Build back different?
20 July 2022
It’s a record that no-one wanted to see broken but temperatures in the UK yesterday exceeded 40C for the first time ever, with 40.3C being recorded at Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
More than 30 locations throughout the country surpassed the previous record of 38.7C which had been set in 2019 in Cambridge. As one climate expert told The Times, “the all-time temperature record for the UK has not just been broken, it has been absolutely obliterated. The mark of 39C will never even exist as a UK temperature record.”
The possibility of reaching the dubious temperature milestone was discussed on the blog two days ago, and reported how hire companies were meeting demand for air conditioning and cooling equipment.
Yesterday severe wildfires broke out as far afield as London, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire with homes destroyed and families evacuated. Fire services were severely stretched.
The railway network experienced widespread incidents of rails buckling in the heat (the metal can reach 20C above ambient air temperatures) and overhead power cables snagging in the searing heat, in some cases starting fires amongst trackside vegetation.
Roads buckled as tarmacadam surfaces twisted and melted in the unprecedented heat. A section of the A14 in Cambridgeshire was described as resembling a “skate park” after warping.
In the immediate aftermath it’s obviously too early to make firm judgements but an initial consensus among commentators is that the leap in record temperatures reinforces the urgent need to address climate change.
Speaking in The Times, professor Hannah Cloke, natural hazards researcher at the University of Reading, said: “Britain is just not used to responding to these kind of conditions. Our whole way of life, our towns and cities and our infrastructure are all based on a very different kind of climate. We need to factor in how people respond to warnings, and change how we prepare for heat all year round, because this is going to become more and more common in the future.”
So will the UK really make changes? If so, the scale of the challenge is extraordinary. The government’s mantra of ‘build back better’ might become ‘build back different’.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, told the BBC yesterday that to replace the infrastructure would take many years: “Decades, actually, to replace it all. Ditto with Tarmac on the roads. There’s a long process of upgrading it to withstand temperatures very hot or sometimes much colder than we have been used to, and these are the impacts of global warming.”
Perhaps the UK and, indeed, the rest of the world face an inflexion point in tackling climate change effectively. If a programme of improvement were to be implemented it would be massive, long-term and requiring huge investment.
More positively, it would bring considerable work opportunities for the construction and hire companies supplying the necessary contractors and equipment. Roads would need to be rebuilt and railways re-designed, perhaps using techniques like slab rail track systems such as are being used on HS2, although these can bring their own challenges.
Will planning regulations need to be revised to allow for the inclusion of firebreaks to restrict the spread of flames in congested areas, and will existing facilities require modification?
However, perhaps we have all been here before. Shortly after the blog was started two years ago, and as the UK was coming to terms with the first lockdown – another unprecedented occurrence – many experts believed we would need to redesign homes, buildings, offices and public spaces to minimise personal contact in the event of future pandemics. Similar sentiments were expressed following the SARS disease outbreak in Canada in 2003.
As a blog post two years ago discussed, ideas such as voice-activated elevators, touch-free coffee machines and communal handwashing facilities in reception areas were touted as becoming the norm. But that's all gone quiet: the ‘new normal’ seems suspiciously like the old one as the perceived threat recedes.
So will earnest climate change action be taken now? Or will the new normal in the wake of the 40.3C milestone not really differ much? When the heat dies down, we’ll see what governments decide.
