Climate Change: The Major Challenge
Lancaster and Fleetwood Liberal Democrats | Saturday, February 27th, 2010 | View CommentsTim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, spoke at the University of Cumbria in Lancaster on Friday 4 December.
The population of the World has grown from 1 billion in 1900 to 7 billion today, and it may grow by a further 50% in the next 40 years. Is there any good reason to doubt that this is linked to global warming, particularly given the industrial revolution and consumption of fossil fuels?
Warming is not at a constant rate, and it may not all be due to human activity. But the link is much stronger than the link to, say, sunspots. And we are able, with political will, to do something about changing our polluting behaviour.
He told his audience of the vast scope for renewable options, including tidal power and anaerobic digesters. Just four major hydro schemes could provide 23% of existing UK energy usage. Yet there are now only four working hydro stations in Westmorland: there used to be 28 commercial water mills in Kentmere alone.
“It makes sense for the UK to meet the economic downturn by building more anaerobic digesters. There are only 38 at present in the UK, compared with 28,000 in Germany and 3 million in China”,
(Written by Michael Mumsford)