Eco energy vital to break vicious circle

WITH Storm Dennis arriving hard on the heels of Storm Ciara – and extreme weather conditions becoming increasingly common – it’s perhaps time to review whether our coping mechanisms are as good as they should be.

Wales has long been at risk of flooding, and it seems likely that the change in weather patterns will put more homes at risk.

People need to be reassured that as much as can reasonably be done to avert floods has been done, and that robust plans are in place to deal with emergencies.

There is clearly a balance to be struck between the need to protect infrastructure, and the personal responsibility home-owners have to make sure their properties are as secure as they can be, and properly insured.

With successive privatisations that have taken place over the last four decades, it is appropriate to debate the degree to which private power companies, for example, should be responsible when weather damage occurs.

Given the result of the recent general election, there is no prospect of such firms being taken back into public ownership any time soon.

There is certainly a need to improve the ability of public transport to function when the weather is bad. Every year there are weather problems that result in trains not running. Yet we know that in countries with significantly worse weather than ours, trains are able to run without problems.

The excuse for our train operators’ repeated failures is usually that extreme weather conditions are rare occurrences.

But with the climate emergency becoming an accepted part of our lives, this is a position that can no longer be justified.

The fact is that we need to radically overhaul our understanding of the threats that exist to our lives as a result of climate change – and take appropriate action. We cannot afford to shut down our society, but to avoid that happening we need to be pro-active in taking measures that will allow it to function on a sustainable basis.

The best chance we have is to adopt a green energy policy that eliminates carbon emissions as quickly as possible. To keep going on as we are will simply make extreme weather conditions more likely, and the consequential havoc they bring.

We can do so much to patch up our system – but real gains will be made if we change our whole approach.