Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency is warning that the UK is seeing the impacts of the climate emergency hitting “worst case scenario” levels with more extreme weather and flooding.

Sir James Bevan set out the increasing challenge that the Environment Agency and the nation are facing in tackling the extreme weather brought by climate change at the annual conference of the Association of British Insurers which took place yesterday.

According to the EA chief, the reasonable worst case scenario for climate change is:

• Much higher sea levels will take out most of the world’s cities, displace millions, and make much of the rest of the world's land surface uninhabitable or unusable.
• Much more extreme weather will kill more people through drought, flooding, wildfires and heatwaves than most wars have.
• The net effects will collapse ecosystems, slash crop yields, take out the infrastructure that civilisation depends on, and destroy the basis of the modern economy and modern society.

Speaking on a panel at the ABI conference, Sir James said:

“If that sounds like science fiction let me tell you something you need to know. This is that over the last few years the Reasonable Worst Case for several of the flood incidents the EA has responded to has actually happened, and it’s getting larger.

“That is why our thinking needs to change faster than the climate. And why our response needs to match the scale of the challenge.”

His comments come nine months ahead of the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, where the UK will host delegates and climate experts from around the world.

Sir James called on governments and the public to put the same effort into tackling the “unseen pandemic” of the climate emergency as we have tackling Covid, saying that if left unchecked it will kill more people, and do much more harm, than Covid-19:

“In the same way we have to work together to tackle Covid-19, it follows that we will get the environment we pay for, we will get the climate we work for.”