MP candidates give views on climate change affecting Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr in the future

Candidates looking for your support have been invited to share their views on a range of issues.

As part of our election coverage ahead of the poll on Thursday we asked all candidates a range of questions, with a theme based collection from all candidates below. You can also read individual answers to all the questions here on our Election 24 page, plus links to party manifesto, supplied bios for candidates and links to find out where exactly your polling station is!

Question: How do you think climate change will affect Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr in the future, and what as a local MP can you do on the matter?

Wales will be one of the last countries to be directly affected. The impact for us will to begin with it becoming more expensive to import food, as the counties that we do import food from becoming too dry for production. This will start to affect much of the Mediterranean and in North Africa.
This will lead to food shortages, and of course the humanitarian issues around food and water for those living in those countries. This will in turn lead to a global refugee crisis as those populations living in these first affected countries seek somewhere habitable where they can settle.
What can a local MP do on the matter? The crisis will be global, no country will be able to avoid the consequences, so what is needed is international cooperation to come to international agreements to reduce carbon emissions and to keep to them. There need to be countries willing to lead from the front. The UK was originally taking this role but has dropped back. We may not have a very large proportion of the global carbon emissions (2%) but the UK still hold influence in the world and our action will encourage other countries to act.
So what a local MP can do is to be part of the pressure in Westminster to press whatever government we have in place to take more ambitious action.
The advantage of the UK taking the lead here is that we can be at the forefront of many of the technologies that are needed as part of the solution and the growth in these green technologies will be good for our economy going forward.

Climate change is already having an impact on Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr. We have seen massive floods in recent years followed by droughts and this is only set to get worse if we don’t act. This will have a particularly devastating impact on our constituency because so much of the local economy and employment relies on agriculture and any farmer will tell you they are very worried about it.
And it’s not just the climate, it’s also about our biodiversity and natural environment. Between them Welsh Labour Ministers in Cardiff Bay and Conservative Ministers in Westminster have let water companies get away with dumping raw sewage in our precious rivers for years on end. The Liberal Democrats would ban executive bonuses, introduce a tough new regulator and expand blue flag status from our beaches to our rivers.
We would also introduce an emergency insulation programme, helping people save money on their bills while also reducing emissions at the same time. This is a massive issue in Wales where houses are some of the most poorly insulated which not only means high bills, but also means high levels of illness from pneumonia, etc… which also costs our NHS.

This is an area of huge concern, but it is also another area where we should not let our morale dip or our belief that we can change things for the better before it’s too late. Montgomeryshire currently produces 96% of all its energy from Renewables. If every part of the country could emulate this, we would be in a far firmer position to tackle this growing crisis.
Labour’s policy here is the implementation of the ‘Green New Deal’ – we would embrace the Second Industrial Revolution, with a massive investment in solar, wind and tidal energy, by creating ‘Great British Energy’ a Publicly Owned utilities company. This would: help to protect the environment from further damage; reduce rocketing energy bills by profiteering energy companies that we used to own! And reduce our dependency on unstable dictatorships, with appalling Human Rights records.

Climate change will affect everywhere. One of the main issues re climate change is energy production and our use of energy. That is why I would be pushing for
Control over the Crown estate in Wales to ensure its benefits stay in our communities
Develop Ynni Cymru as a Welsh owned energy company
With 35% of emissions coming from the housing stock and with a old stock in Wales, i would push for large scale retrofitting of housing not only to minimise emissions but also to create a warmer and healthier housing for our residents

I’m afraid I take a very long view on this. Climate has always changed and always will – at some point ‘in the future’, another ice age will occur and Britain will be smothered yet again by a massive layer of ice 3-4 kilometres thick. Humanity has no control over changing climate; I really do wonder why the climate change lobby have this God-complex which suggests it does. Humans could walk from England to Denmark just 8,000 years ago or so; this is a blink of an eye in geological terms. We are in an inter-glacial ‘warm period’, and this warming began long before the industrial revolution. Thus, there is very little I can do as a local MP – or, indeed, any of us can do. What we can control and what is within our power is to protect the environment in so many other ways; protecting our forests and wetlands, and minimising plastic consumption. These are my environmental priorities.

No response to our Q&A has been received

You can read more Q&A answers here on our Election 24 page along with more election information – remember to GO VOTE ON THURSDAY!

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