Dudley, Eunice, Franklin. Anybody remember them? How about Ashley, Bert and Conall? These are all named storms. The first three occurred in one week in 2022, the others are the first three to be named in the 2024/2025 season. Storm Bert caused terrible flooding, especially in Pontypridd.

While some in public life aren’t willing to state that human-induced climate change is to blame, many experts will. Dave Throup, a former Environment Agency manager, states, “Every prediction is showing very significant increases in peak river flows and levels in the near future due to climate change.” Apart from extra water to deal with, there’s less space for this water to go. Hard surface areas such as parking spaces in place of gardens cause the water to run more rapidly where it can go, and water always finds a way.

The Welsh Government is spending millions every year on flood defences. But, as Throup says, “We can’t engineer our way out. Raising existing defences won’t be technically, financially or environmentally possible.” Are there different solutions out there? In Manchester, known as the rainy city, a park that ‘drinks’ water has been created. This is just one example of how nature based solutions to excess water can work. It’s hoped that this park will soak up excess surface water that has nowhere to go, except properties, during a major rain event. Other nature based solutions are re-wriggling rivers and introducing beavers. Nant Dowlais near Cardiff is being re-wriggled, taking it back to its former curves, thereby slowing the flow, and creating more extensive floodplains that can accept lots of water before it reaches settlements. Beavers are master engineers. Studies by Exeter University show that beaver dams can slow river flow downstream, “thereby reducing peak discharge during heavy rainfall events typically by 30 percent.”

We can adapt to climate change and hope we won’t be the ones who have to bail out our house. We can carry on spending millions building flood defences too. It has been done in Borth, and Aberaeron is currently in the middle of its massive sea defences delivery. Plans for protecting Aberystwyth are under discussion. One aspect of these plans puzzles me: importing sand for the north beach. Is this a waste of money? Will it be washed away by the very first storm to hit the seafront?

I don’t hear enough about tackling the root cause of climate change, curbing our carbon dioxide emissions. COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, didn’t make many headlines in the UK news. Water is extremely powerful. Flooding causes real devastation to properties, and it kills, as many poorer, low-lying nations keep telling us at every COP.

Planning laws should be far stronger in stopping building on or even close to floodplains. Lidl’s mad plans to open a store in Lampeter opposite the old Cwmann Tavern are a case in point. And planning should force homeowners to create porous drives. Allowing nature to take care of flood waters, for instance by allowing it to flood farmers’ fields, is far cheaper in the long run than restoring damaged properties, even if we pay farmers properly for loss of land. For true costs of flooding, turn to the insurance industry. House insurance has increased on average by 42 percent in the last year, due in major part to extreme weather events.

We humans need to learn to live as part of nature and stop trying to be the big conqueror, and face the consequences of climate change, all of us, not just Governments and National Resources Wales. The costs of not doing so will surely come and bite us on the bum.