Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the United Nations body, which provides policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, future adaptation, and mitigation – released its latest
Assessment Report on the causes, impacts, and solutions to climate change.
Four months after the conclusion of COP26 in Glasgow, the IPCC warned that over 40% of the world's population are 'highly vulnerable' to the effects of global temperature rises, with Professor Debra Roberts (the IPCC's co-chair) telling the BBC that 'places where people live and work may cease to exist' and that 'ecosystems and species… that are central to our cultures and inform our languages may disappear'.
Highlighting both the existential threat posed by climate change and the injustice of its effect on the world's most vulnerable regions has become the cause célèbre of the 2020s, but the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, still felt the need to emphasise that the facts of this report – which he dubbed an 'atlas of human suffering' – are 'undeniable', stressing that the 'biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home'.
Although the United Kingdom's COP presidency has seen 196 nations subscribe to the Glasgow Climate Pact, the publication of a
Delivery Plan to ensure £100bn worth of climate finance (transnational public and private funding to mitigate the adverse effects of temperature changes) and a Net Zero Strategy from the nations which produce 90% of global emissions, there is a palpable sense that we are still fighting a losing battle. As the IPCC concludes, any further delay in concerted action will see us miss the 'brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future' which will expire at the end of this decade.
Despite this devastating and authoritative scientific account of the scale of the disaster facing us, anecdotal evidence suggests that it continues to be the homeliest messages that are the most powerful, with studies showing that mention of the effects of climate change on children and grandchildren elicit the most powerful responses. As John Buchan (then a year into his tenure as the 15th Governor-General of Canada) wrote in an open letter in December 1936, 'carelessness in one generation [can] destroy the wildlife', with the Scottish Viceroy urging Canadians to 'safeguard the assets which nature has given us, both in flora and fauna and scenic beauty' which could disappear with 'tragic rapidity'.
In Scotland, the SNP Government at Holyrood has established what it calls – perhaps unsurprisingly for an administration, which for all its more admirable qualities, rivals Johnson's mob down south for the UK's monopoly on hyperbole – the 'toughest, most ambitious legislative framework in the world… winning international respect for our ambition and leadership'. In addition to a commitment to be net zero on all greenhouse gases by 2045, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2019 also reaffirms the Scottish Government's pledge to spend £1.6bn to improve the heating and energy efficiency of Scotland's homes and public buildings over the next five years.
Professor Anthony Seaton rightly argued (in a series of articles for SR in the run-up to COP26) that 'for the UK to reach net zero emissions, we all need to aim towards zero ourselves' by reducing our travel and domestic energy costs, but mitigating the effects of climate change in Scotland will also require a nationwide programme of capital projects to adapt and 'build resilience' to the impact of rising temperatures and higher water levels.
The Scottish Government's
Living with Flooding: Action Plan (2019) estimates that 284,000 properties north of the border are currently at risk of flooding, with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) calculating that a further 110,000 homes and businesses will be vulnerable to flooding by the 2080s. Likewise, in April 2021, Climate Central (an American not-for-profit news agency, which specialises in authoritative climate change information) concluded that rising water levels in the Rivers Clyde, Tay, and Forth could see Glasgow Airport, the Old Course at St Andrews, the V&A in Dundee, the Wallace Monument in Stirling, Musselburgh Racecourse, Torness Nuclear Power Station, and, ironically, even the SEC Centre in Glasgow where COP26 was held, underwater by 2050.
As part of this national effort to prepare for the consequences of decades of wanton pollution, East Lothian Council (ELC) has recently started further consultations on a new flood defence scheme in the heart of Musselburgh, the largest settlement in East Lothian and home to around 22,000 people at the last count. Perched on a small peninsula, six miles to the east of Edinburgh and jutting out into the Firth of Forth, the 'Honest Toun' is dissected by the River Esk, which flows down through Inveresk, skirts the boundary of the Musselburgh Golf Club at Monktonhall, passes Eskmills and Loretto before entering the Forth alongside the 'Old Course' at Musselburgh Links.
Originally approved by ELC in January 2020, the scheme aims to protect 2,500 properties in Musselburgh from a one-in-200-year risk of flooding along the Esk corridor by building a 'physical barrier' along the river and the coastal foreshore and replacing four of the town's road and foot bridges. Likewise, as part of this £42m project, the Musselburgh Flood Protection Scheme has also proposed 'natural, sustainable and catchment measures', including the construction of a 'debris trap' by Whitecraig and wholesale modifications to the existing Victorian reservoirs in the South Esk catchment to direct flood waters away from the town.
Despite the scheme's noble intentions and the council's willingness to consult Musselburghers (including holding a whole-town consultation meeting at the Brunton Hall last night), the project has prompted a vigorous exchange of letters in the
East Lothian Courier, with Alan Taylor (former managing editor of
The Scotsman and native of Musselburgh) recording the 'mounting dismay and incredulity' of many Musselburghers and even accusing the council of spreading 'fear and panic… and fake news' in one missive on 16 February 2022.
Conor Price (the scheme's project manager) has since refuted Taylor's suggestion that the council did not intend to replace the four bridges (which would effectively bisect the town) and tried to squash the widespread rumour that ELC intends to build a two metre-high concrete wall along both sides of the Esk. However, Taylor's argument that the scheme will 'not be a thing of beauty', with green and picturesque areas such as Fisherrow Links and Eskside West being 'transformed into a builders' yard' still stands, regardless of what form the final project takes.
In short, this spat in Musselburgh – which will shape the geography and aesthetics of the town for generations to come – is a microcosm of the situation facing all of us as we try and adapt to the consequences of allowing global temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Although suggesting that Scots must choose between having aesthetically pleasing settlements and effective flood defences is a false dichotomy, the Musselburgh scheme proves that policymakers seeking to tackle climate change – who are consumed by what they believe to be the overwhelming logic of adaption – must put greater effort into persuading Scots of the rationale of schemes which will inevitably shape how we will all live for decades to come.
Tom Chidwick is a contemporary historian, who splits his time between London and Edinburgh. He is currently writing a history of the 1979 referendum on the creation of a Scottish Assembly
