Victoria's Green Matters - 4th October 2013

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

So the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published on Saturday and was followed by the usual disbelief from the climate change deniers who look for any tiny thing to try to discredit the findings.

There are key facts that cannot be denied: there are greater concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere now than in the last 800,000 years: global temperatures are set to rise by 4.8⁰C by the end of the century if emissions are not curbed: sea levels will rise 10 – 32 inches by 2100: because the oceans have absorbed about one third of the carbon dioxide emitted they have acidified. All these things will affect the world’s populations in various different ways.

What is worse than climate change deniers’ rush to rubbish all the findings is the acceptance of the facts by people in power who then refuse to act on the information. It can be seen that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has a poster in its ground floor windows informing us that £13.5bn is being invested in UK oil and gas to ‘Energise Britain’. Our ‘greenest government ever’ is living up to its reputation.

So where do we go from here? Governments around the world will continue to exploit the fuel resources they have despite the consequences to the climate in the long term. No matter that climate change is already affecting, to a more or lesser degree, many countries in the world, including our own.

Victoria Nicholls. Transition Deal.