26 January 2012 The Guardian

A gargantuan report reveals expected global warming impacts and - inadvertantly - a hidden but fundamental injustice.. 

If you thought global warming would bring little more to the British Isles than the inviting prospect of passing long, hot summers sipping chilled English wine, then the gargantuan catalogue of climate change impacts revealed on Thursday flattens that myth.

It also reveals - inadvertantly - a buried but fundamental injustice. Those Britons with outsize carbon footprints, inflated by jet-setting and SUV-driving, will suffer far less than those with daintier environmental treads.

The idea of climate injustice is more familiar in the context of the African subsistence farmer whose livelihood is trodden down by the polluting effects of heavy western consumption. But the long list of damages that climate change threatens to wreak on the UK shows climate injustice exists from the poor flood-prone neighbourhoods by the Humber to the concrete jungles of London, set to become ovens on baking-hot days.

The government's exhaustive report shows that, unless preventative action is taken, we can expect a tenfold increase in the devasting impacts of flooding, while searing heatwaves will lead to deaths. But the report does not examine who will bear the brunt of this.

Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) does. It shows that the richest 10% of Britons cause carbon emissions over double that of the poorest 10%. But the poorest will be worst hit, lacking the resources to prepare, respond and recover from extreme weather. 

View the rest of Damian Carrington's blog at The Guardian