Climate change is a working class issue

THOSE affected by floods in Plymouth through the last week have been shown sincere and valued empathy by our entire community.

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Waking to leaking ceilings or sudden torrents of water pouring through our homes is a traumatic shock as well as a long-lasting costly clear-up and remedial project.

Most if not all of us seeing the media coverage have the immediate intellectual acknowledgement of the reality of Climate Change. We all know it now. Extremes of weather are routinely breaking records, whether temperature peaks or torrential downpours, the erratic conditions now responsible for more moorland fires, farmland droughts, basement floods, transport disruption, and uncertainty about the future.

Seasons are shifting. The damage to our once-stable climate is accelerating, the various impacts of human-released carbon gases trapping heat in the atmosphere, feeding on itself and amplifying the power of nature's dynamic forces. Yet still the fossil-fuelled system of production adds more carbon dioxide to heat-up the world.