{"id":599653,"date":"2026-08-21T00:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T00:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599653\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T00:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T00:04:13","slug":"ministers-are-in-denial-about-the-scale-of-the-crises-we-face-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599653\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministers are in denial about the scale of the crises we face | Climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

This (Just 20 of 6,600 Defra staff working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires, 12 August<\/a>) is a shocking revelation from a government that has repeatedly assured us it understands the risk of the breakdown of nature and climate. Clearly not.<\/p>\n

Families forced to deal with school closures<\/a>, hospitals having to cancel appointments<\/a>, wildfires<\/a> continuing to tear through the country, and, so far, more than 2,700 deaths<\/a> recorded from extreme heat. And yet adaptation remains a tiny corner of one department.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though ministers haven\u2019t been warned. The Climate Change Committee<\/a> raises the alarm in every progress report it produces, urging the government to act. So what\u2019s gone wrong? Have the impacts of ecosystem collapse and climate change become politically expendable to the government?<\/p>\n

From a war on those pesky newts and bats<\/a> to Andy Burnham\u2019s endless game of \u2018\u201cwill he, won\u2019t he<\/a>\u201d over more oil and gas, this is Westminster fanning the flames of climate change. The communities facing firewaves, floods and extreme drought don\u2019t want to hear what\u2019s already taking place \u2013 they want to know what\u2019s going to change. Saying that we\u2019re \u201calready acting<\/a>\u201d clearly does not match the scale of the crisis. Just ask the \u201cUK\u2019s first climate evacuees<\/a>\u201d on whom you reported in February.<\/p>\n

Climate adaptation is a whole-of-government problem, not just for one desk at Defra. Why is there an AI minister around the Cabinet table, but no resilience and adaptation minister? Why don\u2019t we have a dedicated commissioner with the authority to ensure that departments prepare for the risks of climate and nature breakdown, and to make sure that there is a public face for these issues so that communities are protected? And, crucially, why is no one asking these questions in government?
Dr Amy McDonnell
Co-executive director, Zero Hour<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This (Just 20 of 6,600 Defra staff working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires, 12 August) is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-599653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}