FOR many years scientists have been telling us that unless we keep global temperature rises under 1.5 degrees above global levels then we will be forced to make radical changes to our lives as we encounter increasingly frequent floods, droughts, high winds and heat waves that interfere with food supplies and provoke wars and waves of migration.

The hope was that we might succeed in keeping the temperature rises below that level by 2050 if we acted with sufficient urgency early enough. Last year temperatures across the whole of the planet rose by 1.48 degrees. That makes it almost certain that we will exceed the dangerous 1.5 degree level this year. 26 years ahead of the known high-risk date.

It is therefore clear that we aren’t acting with sufficient urgency and we are all going to have to adapt to increasingly chaotic weather and more unreliable growing conditions for our farmers.

We therefore need the government to get serious about spending more on flood defences, setting up a workable scheme for uninsurable properties, and avoiding building developments close to flood plains.

It is also important to start urgently supporting our farmers to be able to grow more food locally by more sustainable methods and to start compensating them when crops are ruined by exceptional weather.

In a period of unstable and unpredictable change there are few things more important than increasing our food security and helping our agricultural producers to survive and prosper whatever the climate throws at them.

Councillor Andy Brown

Green Party

Cononley