PHOTO GALLERY: Homes for a changing climate

Climate change is upon us. In Britain the effects are still relatively modest and can be hard to discern above the natural variability of the weather. But in recent years variations have been so pronounced - flooding, heatwaves and drought - that there seems little prospect of a happy return to the predictably unpredictable British climate.

Furthermore, we know from the scientific evidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for the next 50 years even if the most optimistic predictions of future greenhouse gas emissions are achieved. Our climate will take time to change but change is inescapable.

The fact that we cannot stop climate change does not mean that we should lessen our efforts to reduce emissions and create a low-carbon world. Today, people are dying from the effects of climate change, largely in vulnerable countries that do not have the resources for defence and adaptation.

Hence the challenge is no longer to stop climate change but to contain it and minimise its harm. The more we cut emissions, the less the world will suffer.

As the climate changes, we must change with it. We must learn to cope with heatwaves and floods; with storms and drought. We must make difficult decisions as sea levels rise - stay and defend, or retreat and relocate. At the same time, we will face the consequences of resource depletion, especially of the ‘black gold' that fuels the modern world. Add to these problems the ever-rising global population and we find ourselves confronting the Gordian knot of food insecurity.

What will happen to global food supplies when oil is scarce, the land increasingly desiccated and the weather full of tricks? We will face all of these problems in this century and, for better or worse, we must cope. If we want to cope for the better, we need to use our extraordinary gifts as human beings to imagine and prepare for the future, rethinking and redesigning almost everything.

The primary focus of Homes for a Changing Climate is the built environment and houses in particular. Most of the houses we build, renovate or adapt today will still be with us in 10, 40 or 80 years' time. So we cannot put off building for the future. We are building for it now.

The fundamental message of the book is simple: we have been here before; we know what to do. We need not recoil from the threats that confront us, for we have tackled them a thousand times. Across the world, the great variety of human habitation demonstrates what we are capable of. Every extreme that Britain faces is already a reality somewhere in the world or somewhere in our own history. Adapting to climate change will be tough but we will survive. We will survive and thrive if, rather than continuing to exploit our depleted natural resources, we turn to our inexhaustible human resources instead: above all our adaptability and imagination.

This is an extract from Homes for a Changing Climate by Will Anderson (Green Books, £20)

To order your copy  at the special offer of £18 with free p&p (UK only), phone 0845 4589910 quoting the Ecologist reader offer. All major credit cards accepted

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