real life...
The effects of climate change can be devastating for small business owners“Mike Hartley has managed the King’s Arms Pub on the river front in the heart of York for the past nine years, during which it has been flooded every year. In fact it has become such a regular occurrence that the pub now trades on its growing fame as ‘the pub that floods’.
“We usually cop it in the winter, but last year we were flooded in June, July and August as well as November. I live upstairs and in the 2000 flood, we had to escape across the rooftops. The pub was flooded for two weeks but we were actually closed for seven weeks and five days, because the water had been in for so long the walls were impregnated with sewage.
“Records of flooding in this pub date back two or three hundred years but there has been an increase in flooding, which I put down purely to the weather. I do believe that climate change has come about in the UK. You only have to look at the weather day by day to realise something is up. But we are just a very small piece of a very big jigsaw.”
“We are first grade at getting the pub back up and running and we do sterilise the whole place.
“Obviously insurance-wise, everything is covered apart from flooding.”
Richard Howard owns and runs the Company Shed seafood restaurant on Mersea Island, Essex. He is part of a long tradition of oyster farmers on the island, a tradition that may now be threatened by climate change.
“I’ve noticed that in the last few years summer temperatures on average seen to have been considerably warmer than they have been previously. The normal water temperature in the creeks in the summer is 17 or 18 Celsius. It could be affecting our oysters – in the last couple of years we have had very high mortality rates – as high as 70 per cent.
“We are worried about climate change. What we want is the status quo but I think that is a dream. First, there is the temperature issue which is affecting us directly. Second, there is the issue of rising sea levels, which means that the marsh could disappear. It is already eroding at quite a rapid rate. If it starts getting more and more submerged by the sea the vegetation on it isn’t going to survive.”
Stanley Jackson farms in the stunningly beautiful Borrowdale Valley, Cumbria. Despite Stanley’s land being prone to flooding from the meeting point of two rivers, he has always found shelter for his sheep and cows on higher ground.
In the summer of 2005 this higher ground flooded as well, sweeping away his flock as well as the security that there would always be somewhere safe for his animals.
“It was a truly exceptional cloudburst – the water rose 13 feet in a few hours. I am not insured for any drowning on my own land. It is just a complete waste; it is a loss to me. It really puts seeds of doubt in your mind.
“I’ve got about 50 acres of land which are prone to flooding...we’ve learned to live with it. In the 20-odd years that I have been on the farm, the weather patterns have changed. We seem to be getting long spells of rain and then a long dry spell. It doesn’t seem to average itself out.
“I think it definitely is climate change – even in my lifetime. I think that people are starting to realise now that something has got to be done.”