Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskSpot is a bright yellow robotic dog designed by Boston Dynamics, an American engineering firm, and deployed at a remote natural-gas-pumping station in the middle of a desert by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-controlled oil giant. It is not a great place for a human being to hang out: in addition to the sand whipped up by the unobstructed winds, there is blistering sunshine and nothing to drink or eat for miles around.
The result is that big corporations, at least, are talking about climate change, giving thought to how it affects their operations and planning how to adapt. The main answer to the deluges is the “super-sewer”, as Londoners have dubbed it, a seven-metre-wide, 24km-long tunnel that Thames will manage when it is completed in 2024. The £4.9bn tube, which stretches across the city from west to east, will act as a vast overflow drain when cloudbursts overwhelm the normal sewer system. All the company’s sewage plants and pumping stations have been assessed to judge whether they, too, are at risk of flooding.