Do we really need to panic about flooding in Britain?

Why does every government department and agency seem to feel it hasn’t done its job unless it has expressed some hysterical reaction to the threat of climate change?

Launching the Environment Agency’s latest report on its plans to prepare for possible changes in England’s climate over the next century, its chair Emma Howard Boyd said: ‘Some 200 people died in this summer’s flooding in Germany. That will happen in this country sooner or later, however high we build our flood defences, unless we also make the places where we live, work and travel resilient to the effects of the more violent weather the climate emergency is bringing. It is adapt or die.’

The words ‘adapt or die’ were picked out as the headline for the accompanying press release and, predictably enough, found their way into much of the reporting on the issue. The agency’s message seems quite clear: we’re going to have to do something pretty drastic or else we are all going to perish.

Yet there is an almost laughable disconnect between this sort of language and the actual contents of the report.