East London Humanists argue the extreme weather is a wake up call in this article for the Barking and Dagenham Post August 2018.<\/p>\n
Do you remember the Beast from the East? 39 schools had to shut in the Borough due to the cold. Operations were cancelled and transport came to a standstill. A few months later sweltering heat has brought its own problems. All the continents in the Northern Hemisphere have suffered scorching temperatures in the hottest period ever recorded.<\/span><\/p>\n Surely this is a wake-up call.\u00a0 There is of course nothing new about occasional extreme weather. But what was once exceptional has in our lifetimes become normal. The frightening fact is that this changing pattern had been predicted by most climate scientists. It should come as no surprise that the activity of humans has had an impact. There are now 7.5 billion of us, and rising. How could we expect to keep pumping out \u2018greenhouse\u2019 gases without having some effect?<\/span><\/p>\n Individually we can make small changes. But it is only politicians who can collectively take the major action required. Many show no sense of urgency or responsibility. They squabble about issues which seem petty compared to this threat to our very existence. Trump set a shocking example by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. Our own Government is little better with its commitment to fracking and lack of investment in renewable energy.<\/span><\/p>\n Evidence confirms humans contribute significantly to climate change. It is only through human action that the emissions responsible for it will be reduced. There is no-one \u2018out there\u2019 who will do it for us. There is no Planet B!<\/span><\/p>\n Paul Kaufman, Chair East London Humanists.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" East London Humanists argue the extreme weather is a wake up call in this article for the Barking and Dagenham Post August 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9c4oP-rE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}