Consciousness of Sheep
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Among the dangerous practices of advanced economies is the tendency to build for fragility rather than resilience. The core belief being that any problems that arise will be overcome in future by clever people somewhere else deploying the latest technology. But technological progress – including the vastly over-hyped machine learning – is no more than a fairy tale we tell ourselves to prevent us noticing the growing enshittification of just about everything around us. Nor is this limited to Big Tech. Time and again, enshittification is a design feature of our built environment. The current failure of decades old reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in the UK is a case in point. Like concrete generally, RAAC has a use-by date, and begins to crumble a few decades sooner than conventional concrete. Nevertheless, it was widely used in the construction of public buildings in the 1980s and 1990s… the thinking being that by the 2020s someone would have figured out how to stop it disintegrating. Except, of course, nobody did. And so, millions of pounds are being spent on reconstructing the affected buildings.
Another practice in the 1980s and 1990s was the system whereby local authorities across England and Wales are required to set aside land for housing development. Not, in itself, an unreasonable policy… except that in the UK not all land is equal. Indeed, much of the best land in Great Britain remains in the hands of the descendants of the Normans who took it after the conquest. This, incidentally, is why so many of Britain’s railways were built along the coastal strip. The land that remains – setting aside those areas designated as special interest or as part of a national park – is also mostly coastal strip or river flood plains. And so, much of the expansion of housing in the property boom years from the mid-1980s, was built in areas at risk of flooding.
At the time, the flood risk was played down. But even in the mid-1980s, concerns about climate change were being raised. And by the mid-1990s, climate scientists were modelling rising sea levels and increased rainfall – a particular issue for islands in the northeast Atlantic, directly in the path of the Gulf Stream and the Jet Stream… and yet, the politicians failed to do anything to increase the resilience of properties that had been built in harm’s way.
One reason for this is an inability to understand risk even when it is quantified. As former Tory minister Oliver Letwin admits, when department scientists talked about 1 in 1,000-year floods, ministers took this to mean that there wouldn’t be another one for a millennium. Whereas, they explained, if we have 1,000 places at risk of flooding (the UK has many more) then you are going to have the same flood somewhere every year! More practically, of course, no government is going to raise the money to defend every property at risk of flooding… at least not until after a real flood has occurred.
Which brings us to where we are at the end of 2025. The western side of Great Britain is facing a series of slow-moving Atlantic fronts bringing heavy rain and often resulting in floods for those unfortunate enough to be beneath them. Last month it was the turn of Monmouth in South Wales. But these types of floods are becoming all too common. Last year it was Pontypridd which bore the brunt, while the river Towy in Carmarthen regularly bursts its banks. And across the border, Worcester has been flooded time and time again as excessive rain in the Severn catchment makes its way down to the sea.
While climate change has undoubtedly played a part in this – the speed at which Atlantic fronts cross Britain has slowed, while clouds carry far more water – we should not let austerity-driven councils and price-gouging water companies off the hook entirely. After all, blocked culverts and leaf-clogged storm drains are increasingly common now that clearing them is considered too expensive. Moreover, it is the long-term consequences of these floods which shines light on a tragic neoliberal response to climate change which is seldom questioned… at least among the political class – that attempting to change the climate is better than mitigating its consequences.
In the Parliamentary debate following the flood in Monmouth, MPs and Ministers were keen to claim that time is of the essence in responding. But this is no more than hubris, as wishful thinking crashes headlong into physical and economic limits. Insurance companies – which have already refused to cover many properties in known flood risk areas (leaving the state to underwrite basic cover) – have been quick to draw the distinction between “storm damage” (which is covered) and “flood damage” (which isn’t). And in cases where furniture and appliances were dumped too quickly, people face difficulties claiming contents insurance unless they can prove what was lost. But this is as nothing to the prolonged problems which inevitably follow.
It is not clear what was in the brown sludge that washed down the Monnow valley to the river Wye, but it no doubt contained agricultural run-off as well as the content of the many septic tanks along the way (rural areas of the UK are seldom directly connected to the main sewage treatment system). And so, pretty much anything that the sludge came into contact with will have to be written off. And since most home and business furniture and appliances are on the ground floor, that means almost everything – fridges and freezers, washing machines, carpets, armchairs and television sets, along with wooden skirting boards and much of the plaster, together with damaged electrical cables and equipment. Suffice to say that “getting back to normal” takes a long, long time.
