Our changing climate is the biggest and most urgent problem we all face. It is the perennial elephant in the room when any other important concerns are discussed. If food and housing for humans or the natural environment are under discussion, it is the first threat. Great efforts to plan for its mitigation have been proposed and discussed, but they are constantly being watered down or just filed and forgotten as those with vested interests in the most damaging materials and methods put pressure to bear. We at the grass roots look about bewildered, asking, ‘What can we do?’ We must do anything at all that helps, from the smallest efforts at home to campaigning for action by those with executive powers, or by supporting those who campaign for us.
Since about 2000 there have been rousing calls to arms – from Barak Obama to Greta Thunberg – but we have failed to pause or prevent Climate Change. Emissions reduction was not carried through at anything like the scale required. Fossil fuels continue to be mined, drilled, refined and supplied, supporting a vast world-wide industry determined not to desist. So now we are fighting the global scale crisis that is under way. We will have to accept the cost individually and nationally, and make ready to pay it. Pushing strategies further into the future is possibly the worst idea of all. Looking back from 2055 it will look absurd.
We must cope with the direct effects of climate change, especially those that have the greatest impact on rural life: farming, the food production industry and fisheries. Eco homes, solar and wind power, sustainable farming, lots of trees and hedgerows, new reservoirs and land use changes (beavers and rewilding), will all help but these are diffuse in their effects and very slow to pay off. Preserving peatlands, old established woodlands and new or extended wetlands will all help too. Insurance industry data has shown the scale of damage already being done, as our rising premiums show. Climate resilience needs to be a factor in planning decisions from large scale projects like new towns, schools, hospitals, warehouses and roads to individual new homes. Building standards need to ensure new or renovated homes are climate resilient, eco-friendly and not subject to flood risk.
If we had a more nature-abundant and sustainable farming system we would be better prepared. Moving away from sheep farming on a large scale, mixing woodland with moorland grazed by ponies or cattle naturally adapted for the job, mixing trees and real substantial hedgerows with arable – all these would help. Farmers are waiting for government to open their eyes and see how to set this in motion.
Local councils have mostly been braver or more ambitious than national government with their targets and have tried hard to bring their citizens along with them. There has not been a lot of success, however. Petrol cars are a hard nut to crack, especially in rural areas like Cornwall. Cleaner public transport and lots more cycle tracks have not really changed people’s habits much as yet. Petrol cars are not being exchanged for electric ones at a sufficiently fast rate; people are worried about charging points. More people are cycling but not enough; in any case, on Cornwall’s roads cyclists and motorists do not mix well.
Installing solar panels, bumping up your insulation or switching to a heat pump are all good but very little or no sense or urgency seems to have been generated. There is an absence of incentives to turn ambition into action at a house to house level. CPRE’s strong campaign to get solar panels mandatory on all new builds has been successful but their push to get them off green fields and onto the roofs of the many large buildings that could easily take them – carparks, warehouses, garages, factories, schools – has not been taken up as yet. Back in 2021 the Climate Change Committee was urging the government to ‘get real on delivery’ of mitigation measures. Global Britain, they said, needs to prove that it can lead global change to how we treat our planet. We need to close the chasm that lies between words and actions – and to do that by using nature-based solutions. CPRE – the Countryside Charity – is pressing the current government to ‘get real’ straight away.