EXPERTS have been warning of the consequences of global warming for decades, but while some countries are acting to lessen the effects, others are ignoring the problem. Reporter SIMON HAWORTH looks towards the future for Britain and asks what the British public can do to help
IT'S 10am on Friday, May 30, 2080. In Blackburn town centre, shoppers swat away mosquitos carrying the deadly virus malaria.
Later in Burnley the heat is so intense residents spend midday sweating indoors. Newspaper headlines disclose the cases of skin cancer across East Lancashire are rocketing.
Meanwhile, a slow-moving River Ribble at Ribchester is salt-laden like the sea and only a few inches deep due to several months without a single drop of rain.
Elsewhere, the south of England is too hot for a holiday, much of London is under the sea and there are rations on drinking water.
It sounds like a doomsday vision from a science fiction novel, but experts this week said these are the sorts of scenarios waiting to happen if global warming continues at its current rate.
In Warrington, scientists and environmental experts met to discuss the most pressing matters for the environment in the North West of England.
Brought together by the Environment Agency -- the government body in charge of protecting and improving our air, land and water -- the committee discussed how to plan for global warming and minimise its dramatic predicted effects.
Scientists who back the global warming theory state the earth is rapidly heating up because of the greenhouse effect caused by industrial pollution.
The greenhouse effect is where industrial gases such as carbon dioxide trap the sun's heat in the upper atmosphere.
The only way to control it will be for industrialised countries to cut the rate at which they are burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gas and their derivatives such as petrol -- and for developing countries not to dramatically boost their output of pollutants.
Global warming will affect the entire world, but the blame lies mostly with the west: the United States produces 24 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases and Britain manages three per cent - the same as the whole of Africa.
The most important treaty to try and combat global warming on a global scale was the Kyoto Treaty which was signed by 180 countries in 1997.
If ratified the treaty would have made developed countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent, from 1990 levels, by 2012.
However, the USA flatly rejected signing it.
Russia is unlikely to ever sign it too on commercial grounds, despite Russia producing 17.4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.
Godfrey Williams, the Environment Agency's fisheries policy and process manager, said: "There will be lifestyle and recreation changes with warmer weather, there will be higher risk of water-related disease and that may have an impact on people's willingness to engage in water-related activities.
"Looking at what we have the best science suggests we are going in that direction.
"However, there are other much more catastrophic scenarios such as losing the Gulf Stream with the country becoming extremely cold instead of extremely cold."
Committee member and scientist Derek Norman said: "In the future the south of England will be far too hot to go to on our holidays. In the Lake District there will be three to four times more tourists.
"We are going to have some huge socio-economic changes which we need to be planning for in the way we build our infrastructures in the North West.
"There are some health issues which might make the future quite worrying.
"There will certainly be a lot to talk about in the years to come."
But another committee member, Harold Tongue, said it was pointless the UK trying to combat global warming without the help of the major greenhouse gas producers and we should instead plan for the inevitable.
He said: "We cannot affect anything in this country on climate change therefore we must accept the changes and do something about it."
The Environment Agency has now set up a programme called the 'Climate change impacts and adaptation research project' which has been specifically funded to look at the affects of global warming and plan for climate change in our region.
In the meantime, while being as environmentally friendly as we can, we may count ourselves lucky we can walk in our town centres without being threatened by a plague of mosquitos.
BY the year 2080 predicted changes for East Lancashire include:
A 4C increase in average temperature.
A 50 per cent drop in rainfall in the summer months
A 50 per cent increase in rainfall in winter months
Salt water intrusion up rivers because of low water and greater tidal surges
The presence of diseases such as malaria because of higher temperatures, and
Many non-native animal species living in the region.
In the future the south of England will be far too hot to go to on our holidays
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