivers had produced another natural disaster. There have been precedents: the East Midlands flooding a decade ago which swamped 7,000 homes, the recurring floods around Tewkesbury, Carlisle, Hull, Doncaster, and parts of the fenlands gradually yielding to the sea after 400 years of drainage. It would be unwise automatically to ascribe all of these events to climate change since severe flooding has frequently occurred in the past when climate change was less apparent, e.g. at Lynmouth on the south coast in 1953. Bu the increasing frequency and ferocity of these irruptions does suggest that something more is happening over and above the natural variability of the climate. These latest floods cary a warning like the canary in the mine. So what should we do about it?

The polls suggest that 40% or more of the population still do not believe that global warming, which is unquestionably happening, is caused by human activities, i.e. by the generation of greenhouse gases (mostly carbon) from power generation, industry, transport, and domestic household activities. Since the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists do think this and the evidence correlating global temperatures with greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is extremely close (though not absolute) over very long periods of time, this lack of conviction probably reflects unwillingness to change lifestyles unless unambiguously forced to do so. But even if it were more rationally based than that, it is still extraordinarily short-sighted not to take precautionary action when the risk is so momentous.
For those who do think action should be taken to slow and arrest climate change, there are still dilemmas. Britain with only 1% of world population is only responsible for 2% of global GG emissions, so we need the co-operation of other big emitters, notably the US and China. The US won’t commit itself unless China signs up, while China and other developing countries insist that the Western countries whose dirty industrialisation caused climate change in the first place must act first. Breaking this deadlock is key to the Copenhagen summit.
But is Britain taking the lead that is needed? The UK’s GG emissions have fallen by 15% since 1990 (far more than the 2% drop for the EU as a whole and the 14% rise in the US), but Britain’s ‘success’ has come largely from the ‘dash for gas’ rather than a switch out of fossil fuels. Moreover the decline has now almost stopped, with GG emissions now reducing by less than 1% a year; yet if Britain is to meet its target reduction of 80% by 2050, it needs to cut its emissions by at least 3% a year. If Cockermouth persuades enough people and enough companies to raise their action to hit this target, we will be sending the clearest message that we are fully playing our part and they must do likewise if we are all to survive. If not, expect more, and worse, Cockermouths.

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