By virtue of living right next to it, having watched the flooding on TV I was expecting the Wye River to soon be joining me in the lounge.
Strangely, nothing happened, he says, firmly touching wood.
But there are some pretty nasty things going down, and I have been interested in the coverage so far. Especially on Breakfast TV, with the boss lady of the Environment Agency on hand to offer the kind of advice that is great in theory, but perhaps a little less easy to put into practice.
I also caught a few 'never seen befores' flying about as to the level of the, well, levels.
Now, at risk of being labelled a 'big oil-funded denier' BOFDi, I had cause to ponder this.
As one who thinks there may be something to all this (and hence merit in appropriate mitigations), I nonetheless do concern myself at what gets laid at whose door, opening up which Pandora's Box first to put things right.
My main area of kinked eyebrow is how much is down to new and unimproved weather conditions caused by man-made climate change (with all sorts of carbon trading initiatives just waiting to be brought to bear as a consequence, with measurability and accountability on the never-never), and how much to pretty dire decisions on the ground; which can, and should, be made accountable quicksmart.
There are a lot more of us, living on a lot more land, concreting it over, requiring resources from it and pushing gunk back out. To what extent are these demands, and the political 'quick fixes' ('Eh up, let's pop 500 registered voters on that flood plain, lad') to accommodate these responsible for these floods, and how much to the heavens that have opened to cause this issue?
Both are serious, and both need addressing. But I would just like to make sure those Chicken Littles who are responsible for the more immediate, short term and more correctable causes (if, as I suspect, they may exist) do not get a free pass by shunting everyone's attention solely to a falling sky.
Indy - Letters: Flooding - Looks like I am not alone
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