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THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE
Global change, local impacts
The wide-ranging effects of climate change have been monitored by scientists across the world for years; from more extreme weather events to sea level rises, it’s a reality that’s no longer in dispute. In the first of a series of articles in Housebuilder & Developer looking at the Climate Challenge, Jack Wooler takes an in-depth look at the wider impacts, as well as the responses the construction and housebuilding industry has made thus far.
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s far as we know, the earth has experienced five mass extinctions in its history; it is believed that all of
these events except the one that killed the dinosaurs was fuelled by climate change. Scientists across the world are convinced that we are this very moment experiencing the early days of such an event. Prophecies of doom such as this are
prone to doubters – climate change can seem like a far-away issue that will only be felt by subsequent generations (which in itself should have been cause for alarm).
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The reality, however, is that our climate has already changed. Two simple, evidenced examples of this
are that it is now between 0.5-1 degrees celsius hotter in England than it was in the 1970s, and sea levels have been rising by an average of 3 mm each year. While these facts may not be earth-
shattering in their own right, the repercussions are more tangible – as temperatures rise, the more volatile our climate becomes. A total of 1.8 million people in the UK are already living in areas of significant flood risk, the water necessary to supply our homes is in short supply, rising temperatures are contributing to widespread overheating in homes, and this year has seen the UK hit by 100 large wildfires – before April – making it the worst year on record in just four months. Humans are not the only ones affected of
course. According to the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, more than two plant species a year have become extinct since 1753, with 571 going extinct between then and 2018. This is thought to be an underes- timate, but even this rate is said to be around 500 times faster than the rate that they would have, without human interven- tion. The insect population is also
plummeting, with 40 per cent of species currently in decline. In countries at much greater risk than
our own, changes have already been immeasurably more severe. At the time of writing, the Amazon rainforest is seeing thousands of blazing fires (the forest being a vital carbon store which produces around 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen); multiple studies have citied climate change as a contributing factor to the civil war in Syria; and Indonesia is set to become the first territory to change its capital city (currently Jakarta) because of severe flooding and coastal erosion. The potential effects from the resulting mass migration due to such events could however prove problematic closer to home. Freak weather has of course existed for
as long as humans have recorded events, but it is widely accepted that global warming is exacerbating these events, and making them more frequent. These changes have not gone unnoticed.
There have been some high-profile campaigners grabbing the headlines recently, in particular Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage activist who has been spreading the word across the world through speeches and student strikes. More
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