Barry White
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has responded to a new UN report on climate change, reported here at https://acesettleandarea.org/key-moment-on-climate-emergency-says-report/ by stating that much more needs to be done on climate change in terms of both prevention and adapting to its devastating impacts.
The Panel’s report suggests that Europe will face increasingly severe climate impacts, including heat waves and flooding, unless action is taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
Firefighters are the public service primarily tasked with responding to flooding incidents in the UK. There are known links between heat waves and wildfires, which firefighters are also responsible for dealing with.
Commenting, Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said:
“We have had so many warnings now but still our politicians are not taking climate change seriously. They’re not accelerating changes to our economy and our society as quickly as they need to, and they’re not investing in a vital piece of climate change adaptation: the fire and rescue service. Very soon we could be seeing devastating flooding and heat waves on our shores, and a fire and rescue service that has seen huge cuts including one in every five firefighters since 2010 will find this too much to deal with. We don’t even have statutory funding for dealing with flooding in England: that’s an embarrassment and symbolic of a government hiding its head in the sand as an existential crisis approaches.”
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