Birmingham 'worst' over climate change

9.01.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sun 1st Apr 2007

According to Dr David Viner (a leading climatologist) Birmingham (my home city) is the worst place to live in Britain if you want to avoid climate change.

Dr Viner has been a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit and is about to take a new job advising Natural England on its fight against global warming chose his top 10 best and worst places for a BBC Inside Out programme, Climate Change Now.

"Hot summer temperatures, coupled with air pollution and the tendency for extreme storms will make Birmingham an unpleasant place to live," Dr Viner said.

Birmingham is reported to produce an estimated 6.6m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year which about 2% of UK total.

There are some environmental schemes in Birmingham which hope to make Birmingham a better place to live. The Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr is fitted with solar panels and there are isolated examples of wind power, along with some grants to improve energy efficiency in the home.

The new "Climate Change Strategy" which was launched recently hopes to build on this. We will see some super-efficient 'Combined heat and power' generators being installed in the city centre and domestic recycling rate will rise to 30% by 2010.

I hope that Birmingham City Council will work hard with the Government Office for the West Midlands to stop climate change to causing havoc to the residents of Birmingham.