Warnings on climate change: Actions must match threat

FOR a country in the grip of a shaming housing crisis the news that thousands of people living in coastal communities will be made homeless as sea levels rise adds to a pressing to-do list for this society.

Scientists at UCC have warned that a changing climate may mean we may not be able to grow staple crops like potatoes and that some shoreline highways will disappear under a relentlessly advancing tideline. Tar roads will melt and railway tracks will buckle in heatwaves comparable to those endured in southern Spain. Storms will be more regular and far more destructive. Scientists are working on a “managed retreat”, a situation that will be exacerbated by climate change refugees arriving on our shores

These warnings are not new but they have, largely, fallen on deaf ears so little enough of the scale required has been done to prepare and protect our coastal towns and cities.

One warning suggests that unless Cork City is protected by a barrage close to Roche’s Point, costing around €1bn in today’s terms and begging all sorts of questions about the future use of the harbour, then significant parts of the city will be drowned.

The timescale? Less than a century so a period shorter than the one separating us from the events the country celebrated so enthusiastically over the weekend. Time is indeed running out.