Visiting the front line of climate change in Britain
By Mike Swain
www.mirror.co.uk
For Malcolm Kerby climate change is no distant threat to the Third World. He lives where it is already ruining lives… in Britain.
His home is in the small village of Happisburgh on the North Norfolk coast where the shore is retreating, battered by increasingly ferocious rising seas.
“This is the front line of climate change in Britain,” he says. “We can’t deny it. It’s happening. We see it with our own eyes.”
Sea levels are predicted to rise by a minimum of 37cms by 2050.
Latest world predictions claim they will reach 1.4m by the end of the century if the present rate of warming continues.
The flat Norfolk coast would be swamped, the Broads would become seawater and Peterborough a coastal town.
But all that’s in the future. Happisburgh has already lost 26 homes in 17 years and several more are on the verge of tipping over the edge as long-term erosion of the soft-sediment coast speeds up.
But last night there was, finally, some hope as the the North Norfolk coast was awarded £5million by the Government to fight climate change erosion.
It will allow those about to lose their homes to the sea to receive compensation for the first time – and Malcolm was thrilled. He said: “It is quite simply the most important step ever taken in the management of our coastline.
“For the first time the coastal communities have a future.”
