Worcester based UKIP MEP James Carver has claimed (see Worcester News article) that recent flooding in the UK is down to the EU stopping the dredging of rivers. This argument was backed up in a letter in today’s Worcester News by regular letter writer and Europhobe GB Dipper.
The latter is happy to state that flooding is nothing to do with climate change, which UKIP and many of its supporters deny has anything to do with humans pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
In both cases they are wrong. They are ignoring the evidence from flood management experts and climate change scientists, most likely for political point scoring.
UKIP are the only political party in the UK that are so unscientific that they continue to argue against the evidence presented by climate science. I hope that following the agreement reached at the climate summit in Paris at the end of last year that the minority who still cling to the idea of it all being a hoax can be ignored.
As regards dredging, the evidence shows that the best way to reduce the flooding of urban areas is to slow the flow of water upstream. There are many ways of doing this, such as natural obstacles in rivers, changing agricultural practice, planting more trees, etc. Dredging speeds up the flow, thus making flooding worse! With Liz Truss (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) about to allow farmers to dredge without permission and promising to prevent flooding of farmers land, flooding further downstream is likely to become even more frequent.
So rather than getting angry with the EU, we should be criticising the government for doing everything the farming lobby asks for and using public money to make the flooding of where most people live even more likely.