Nearly seven
years ago, while I was writing Toward the Setting Sun – a look at the links and rivalry between Columbus, Cabot and
Vespucci – I went to Palos de la Frontera, from where Columbus set sail in
1492.
You can stand
on the dockside, as he did, but the ocean is now completely out of sight. It is smallholdings, strawberry farms and
scrubby farmland as far as the eye can see.
In the far distance, on a clear day, you can just see the glimmering of
the Guadalquivir estuary in the distance.
It is a measure
of just how far the water has receded over the past five centuries or so, right
across Europe. Partly because of
drainage, partly because of industrialisation, partly because of greater
extraction.
I thought about
that today when I saw the pasting the Environment Agency was getting because of
the flood water in Somerset.
They may be to
blame for not dredging the rivers enough, though there are clear disadvantages of
doing so. I don’t know. I’m not a water engineer.
But what we can
say is that it is possible to discern the drift of the politics of climate
change, as the water levels rise and the wind and extreme weather begins to
take shape. The first people we will
blame, after the transport companies – who will have taken no precautions, as usual
– will be the Environment Agency.
If it is their
fault at all, then they will share it with the politicians who failed to take
evasive action when it was clear what direction the climate was taking, but
that is kind of by the way.
The main point
I want to make is about history. We know
the shape of our rivers and coasts in previous centuries, and there is no
reason why – however much money the Environment Agency might throw at flood
prevention – those patterns should not return.
As I say,
Columbus sailed from a dock where the sea has entirely disappeared. The Saxons used to sail ships all the way up
the Thames to Oxford. And the Somerset
levels were under water until a few centuries ago – they were drained over a
millennium, and it appears they are returning to their previous shape.
Joseph of
Arimathea may not have arrived in Glastonbury by ship, as legend suggests, but
many other people did.
Similar
examples are all over the country. The beach
where William the Conqueror landed and ate the sand is now an inland car park,
some miles from the sea.
We may just have
to put up with the return of medieval rivers, with flood plains which are used for
floods not for building houses on. Even
the crustiest sceptic about the climate change narrative agrees that the
temperature is rising.
There are times
when we need to take Carl Jung’s old advice, that we must tackle the things we
can change, not waste our energy on the things we can’t, and somehow generate
the wisdom to know the difference. This may
be one of those times.
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