Thursday, December 16, 2010

Flooding Imperils Britain's Food Supply


One of the things climate change has brought the United Kingdom is water - much too much of it.   Always known as a rainy place, Britain is now known as a flooding place.   In London the government is pursuing massive infrastructure programmes to protect British cities and towns from fresh and seawater inundation but a report warns they're leaving the country's farmland at risk:

The government's emphasis on protecting towns and cities will expose low-lying food-producing areas to flooding and salination, according to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA).

" Land managers need to be able to defend their properties ... even when the Environment Agency has withdrawn funding from what it regards as uneconomic defences,"   it says in a report. " The ability to continue using land for producing food, energy, textiles, pharmaceutical and industrial products is a national asset and not the liability it is treated as in the government's cost benefit analysis."   The cost of traditional "hard" sea defences is about £5m a mile.

The report, entitled The Tide is High, criticises " managed retreat"   policies. " The amount of high-grade agricultural land that will be lost through erosion and flooding in Lincolnshire alone could have a significant impact on our ability to produce food in the future, at a time when it will be more needed than ever. Current projections put 39% of Lincolnshire's land area in danger of flooding from the sea and rivers."

Has nobody told these Brits that global warming is a hoax?

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