In Cornwall, we were told by a local a couple of weeks ago: “it has not stopped raining since October.”. It certainly seemed that way at Easter. We saw the sun for a few hours on one day, but all week it was either about to rain or raining so hard our coats became unusable. High tech rainwear is essential, and local businesses are struggling. Some sailing outfits have simply not opened this year due to perpetual gales and endless, pitiless, drenching rain.
Even some of the local ferries have had to stop because of the succession of storms rolling in day after day from the Atlantic, which has heated in a way that is frightening scientists and means the air is saturated with water that gets dumped, as usual, on our west coast, with a bit to spare for the rest of us further inland.
But this isn’t ‘as usual’ weather. Cornwall feels like it is on the front lines of global warming, like those flood plains in Gloucester hit year after year. They will have to adapt to this new reality—chaotic, extreme weather, because it is the new normal. In southern Europe, they are running out of water. In northern Europe, we get too much, or we get it all at once, like Dubai last week or Tanzania and Kenya this week.
The world turns its back on climate disaster, but it’s coming faster than ever.
India bakes in another heatwave, but no Indian political party wants to talk about how to tackle climate crisis. Drought stalks parts of Asia (Vietnam), and Bangladesh is now spending £3 billion a year on flood mitigation, more than any western nation because it is forced to. Millions of lives are threatened every year.
The disaster is already with Bangladesh and low-lying islands who have been screaming at the world in the annual Copfarce. The Horn of Africa, where drought affects millions is so busy dealing with famine and resource wars that the hot air generated at these global Cop circuses just adds to their woe.
And what about Britain? We know the Tory government is stuffed with swivel eyed climate deniers, but we thought at least Scotland was on a more sustainable path. Not so, the SNP, in one of the greatest acts of national self-harm, just ripped up their modest climate pledges and booted the Greens out. The oil industry wins again.
Back in 2009, Franny Armstrong released the brilliant and terrifying documentary The Age of Stupid, but nobody paid any heed to the dire warnings that film gave. In 2024, we will enter the Age of Terminal Idiocy.
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