Monthly Archives: August 2017

Floods, Climate Change & Human Life

Flooding in Mumbai 29th August 2017

Flooding in Mumbai 29th August 2017

Hurricane Harvey continues to bring unprecedented flooding to Texas and is now making landfall in Louisiana. Large parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh have been flooded in heavier than usual monsoonal rains. Niger in the African Sahel is also now experiencing higher than normal flooding with more than 40 deaths.  Earlier this month torrential rain caused a devastating mudslide in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, and Typhoon Hato battered Macau, Hong Kong and parts of South-Eastern China. There are two points I would like to highlight about how these events are covered in the media.

First is about the relative importance we put on human lives. Hurricane Harvey has attracted vastly more media coverage than the South Asian monsoon. Both situations are still on-going, but at the time of writing the death toll from Hurricane Harvey is 30 while for the South Asian monsoon it is 1,200. If the media, and their readership, which I guess includes us all, really valued all human life as having equal value would we reflect this in our reporting and give greater media attention to where the death toll was higher? Let us simply say that our hearts go out to all those who are suffering from these extreme weather events wherever they live and whoever they are.

The second point is about the causal relationship between climate change and these types of events. This has been particularly heated in the USA where climate change deniers and over simplistic arguments saying climate change caused the hurricane scream at each other. David Roberts, writing on the Vox website, makes a very intelligent and nuanced analysis of the complex relationship between individual weather events such as Hurricane Harvey and climate change. Of course hurricanes and monsoons have always killed people and the death toll is made worse by many factors such as how and where we build our settlements, but to exclude the role of climate change is simply wrong. Climate change is certainly making Hurricanes like Harvey worse as the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are warmer than was historically the case, leading to greater evaporation and precipitation, which coupled with rising sea levels, has resulted in more flooding. The US military describe climate change as a ‘risk multiplier’ or ‘threat multiplier’. They rightly see it as exacerbating many pre existing threats from flooding to terrorism in ways that are both complex and highly nuanced. The simple truth is wherever we can reduce threats and risks we should do so and rapidly reducing carbon emissions is a very doable policy. And a second simple truth is that we should value all human life equally.

Snowdonia & Hafod y Llan

660KW hydro at Hafod Y Llan

660KW hydro at Hafod Y Llan, with me peeking out from behind it.

Hafod y Llan is a farm covering over 2,600 acres of the south-eastern slopes of Snowdon. I’ve just got back from holidaying in the area and was very impressed by how the National Trust, who own the farm, are managing it. 60,000 people climb the Watkins path across the farm and up Snowdon each year. The National Trust run a lovely campsite on the farm and maintain the footpaths and in other ways welcome the many people coming to this magnificent scenery. They are also managing the land to increase its biodiversity by reducing sheep numbers, introducing Welsh Black cattle, and employing a couple of shepherds to focus the grazing animals onto those areas that need it and away from the sensitive ridges where grazing might be detrimental.

Three years ago I wrote about how the National Trust is working to produce half their energy needs by developing local on-site renewables, and also to reduce their energy needs by 20% by 2020. Then I wrote about the impressive marine source heat pump they had installed at Plas Newydd on Anglesey. Last week in Snowdonia we were very lucky to meet the very knowledgeable Wynn Owen who works at Hafod y Llan and who showed us two of their recently installed hydro electric systems. They had integrated the work into the landscape in a very sensitive way. One of the systems is a small 15KW turbine, the other, pictured above, is a 660KW system, which, as far as I’m aware, is the National Trust’s biggest renewable energy project to date. They also have a couple of other hydro systems, including the Gorsen 18KW at Hafod y Llan and a 45KW system on the neighbouring 2,100 acre Gelli Iago Estate, also owned and managed by the Trust.

The extensive farmhouse and buildings at Hafod y Llan house National Trust staff and volunteers, a holiday cottage and the campsite with its showers, washing machine and recharging point for an electric car. On site they have a range of other renewable energy projects, apart from the hydro systems, including a good sized photovoltaic array on a barn roof, ground source and air source heat pumps, 18KW wood pellet boiler and are hoping to develop a number of other projects in the future including an anaerobic digester.

So far most of the electricity that the National Trust generates has been sold to Good Energy, and as we are Good Energy customers it is nice to think that some of our energy is coming from them. Recently the National Trust has started selling some of its electricity directly to local people which is both more profitable for the Trust and cheaper for the local energy consumers as it cuts out the middle man.

The way the National Trust is managing Hafod Y Llan successfully combines tourism, biodiversity, renewable energy generation into a productive organic farm and has increased on-farm employment. It shows how land can be managed in ways that are good for ecology and for the economy at the same time.

Thanks to Keith Jones and Wynn Owen for providing useful information for this blog.

Trump: Beyond the Moral Pale

Heather Heyer, killed by Neo Nazis in Charlottesville

The situation in USA is very dangerous as Neo Nazis are on the rise, egged on by a President who at times seems merely narcissistic and incompetent, but at times simply evil. The Guardian has a very good editorial which puts the case that Trump is ‘beyond the moral pale’. To me, USA now feels to me much like Germany must have felt in 1934, with a clearly deranged and hate filled leader supported by a fanatical band of supporters. In many countries and at many times in history small far right racist groups exist, but then in Germany and now in USA they have taken over the reins of power. The task humanity is faced with is getting rid of Donald Trump and all he stands for as quickly as possible, yet peacefully and in such a way as to strengthen democracy. If this is not done USA faces the real danger of civil war, or of Trump making a pre-emptive attack on another country just in order to try and unite Americans behind him.

Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville while peacefully protesting against the Neo Nazis assembling there. Her last words on Facebook were ‘If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.’ Trump’s failure to clearly condemn the forces that killed her means he is totally unfit for office. Theresa May foolishly invited him on a state visit to the UK, which apparently he still intends to accept. This is comparable with inviting Hitler on a state visit to the UK in 1934, at that stage where he was in power, but while there was still an opportunity to limit the damage he was to do. Evil leaders must be opposed, strongly, peacefully and by the vast majority of ordinary citizens standing up for what is right. If Trump visits Britain the demonstrations will probably be the biggest in the history of this country. I would expect millions to be on the streets. One of the lessons from the Nazi era was that by staying silent we are complicit in evil. Good people must stand up and speak out.

In USA the ordinary citizens must join together to oust Trump. We have seen many Republicans distancing themselves from Trump: they need to go much further. I would like to see the majority of people encouraging politicians from across the spectrum of respectable political beliefs to work together to create a less confrontational and hate generating system of politics. The key is local people organising in their own communities but some top down leadership would also be useful. I’d like to see Jill Stein of the Greens, Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, Jerry Brown and Barack Obama from the Democrats sitting down with respected Republicans such as George Bush, George W Bush, John McCain and perhaps Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. They may not agree about much, but rescuing American democracy ought to be a sufficiently unifying project. The most important thing is to change the tone of political debate. It has been too adversarial, confrontational and tribal for years. Putting proportional representation on the agenda might be the first step to help bring about a more collegiate atmosphere. American people are desperately insecure and atomized. A universal citizen’s income, free health and education would help to transform American people to feel more safe, secure and less susceptible to give their support to hate filled populist leaders. But these are just my ideas.

The new ideas and main opposition to Trump has to come from within American Society. Today I want to pay tribute to Heather Heyer and to the millions of Americans who are standing up, speaking out and putting their bodies in harm’s way in the interests of democracy.