Half of England has been declared officially in drought, as farmers warn the extreme conditions and record-breaking heatwaves are making it “harder, riskier and more costly” to produce food.
The Environment Agency says seven regions across central, eastern, and southern England are in drought after what is thought to be the driest July on record combined with soaring temperatures.
Agency bosses warned of lasting effects of the absence of rain on the environment, wildlife and the economy, while experts said farming was becoming increasingly precarious.
But see we haven’t been able to act too fast on climate change because it would cost too much
and people still support climate deniers like Reform
I think the current strategy is “perhaps climate is changing but it’s not caused by humans”, rather than outright denial.
oh my god yes, hearing this a lot
It’s an established playbook.
- climate change isn’t happening
- there’s no consensus in the data
- climate is changing due to natural processes <-- we are here
- things are so bad, now is not the time to upset industry <-- due when we have many millions of climate refugees
- this is the new normal <-- when we have a decade of 2 degrees average increase in temp
Or the old “well of course we need to reduce emissions but it’s a matter of individual responsibility, anything else might hurt the economy so much that I’d have no choice but to vote against the future of humanity. Don’t make me do it, if you hurt my profits even slightly I will!”
If only there was some big group of countries we could import cheaper produce from. That’d be grand.
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Given that other countries today have similar breadbasket failure prospects, maybe you should look into the history of the UK for examples of how grand your proposal is, like with India and Ireland,.
I’m making the point that pre-Brexit UK would have been better able to cope, don’t mistake this for a chance to be insufferable.
You mean the group of countries having an even worse season than Britain?
They have more arable land per capita, so maybe. Look, are either of us experts or is this conversation going to suck?
Just in the June heatwaves, EU+UK lost 9m tons of grain crop, with 7m of that in France, Hungary and Spain. This will be the worst harvest in nearly a decade.
England be looking more like South Texas lately
Cool season grasses like that die in the heat even with water and rapidly without.
Meanwhile in Spain, they’ve figured out we’re gonna have to grow stuff in greenhouses or indoors.
Never thought I’d see a fucking desert in the middle of albion.
