As I sit and type this, I can hear the rain battering the lounge window. All day at work I have been facing the window, watching the heavens open and deliver yet more water onto an already sodden ground. I don't remember a winter like this in recent years; it's just so... wet!
In some respects we are very lucky where we live - at the top of a road that leads downhill. We aren't really at risk of flooding however, two streets in each direction were on red warnings over the Christmas period for flooding because of the way the rivers flow through the town. I'm so used to watching news reports of flood victims further down the country that to have severe warnings so close to home made us rethink a number of things such as our contingency plan for living arrangements, what we would have to move upstairs in order to save precious items and what our insurance would cover!
It's not just us that have been thinking about the long-term effects though. Simpson Millar Solicitors looked into the effect of each recent storm and then surveyed 500 people to see the effects as a whole. The results make for very interesting reading but there's an awful lot of people who believe that it wasn't possible to avoid the flooding this year (with or without local council or Government intervention) simply because of climate change. And that's something that is considered in this Huffington Post article.
I'm not sure what the answer is. There has always been talk about protecting this planet that we borrow to survive on for a short space of time; protect it and nurture it - but are our actions making things worse or does the only habitable planet in the solar system have a 'use by date' that we are hurtling towards?
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