The impacts of extreme weather are already directly affecting people and communities across the UK. We lack ways to deal with this.
Without a serious rethink, we will lose any reputation for competence and leave an opening for the far right. But bringing together protections from extreme weather now with policies to stop the problem getting worse can be a strategic asset for progressives.
Climate, by its nature as both an immediate and a long-term problem, provides a case study on how we can be better at connecting the urgent concerns of the public with longer-term progressive goals that take time to manifest. We can no longer ignore the present at the expense of the future, but likewise we cannot forget the future when we focus on the now.
