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Amber Rudd: “We need to plan for worst climate change scenarios”

Businesses and governments need to plan for catastrophic weather events as climate change worsens, UK Energy & Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd warned this week.

Amber Rudd, Beijing

Rudd delivered her message at the launch of a report 'Climate Change: A Risk Assessment' in Beijing, which argues that climate risks must be assessed alongside risks to national security, with a focus on ‘worst case scenarios’.

Rudd said that the management of climate change risk should be the same as that for insurance firms, which are required by UK law to ensure they would remain solvent even in the event of a one-in-200-year catastrophe. “Our tolerance for the risk of losing a safe and stable climate should surely be at least as low.”

Rudd said that the management of climate change risk should be the same as that for insurance firms, which are required by UK law to ensure they would remain solvent even in the event of a one-in-200-year catastrophe. “Our tolerance for the risk of losing a safe and stable climate should surely be at least as low.”

Climate change represents one of the “greatest long-term economic risks facing the UK”, with action needed to “protect food production, coastal cities, public health and national security,” she said.

In the report, climate change experts from the UK, US, China and India identify risk thresholds that will trigger system failures. These include the tolerance of humans and crops to high temperatures and the ability of coastal cities to adapt to the rising sea level.

The launch, which was supported by the British Embassy, also saw the launch of the Chinese edition of Climate Change and Business Survival. This report by Mott MacDonald spells out the need for US$200bn annual investment in climate resilience by 2035 to avert potential losses of US$1trn. It also highlights a growing shortfall of US$130bn in resilience spend.

The challenge of climate resilience will be tackled at forthcoming Enviromental Industries Commision annual conference on 19 November - details at www.eic-conference.co.uk

Madeleine Rawlins, principal climate change consultant at Mott MacDonald, said: “We need to plan for the full possible range of climate change impacts that may occur in order to protect our assets. We need scenario planning that accounts for all risks and uncertainties.”

The two reports come in the run up to the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris in December, with hopes for a binding international agreement on carbon mitigation to keep global temperatures within 2oC above pre-industrial levels.

Rudd said: “Although the commitments that countries have put forward for the Paris deal represent significant progress, they do not yet give us great confidence that we can limit climate change to a safe level.”

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Comments

Then lets see the Government signify the importance of resilience and adaptation by introducing measures to develop adaptation strategies into Regulation; and funding R&D / demonstrators of adapted buildings / infrastructure to assess the benefits and build the business case. Refer: Innovate UK report on "The business case for adaptation" November 2014.
I would also promote that whilst we should "consider" the worst case scenario we should "plan" for a phased adaptation to suit the dynamic change at hand and advances in technology to respond to the change.
Excellent comments by our Climate Change minister - but why is she not ready to say this to the Conservative Party Conference but reserves these insights for a Chinese audience? Is she "frit", as her heroine Margaret Thatcher once said?