Spain’s deadly floods prove climate change is no longer a distant threat

Round our way, this coming weekend, they’ll be switching on the Christmas lights. It’s not exactly Vegas, but it’s a pleasant moment in the calendar. The car park below the library is closed off, there are stalls and a stage for some local DJ to make like he’s from Radio 1. For a few hours there are waltzers and a marquee with a bar. And then, around 7pm, the lights are lit. Sometimes it’s wet, but mostly there is a whisper of frost, a suggestion that the big coats are staying for a good few weeks because winter is knocking. 

On the toll, in the middle of the roundabout at the top of the high street, there is a tree. And on this tree the council strings lights. It’s a very simple, renewable idea that means big trees don’t have to be shipped in from somewhere else. In truth, they could do a bit more with the streetlight sets they put up. These look like ice-cream cones. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be. 

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This year, I’m not sure how it’s going to go. There are still some leaves on the tree, which will make it tricky for the lights. A couple of weeks ago, this was a reason for delight. Glasgow in the autumn, as leaves turn, is a rust-and-gold joy. This year October was mild so the leaves clung around longer than normal. Into November, the daily temperature remains comfortably in double figures, well into the teens sometimes. Many trees are holding on long after they’d be expected to shed. It’s a sign of something being not right. 

In terms of signs, this is a gentle one. This is not the terror and horror of Valencia, of lives lost and neighbourhoods swept away. The symbolism of the people, angry and feeling abandoned, throwing mud at the king of Spain is one that will resonate around the world for a long time. 

Arguments remain between national and regional politicians there about who is to blame for not alerting residents soon enough about the incoming danger. But even when that blame game ends, hundreds of people will still be dead and the main point may not have been admitted. That climate change costing lives is no longer a distant threat of underdeveloped nations. 

We know that climate change in the global south is a contributing factor towards mass migration. There have long been debates about whether or not we in the developed west, who spent hundreds of years growing strong as we burnt fossil fuels, owed a debt of responsibility and therefore should have a very different take on the inward migration of people. 

Things become a little more complex as it grows obvious that climate change is causing very changed circumstances on our own doorstep. This is not because we don’t still owe a debt, or that now we can say we have our own climate problems, which will provide a convenient excuse and allow some agency to those condemning people who would flee to our shores. It’s rather because we need to stop thinking it’s just a problem elsewhere.  

• Doomism about climate change is a privilege we can’t afford
• How can the UK adapt to climate change – and how much progress has been made?

Last week, Ed Miliband, Labour’s energy minister, made it clear that the acceleration towards what he calls ‘clean power’ by 2030 was attainable. The borrowing to invest to grow, that Rachel Reeves laid out in her budget – called for previously in Big Issue – needs to build the infrastructure to help what he calls “mission-driven approach”. 

There will be challenges. There will be financial and political leaders who will argue about the actual reality of climate change.  

As America darkens and looks set to serve the few while claiming to be for all the left-behind; as demagogues and those who would happily quieten democracy and blame the ‘other’ for the problems they themselves deepen, it will become more difficult to gain international consensus about essential steps forward. But we need to keep pushing for that move to a better future. 

The interconnectedness of everything is hardly news. But I’ve been thinking about the man in Shetland and his otter. Billy Mail found a sick otter cub near his home and nursed it back to health. Molly, as Billy called her, became a kind of pet, though he was careful not to domesticate her. Then, realising he needed to let her go, Billy encouraged her to find her way back into the wild.

Billy was dealing with grief at the time and credits the focus on Molly with helping him work through it. He wasn’t sure if he’d see her again. Then, Molly the otter returned a year later to have her own cubs. It’s a curious, circular ending.  

I’d quite like to live in a world where people can still be healed by nature and families can enjoy the changing of seasons. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.

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