The climate crisis is no longer a looming threat – it’s here and it’s happening now. Yet we prevaricate and this refusal to act at the pace the science demands is deadly, Alliance MLA John Blair has said.
He added: “In 2020, extreme weather events uprooted 30.7 million people from their homes, the highest figure in a decade, according to new analysis from the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
“In recent weeks, we have witnessed disastrous floods in Germany, Belguim and Italy that have had a devastating impact on people’s lives. We’ve seen wildfires razing Turkey and spread across southern Europe.
“Climate experts are clear: these recent events mark the end of a stable climate, we must step up our efforts to minimise the damage caused by extreme weather.
“We have learned many lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, but a distressing lesson has been that high impact threats must be acted upon in a timely fashion and delay is costly. We need a green recovery with huge investment and urgent, radical changes to our economy – this radical change it isn’t just sensible, it’s now critical.”