We now have the first estimates; the cost of this year's floods will be nearly £15 Billion, wiping out 1% of the UK's GDP. The Government's failure to take action on climate change has cost us more in 4 weeks than any similar period during the whole financial crisis. The reason? We now know that the Environment Secretary's decision to ditch 'climate mitigation' actions undermined the policy to strengthen our flood defences. This was compounded by the Treasury's decision to increase 'the minimum threshold value' of flood defence expenditure to £8 for every £1 spent.
The misery of today's flood victims is, as Nigel Farage put it, due to 'The Weather' - but as he and many Conservatives stubbornly refuse to accept - the increase in extreme weather conditions is due to climate change. No doubt these self same people would have denied that the world is round in the middle ages. This arrogance was the cause of the fiscal policies that decided that flood defences were not worth the money.
It is time for politicians to stop treating Climate Change as a religious schism - their language betrays their shallowness - we are deniers or believers or sceptics. It has to stop. It is not a religious or political debate, it is peer-reviewed science, and the overwhelming evidence is that human activity has caused the current process of climate change - which is now drowning this country.
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