A New Apartheid

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and scale, affecting all but the super-rich and the world’s largest corporations.

Words: Frank Swain
Illustration: Kate Prior

On a beach in Norfolk, UK, the sound of rolling waves and bickering seagulls has been replaced with the roar of heavy machinery. A slurry of sand and water belches from a huge pipe leading to a dredging ship offshore, while bulldozers crawl through the shallow water and push up drifts.

The machines are creating a sand dune, six kilometres long, seven metres high, some two million cubic metres in all. All this is to protect the Bacton Gas Terminal, source of one-third of the UK’s gas supply. Built 100 metres from the coast in the late 1960s, the sea now laps at its perimeter fences.

Meanwhile, just 25 kilometres down the coast at Hemsby, houses are falling into the sea. For years, the local community has been campaigning government for sea defences to prevent the cliff face eroding, to no avail. “We’ve lost 100 homes in 20 years; it’s not insignificant,” says Lorna Bevan Thompson, founder and trustee of Save Hemsby Coastline. “We’ve lost
18 in the last five years, and 30 more are in direct trouble at the moment.”