All over the world Greens and scientists are watching with dismay at the extreme weather conditions descending on land and sea with ever more destructive frequency.
Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party Leader said today “Try telling the people of Cornwall and the south coast that our lives are all about economic growth. Try telling the people of South Wales who cannot even get out of their houses for the storms and water that this is all about economic growth - and we should be wanting more of it.”
A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that they are 95% certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950s.
Poor building codes, planning permission on flood plains, burning of fossil fuels, fracking and drilling are all about economic growth of the sort which should have been rejected 30 years ago, when the warnings were already clear.
The Wales Leader added, “ 30 years ago we knew that extreme weather conditions would be the result of our addiction to fossil fuels, yet more concrete has been poured into the ground, woods and hedges have been uprooted to make way for unsustainable agriculture, flood plains have been compromised and more roads built. We continue to burn and mine, heedless of the warnings.”
Continuous economic growth is not sustainable in any form. There is a limit to what we can drill or mine out of the planet, there is a limit to the amount of pollution we can put into the air we breathe. The results of reaching those limits are finally being revealed.
Pippa Bartolotti added, “Simply showing the evidence for climate change does not appear to be enough to open minds which are closed to all but the treacherous concept of economic growth. Yet it is clearly madness to continue failed economic policies when we should instead be enacting vigorous energy conservation and efficiency programmes to reduce the impact of climate change and the suffering it brings with it. “