It is up to Labour to make climate change a political priority

The house that my dad spent grew up in is filled with water; something that hadn’t happened the thirty years his own dad lived there and that the previous tenants didn’t experience either. Carlisle, along with large parts of Cumbria, is flooded. This area of the country was subjected to torrents of rain over the weekend, 30cm worth in 24 hours.

Although it’s a relatively recent phenomenon, flooding of this kind and frequency isn’t a once-in-1000-year event, as it was described in 2009 nor is it an unhappy accident of nature. It’s made more likely by climate change. These two words usually elicit a bristle of exasperation or a glazed eye of boredom, but they should be at the top of the political list.

Heavy rainfall is more likely with global warming, because as temperatures rise so does the amount of moisture held in the atmosphere resulting in more rain.  Or as Lord Deben, the Chairperson of the Committee on Climate Change put it “The devastating flooding this weekend is a timely reminder that climate change is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of severe flooding across the UK”.

None of this seems to bother David Cameron whose plan is probably to flee to higher ground should flooding ever touch his own world. Before his Hunter boots were ditched (traded in for Asda wellies) the PM cut funding for flood defences by 27%. Although new ones were erected in Cumbria, the downpour overwhelmed them because of the Government’s poor flood prevention plan.

The situation in India has been even worse in recent weeks. In southern city Chennai, floods crashed through the streets killing at least 280 people while sewage and rubbish was swept into peoples’ homes. This was down to the heaviest rains in over one hundred years. The logical trail that links this flooding to climate change is easy to follow.

Another bout of serious flooding in Cumbria just after water cascaded through Chennai shows that the effects of climate change touching all parts of the globe. This is not just a problem for Chennai; The Marshall Islands, that are disappearing under water because of rising sea levels; or Vanuatu, areas of which were was stripped bare by Cyclone Pam earlier this year. Even if it were, surely Labour’s commitment to internationalism would mean it would be high on the party’s agenda, given the huge threat these climate changes pose to human life.

Nevertheless, the march to more airport runways, the dash for gas and the swift retreat from renewable energies and carbon capture continues in British politics. The Heathrow debate is postponed mainly because of David Cameron’s desire to avoid intraparty feuds; he claims it’s linked to environmental concers but the reality is he’s keen to temporarily shelve the decision so as not to lose his London Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith. Labour should be fundamentally opposed to expansion, lobbying for another runway in the face of flooding makes little sense.  But the gravity of the climate situation is likely to be quietly dismissed by the pro-expansion lobby while they don their wellies to visit the latest village, town or city devastated by flooding.

In a cruel twist of coincidence, the rain fell in torrents over Cumbria just days before the climate change summit met in Paris. The starkness of the situation couldn’t be more pronounced, relatively limp platitudes spoken in conference rooms will no longer do. Jeremy Corbyn is one of many Labour politicians who understands how far along the climate change conveyor belt the planet has gone. This poses a huge threat to humanity, yet other political issues are routinely prioritised above the seemingly dull but frighteningly immediate changes we have created on our planet. It’s up to Labour to make it a priority.