UK Climate Change Projections 2009 – planning for our future climate
Transcript of Hilary Benn’s introductory comments for the launch
Hello. Climate change is the greatest challenge that we face as a world, and the projections that we’re publishing today give us a detailed picture of how our climate is likely to change over the next hundred years, with much hotter summers, less rainfall in summer, more rainfall in the winter, and rising sea level.
This is cutting edge science – it’s not a long range weather forecast, but it is the best assessment we can make of the probability of those changes, and probability matters if you’re planning for example to protect London from flooding through the Thames barrier, you really want to know what might happen in the next 50-100 years.
They’re very sobering reading these projections. We’re already heading for a temperature increase in the summer of about 2 degrees. These projections show that by the time we get to the 2080s then if we carry on with the level of emissions that we’re putting out, as a world, we could be looking at an increase in the average summer temperature of 4 degrees, more on the hottest days, much less rainfall, more rainfall in the winter, and rising sea level.
And the real message of these projections is that we have got to respond, we’ve got to act. And there are five things that we need to do.
First of all we’ve got to protect people. And that’s why for example we’ve been increasing investment in flood defence, so more homes don’t flood in the future.
Second, we’ve got to plan. We’ve got to think about the way in which we design drainage on our motorways, to deal with greater rainfall. How are we going to design buildings so that they’re kept cool in summer. How are we going to cope with heatwaves? That’s why the NHS now has a heatwave plan.
We’ve got to lead internationally, because this is the future we don’t want to happen. And that’s why the meeting in Copenhagen this December is the most important meeting in humankind’s history, because we must get an agreement that will begin to get global emissions down, so that we don’t have to deal with that future, over the decades ahead.
We’ve got to play our part here in the UK – that’s why we passed the Climate Change Act, that’s why we’re committed to at least an 80% reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – and we’ve got a plan to do that which we’ll be publishing in a few weeks’ time.
And finally, we’ve got to support each other in making all these changes – we can’t do it as government alone, we have to do it together, we’ve all got to play our part. And these projections being published today remind us of how important it is that we act.
Thanks very much.
Page last modified: 18 June 2009
Page published: 18 June 2009