Climate Impacts on Wales

Front page of today's Western Mail and a full page in the Guardian, on a report released by the National Trust which projects that some 55 National Trust sites in Wales are in danger due to rising sea levels and soil erosion as impacts of climate change.

Engineering consultants were approached to produce the report, using scientific data from DEFRA's UK Climate Impacts assessments and over 100miles of Welsh coastline are estimated to be affected. These include sites of historic, archaeological and aesthetic importance and biological systems will be further affected by rising seas, flooding and increased salinity. Some of these sites can be protected, but it probably isn't financially viable to save all (or most) of them.

Again, prevention is far better than the cure.

Somehow, Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan has chosen this time to remark that climate change will 'hardly be unhelpful to Wales' competitive position' and that the introduction of caps on carbon emissions would see businesses get up and leave Wales - and presumably should therefore not be a policy step that the Assembly Government would undertake. Well, there you have it - it's all going to be all right with climate change.

To say that oh, things will be a bit warmer but on the whole we'll be hunky-dory just smacks of complacency to me. Climate change isn't just going to move one factor - temperature - in one direction, but wind patterns, precipitation, ecosystem structures...the list goes on. I would take very little for granted in the idea that Wales might just become another version of California. Perhaps the First Minister would do well to consider that rising sea levels see the abandonment of entire island nations, increased drought threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions, warmer temperatures bring different risk of infectious diseases and melting glaciers jeapordize water supplies across the most populous areas of the world. People who live in Wales will be affected by climate change, no doubt. But people who live in Wales won't be at the sharp end of the climate wedge, which is changing lives right now.