This is where the unwary victims of flooding can easily come a cropper, because they face pressure (external and internal) to hurry… especially (as politicians and journalists have been quick to point out) because Christmas is just around the corner. But how does anyone hurry the physical process of drying out a house, shop or office? It can’t be done… not least because water evaporates more slowly in the winter months. Even in summer, and using several large fans, drying out can take several months… and God help anyone foolish enough to try to rebuild while the property is still damp, because that is almost guaranteed to result in poor repairs which need redoing in future.
Large fans, are just one of the many things which are inevitably in short supply where there has been widespread flooding. The outlets which hire them out only keep as many as are required in normal conditions… they don’t have a warehouse somewhere stacked to the roof with enough fans to dry out an entire town. The same goes for all of the building materials needed to restore affected properties. And, of course, the UK has a huge shortage of the skilled tradespeople – carpenters, electricians, plasterers, plumbers, etc. – who will be needed to do the renovation properly… although in the aftermath of flood after flood, all kinds of chancers and cowboys tend to turn up claiming (and usually failing) to be able to carry out the work.
Realistically, people in Monmouth should be looking at Christmas2026 as a target for renovating and getting back to normal… assuming normal can be returned to. And the personal “disaster after the disaster” befalls those who hurry, only to discover that the renovation work must be re-done… only this time without the money from the insurance company. Although even those who do successfully renovate don’t get away unscathed. Insurance companies are seldom prepared to insure properties at risk of flooding, still less those that have actually been flooded. And since flood risk shows up on even the most cursory of surveys for a house sale, moving may no longer be possible.
This was the plight of the residents of Fairbourne on the west Wales coast… the first community to be written off to flooding as not worth saving. Something similar happens to communities on the east coast of England, where coastal erosion means that they are going to fall into the North Sea… and since nobody is coming to buy the houses, those without independent means are stuck. But less dramatically, properties in flood risk areas across the UK are becoming unsellable even as the housing crisis grows.
Nor is it only we peasants who are at risk of flooding in future. A large part of central London lies below sea level… including the Houses of Parliament. The area is defended for now by the inner Thames Barrier, which opened 41 years ago and was believed at the time only to be needed 2-3 times a year. But with each decade it has been deployed more often, with a high point of 50 deployments in the winter of 2013-14. This is both due to tidal surges coming up the estuary and the need to manage floodwater upstream.
Even as the Queen was officially opening the barrier, my old mate Simon Turney (seated back row second from left) Chair of the Greater London Council’s Fire and Civil Defence Committee, had a planning team working on a second, outer, barrier further along the Thames estuary in response to modelling showing the flood risk growing over time… not least because that part of Great Britain is very slowly sinking into the North Sea. It never came to anything, in large part because the GLC was abolished by the Thatcher government just two years later.
In 1984, even after the economic vandalism of the first Thatcher government, resources could have been found to build the outer barrier. Political will was the main obstacle… together with that other human flaw of discounting problems that seem to be aeons away. And in the 2020s, as a whole herd of gathering crises have appeared on the near horizon, it is not so much that the money has disappeared – although this, no doubt, is how mass media will explain it – but that the real-world inputs – cement, steel, heavy machinery, skilled workers, etc. – which money is no more than a claim against, are no longer available. And so, just as individual households are unable to defend themselves against the growing risk of flooding, even some of our biggest (and richest) towns and cities are no longer able to do much more than pray that the next Atlantic storm deluges someone else.
Elsewhere, climate impacts will vary. But in Britain’s case, flooding is shaping up to be the most obvious consequence… both of the changing climate and the lack of resilience. And readers would do well to look closely at their own built environment and seriously examine their own vulnerabilities (this year’s fires in the Hollywood Hills are another example). Because, despite our Canute-style multi-billion-dollar attempts to reverse the environmental impact of three centuries of industrialisation, all the evidence is that things are going to get worse. As the Blessed Virgin in G.K. Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse has it:
“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.”
As you made it to the end…
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