THE south west is on course to become the new Mediterranean. By 2080 Exeter could have a climate as hot as Lisbon's while Dartmoor becomes as parched as the Spanish plains. Greece, Turkey, Spain and Italy will have been overtaken by desert, the rain forests dried out and the tropics too hot to support life. This was the Armageddon vision sketched out to an audience of 50 at a climate change talk at Coombeshead College, Newton Abbot, last Wednesday. Chairman, Cllr Gordon Hook, Teignbridge Council portfolio holder for the environment, introduced the speaker, saying that the planet which sustained us and was our home 'was under threat as never before.' Ian Bateman, Devon County Council's climate change officer, said that this worst scenario picture was based on CO2 emissions continuing at their current levels. He said that global warming would accelerate in the second half of the century, with sea levels rising between 8ins and 3ft and global temperatures jumping 5.8 degrees – which was enough to tip the earth out of the last Ice Age. 'And we're going to do it in 100 years,' he said. Under this scenario, Devon would become the UK's epicentre for drying. Weather patterns would be more extreme with rivers breaking their banks, flash floods, storm damage, drought, heat stroke and general storminess. Mr Bateman said it was hard to predict with certainty because the world's climate was so complex. It is not known how populations will increase, technologies develop and economies grow. Even if CO2 emissions were cut tomorrow, climate change would continue for at least another 30 years because of the inertia locked into the system. What was needed was to cut CO2 emissions by 95 per cent, even so, it would take an estimated 200 years for CO2 to stabilise in the atmosphere and a millennia before sea levels stopped rising. 'We are on the train. We have bought the ticket, we just don't know what the destination is,' said Mr Bateman. Rather than spreading a message of hopelessness, Mr Bateman urged Devonians to play their part by reducing their carbon footprint (see adjacent panel). He said that Britain was now a world leader on climate change. Advanced technologies were being developed, for instance the new coal-fuelled power station announced for Teesside will be able to remove and bury its CO2 emissions. These technologies may well be sold, or given, to China, which is opening a new power station every week, in exchange for carbon credits, once a carbon economy is developed. Other futuristic ideas might include the use of vast umbrellas in space to bounce the sun's rays away from the earth.
