Working Towards Reducing Climate Change Impact
Hurricane Harvey was a truly Texan scale storm. It distributed more water on a region of America than any other weather event in history. The cost of recovering from it will dwarf the already huge cost of the emergency response. Its economic impact is already outstripping Hurricane Katrina that put New Orleans top of the agenda in 2005.
"This unprecedented storm inevitably leads many of us to ask 'is it a direct result of climate change?'"
The only experts offering emphatic statements to deny or support their case are at the extreme of the climate change debate. Most experts fall somewhere in between suggesting that climate change exacerbated the effects of the storm. After all, attributing climate change to individual events using current technology is an extremely imprecise process right now.
The general themes linking climate change to Hurricane Harvey are:
- Global warming leads to ice melting and ocean water expanding, increasing sea levels.
- There is more water vapour that storms can sweep up and dump on us in a warmer world.
- Warmer temperatures make storms stronger and intensify them more quickly.
Given the UK’s buildings account for nearly half of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions through heating, cooling and lighting. All property managers and owners can take steps to reduce global warming. We shared some ideas on building design recently that you can read by clicking here >>
At Gen², we recognise how we operate and our staff are also critical in meeting our environmental improvement plans and comply with our environment policy too. Not only is this an important aspect of our ISO14001 certification we are working towards, but we also know that significant costs savings can be achieved.
Our intention is to drive forward resource efficiencies, challenge us to find alternatives to car travel and prompt us to plan our work and travel more effectively.
We are introducing reporting on our environmental impact to gather evidence that we comply with environmental legislation and that our improvement plans deliver.
We are going to monitor that our staff have a good level of awareness on what we have to do.
You can read about our commitment and full environmental policy by clicking here >>