I cannot personally remember such a string of continuously hot, sunny days in England as we’ve experienced in recent weeks. It’s been beautiful weather day after day – but with its associated challenges, from wildfires, to hosepipe bans, and weak harvests for certain crops. I was two years old in the ‘drought’ summer of 1976 – fifty years later and we do appear to be experiencing a serious change in our assumed meteorological pattern of life.
Reflecting on the extraordinary weather of late, I was particularly struck by a conversation with friends about planning a barbecue. There was no question of considering ‘what if it rains’? It was a given that we will have glorious sunshine for the foreseeable future. For me, it’s this kind of near certainty of clement conditions that is so alien.
When families go on holiday to the likes of Spain or Greece, a key consideration is the near certain knowledge of sunny weather for the whole break. With a UK break, you take a risk. That’s been the way of it for years. North Norfolk and the west country tend to be relatively clement, but I’ve holidayed in Wales and the Highlands of Scotland in August – both possessing spectacular scenery, with bouts of good weather; but plenty of heavy rain mixed in. Wholly unpredictable either way.
So there is a great upside to being ‘spoilt’ with so much sunshine in our own backyard, but the wildfires in Dunwich showed what we can expect if this type of weather persists. Certainly, the one thing we can surely all agree on is to commend the extraordinary efforts and bravery displayed by our firefighting crews, drawn not just from across East Anglia to tackle the Dunwich blaze, but from Yorkshire and the rest of the country. And we must all follow the advice on minimising risk of outdoor fires.
As to the wider policy questions, we need to be pragmatic. The UK was the first economy to halve its greenhouse emissions, which most accept are a key contributor to the pattern of global warming now playing out across our continent. We have actually already achieved a lot in this regard, but it cannot be at the expense of our economic competitiveness – or we will simply import our emissions.
To give the most striking example of where some common sense needs to apply, there are those who oppose new drilling in the North Sea because of climate change. When climate activists recently descended on London to urge new PM Andy Burnham not to approve new fields like Jackdaw and Rosebank, their posters read ‘World on Fire’ and ‘Andy for my grandchildren say NO to Rosebank’.
The problem with this is that our country still needs fossil fuels, and will do even if we were to achieve ‘net zero’ (the key word being ‘net’). As such, the choice is really whether to rely entirely on imported oil and gas, or use our own precious resources – like every other nation in our position. Indeed, we have the absurd situation where the UK imports Norwegian drilled fossil fuels from the same basin that we are restricting our own use of.
This makes no sense. Only a few days ago we heard that one of most valuable companies, BP, was going to sell off its North Sea assets. The fact is, with global fuel supplies under huge strain following the war in the middle east, and both heating oil and the forecourt fill-up shooting through the roof in cost terms, we should maximising our domestic supplies, not deliberately harming our economy – without cutting any emissions. In fact, imported gas uses far greater emissions than if we source from the North Sea.
If energy security requires serious consideration, so does food security. As a rural MP, it’s been alarming to see the constant strain on local farmers from such unpredictable climate conditions. There will clearly need to be a much more intense debate about water abstraction and how we address the needs of our agricultural sector. For a start, I suspect we need more of the ambitious inter-regional water management I’ve witnessed in my constituency, particularly Anglian Water’s construction of a 205 mile ‘strategic water pipeline’ to move water from wetter to drier parts of East Anglia.
All of this will require serious scrutiny from Parliament when it returns in September, with our new PM finally facing questions from MPs. In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying a relaxing summer break.
Published in the East Anglian Daily Times.
