Environemnt Agency

Chris Smith has fascinatingly come off the fence now he is moving out of the bonds of departmental collective responsibility. He reveals a number of things many of us have suspected to be true for a while in this article!

Slashed flood defence budgets have left the nation at the mercy of the wilder weather that climate change is bringing, according to the outgoing chair of the Environment Agency.

Lord Chris Smith, who steps down in July after a sometimes stormy six-year stint, said reduced funds and rising risks were an “inconvenient truth” and that failing to improve flood protection in the face of more frequent and extreme events was a false economy.

In an interview with the Guardian, he also said:

• the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, does not accept that global warming is due to the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning;

• the government has failed to fulfil David Cameron’s pledge to be the “greenest ever”;

• the current resources available to regulate fracking safely could not cope with the government’s hoped-for shale gas boom;

• major budget cuts at the Environment Agency (EA) have cut action against the illegal dumping of waste.