Britain’s hospitals, schools and homes will need to be fitted with air conditioning to deal with expected rises in global heating, the government’s climate advisers have said.
With temperatures forecast to exceed 40C in all parts of the UK by 2050, a major report from the Climate Change Committee has warned the country is “built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come”.
What’s in the report?
Julia King, chair of the CCC’s adaptation subcommittee, said that, of the many climate threats laid out in the report, “extreme heat is certainly the most deadly” and requires the “need to see cooling rolled out at scale”.
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“Sometimes this will mean shading, but sometimes it will mean air conditioning. And either way, we’ve got to get serious about protecting our most vulnerable people in hospitals, in care homes, and in schools.”
The CCC recommends air conditioning be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, and in all schools within 25 years. Exams should be set at cooler times of year, to stop students struggling to think in the heat.
The government should also set a maximum temperature for working indoors and outdoors, it said, following countries like Spain. There, the maximum legal working temperature indoors is 27C for sedentary work and 25C for light physical work.
Failure to take the necessary steps to stop people overheating could cause deaths from heat-related illnesses to rise to 10,000 a year by 2050, the committee warned.
Anything else?
As well as the risk from more intense heatwaves, the CCC found droughts are likely to become much more frequent. Last year the Environment Agency warned that England is on track for a daily shortfall in public water supplies of five billion litres by 2055 – equivalent to more than a third of current daily usage.
“We’re facing a potential world where you could turn on the tap and nothing would come out,” said King.
Global warming will also lead to more erratic rainfall and flash flooding. Seven million UK properties are currently at risk of flooding; if nothing is done, this could rise by 40% by 2050, the CCC said. Sea levels will also rise, threatening coastal areas that would no longer be protected by natural flood defences. Higher temperatures would also put domestic food production under threat.
How much would the changes cost?
“Adapting to a changing climate comes at a price,” said the BBC. The CCC estimates its recommendations would cost roughly £11 billion per year, split between the public and private sectors.
But every £1 spent would yield about £5 in benefits, the committee claims, and “the UK invests 50 times this amount every year” already, “some of it on infrastructure that exacerbates the climate crisis or vulnerability to it”, said The Guardian. “It’s very good value compared to the cost of the impacts of the climate that we’re already seeing,” said King.
There could also be a political cost to inaction. Sam Alvis, from the left-leaning think tank IPPR, told The Times that if the government did not step up efforts to adapt to hotter temperatures, it risked “stoking support” for populist politicians.
“When increasingly severe and frequent climate impacts strike, populists are quick to exploit public anger over a lack of preparation, using it to advance their own agenda and weaken support for climate action more broadly.”
