(Bristol North West)
(Lab):..I will read through some of the headline extreme
weather events of this year. In January, a mud slide following
rainstorms in California resulted in 18 deaths. Since March,
floods in east Africa have accounted for almost 500 deaths. In
May, a dust storm caused by high temperatures in India killed 127 people. In June, a
monsoon followed by a landslide in Bangladesh caused 12 deaths. A
summer of heatwaves across the northern hemisphere, experienced
in Britain too, resulted in 65 deaths in Pakistan, 80 deaths in
Japan, more than 90 deaths in Canada, 42 deaths in South Korea
and 20 deaths in Greece, and, on the best available data, up to
259 deaths were attributed to high temperatures in the UK.
In June and July, floods in Japan led to 225 more deaths, and
more than 8 million people were advised to evacuated. In July,
wild fires in Greece resulted in 99 deaths. Throughout August, we
saw the news of floods in Kerala in India, which caused 483 deaths as of 30 August
and forced more than 1 million people into relief camps.
Throughout the summer, wild fires in California, which are being
dealt with again as we speak, resulted in tens of thousands of
evacuations. In September, a typhoon in Japan caused 1.19 million
evacuations and seven deaths. A typhoon in the Philippines, China
and Taiwan led to nearly 2.7 million evacuations and 134
deaths...
...The immediate challenge is to limit temperature growth
to 1.5 °C. The Paris accord said that we must limit it to 2 °C or
less, but the IPPC said we must meet 1.5 °C within the next 12
years. If we fail to stop global temperature growth, the world
will radically change. Models published in
the New Scientist suggest that a
world that is 4 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels would result
in the United States, South America, central and southern Europe,
Africa, the middle east, India, China, Japan and most of
Australia being uninhabitable—gone. A 4 °C rise means a world
without the United States, China and India—that
could happen within my daughter’s lifetime. We would be left with
a world dominated by Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland,
northern Europe and the Nordics, Russia and whoever ends up
owning western Antarctica, which would have thawed in the 4 °C
model, and might be somewhere that people need to live...
(Strangford)
(DUP):...In his introduction, the hon. Member for
Bristol North West referred to something about which we must
express concern: the President of the United States unfortunately
seems not to be focused as much as other countries are on
environmental issues. We would like to have that commitment by
him and the USA. Other countries also have a responsibility. We
are not pointing the finger and accusing other countries, but
there is a strategy, of which they have to be a part. We look at
China, the States, India and Brazil, to which the hon.
Member for Richmond Park referred. In the press just last week
there was a picture of Brazil from the sky showing how much of
the rainforest has disappeared—an enormous amount. That cannot go
on. Our incredibly fragile eco-system, which benefits everyone,
needs the rainforest to be there as the lungs of the world, yet
we see large tracts of forest being decimated and put to other
uses. All countries across the world have a role to play...
(Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
(SNP):...The hon. Gentleman detailed the other extreme
events that have been happening recently: mudslides in California
and Bangladesh; floods in East Africa and India; dust storms
in India; heat waves across the world,
causing deaths even in the UK; typhoons; hurricanes; and extreme
rainfall. He explained well that such events come at a human and
a financial cost, and gave illustrative examples of the
disproportionate impact that they are having on women and girls
in some developing countries. It is sobering to think that 20
million people annually have to evacuate their homes and uproot
their lives because of extreme weather events...
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