Thanks for replying, and completely agree with your comments. I used to engage often with those who denied climate issues, but they’ve become fewer and probably happy where they are. On the other end of the spectrum, I converse with the scientists and authors and writers like myself, who puzzle at why we are not doing all that we can and urgently; on a war footing is the term often used. It’s the bulk of people in between that I’m hoping to reach, busy with life, and maybe not sure what to do, perhaps reluctant to ask questions. Appealing to the masses and being viral on social media is all somewhat beyond me, but under the Climate Reality Project, we are asked to perform acts of leadership, even if it’s just to get people talking. I also volunteer as a mental health first aider and climate anxiety, especially amongst the young, is a rapidly growing problem. Thanks again.
To me western gov’ts won’t do anything until it affects economic performance and thus their ability to stay in power (or rather until they realise it is already doing so). Sorry to be cynical but I have spent 40+ years working in this field and now it seems we are going backwards, not forwards. There was a lot of “people” interest in 70’s and 80’s including massive people protests, that led to changes and some good measures. The first green parties appeared, 1982 UN conference sparked all sors of things, there is a long long list of positive changes. Many since abandoned.
Global earth day, which came out of huge protests in 1970, has just celebrated its 50th anniversary……
Perhaps looking at the history might be useful to show a way forward, rather than repeating failures.
Hi Hutan and welcome to SF
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My personal view is that we need a complete, radical change of the system. What we have now isn’t democratic, and I’m appalled at what they get away with.
Thanks, Graham, that’s much better.
And at EU level - see
I’ve had a similar engagement Jane but when I introspect honestly I don’t find cynicism. You have to be realistic, of course - humanity, and many other species, are in a hell of a mess. But I feel there is hope. Voting for green parties is on the increase all over the world - most are still small, of course, but other left parties are increasingly incorporating green ideas into their own programmes (I know many French environmentalists last time felt that Mélenchon’s programme was actually ‘greener’ than Jadot’s).
I also feel younger people are much more aware and inclined to activism than older generations - my kids’ friends and other young adults I come across here in France I find deeply impressive in all sorts of ways - much more so than I have found other age groups most of my life.
It’s true we are heading for a crisis - as Hutan says ‘we need a complete, radical change of the system’ - I think it could go either way - but I do feel hopeful. Maybe I’m just a ‘glass half full’ person!
I’ve seen a lot of crises in my life, during two careers, although nothing as serious as what we are in now. I do know that sticking with it and doing everything we can will bring us through. That doesn’t mean that people, and all living creatures, won’t suffer and some/many may die, but the alternative is what? To do nothing and accept.
Geoff is right with regards to the youth, which is now a huge movement growing all the time. They merit our support.
Governments, the fossil fuel industry, big businesses and we, as individuals just need to be persuaded to make changes. We already have most of the technology, and the rest will follow soon. Some of it isn’t yet perfect, but there’s no need to keep debating it, it’s better than we what are doing at the moment and it will get better. And, very importantly, there will be jobs, growth and a better economy to be had by making these choices.
I know a few really, really impressive young people. Focused, energetic committed and just wonderfully thoughtful. Sadly when I look at our village and little town their numbers are dwarfed by the young people who are exactly not that. There was not a single vote for for the greens in the presidential election in our commune.
Maybe proportions are different in towns, but there of course you have the disenfranchised young people who struggle to survive, let alone care about the survival of the planet.
Hutan, I see that you’ve joined the pseudo religious cult run by Al Gore, the blokes a complete charlatan. You need to some more facts on the other side of the argument and read something like ‘CLIMATE CHANGE : THE FACTS’ edited by Alan Moran. There has always been “climate” ever since the earth was formed and there are definable cycles of heating and cooling and there’s nothing man-made about it, more to the point nothing you can do about it.
My guess is you won’t find any ‘facts’ in that book Lawrence. It’s actually by the Institute of Public Affairs (Australia) - a notorious extreme right-wing lobby group funded by dirty industries (the Murdochs, of course, plus tobacco, oil and gas, forestry, mining, pesticides/genetically modified organisms, etc.).
Alan Moran is not a scientist, let alone a climate scientist, he is an English motor industry market analyst turned Australian policy wonk, noted principally for advocating in September 2005 using Australia as a dump for global nuclear waste, now just an employee of said Institute of Public Affairs (Australia).
Don’t fall for it - the truth is almost all proper, peer-reviewed climate scientists agree about human driven climate breakdown:
As the BBC and other left-wing media outlets consider that the “science” is proved beyond any doubt, they can corporately ban any discussion of other possibilities - their version of “free-speech”.
But there is another well documented side to the story.
Try this for a start.
Thanks for the reply, Lawrence. I agree that there’s a natural warming and cooling of the planet, volcanoes, as an example, do it all the time. The problem is that the current rate of warming is far beyond anything we have ever seen, and we will not have the capacity to adapt to these changes if we do not slow it down. If this accelerated warming started from when we started burning fossil fuels, then there’s lots we can do about it.
Thanks for the book recommendation. My own suggestion would be The New Climate War by Michael Mann who is a distinguished climate scientist. His book describes the tactics of the fossil fuel industry to deny, divert and deflect us away from what is happening, often by dividing us, all in the interests of selling more oil, coal and gas. And, I’m not knocking that industry for their business plan, even though their own scientists revealed a long time ago that it was detrimental to our health, but now is the time to make changes.
I am amazed you consider the BBC left-wing, but I suppose in the far-right environment of mainstream UK politics that is how they seem.
Seen from France they have a centrist/paternalist mild-right line.
A sign that the BBC are reasonably in the centre is the way both left and right think they support the opposite side. 
Naturally individual reporters will have their own views that sometimes slip through a little.
Oh dear, another thread muted.
The problem with climate change is that getting it wrong means that the Earth turns into something which looks more like Venus.
Climate is a complex system which we don’t fully understand (so messing with the controls is inadvisable), it is also “metastable” - which means that there are stable conditions which can withstand some changes in the inputs but push it too far and it will “flip” into another stable state.
Take water vapour for example, it’s a greenhouse gas BTW which is part of the point I want to make.
While the atmosphere is cool, water vapour condenses (clouds and rain) which is, obviously, good. Clouds reflect some of the Sun’s heat so even though H2O is a greenhouse gas it can offset some of its own effect.
But push the atmosphere too much - I think around 50°C is the tipping point and it does not condense, there’s no rain and you just get the greenhouse gas effect causing a runaway increase in temperature which, um, boils the oceans dry.
Blimey - you guys are really digging them up now!
Climate Resistance (dot.org!) is not an organisation - it’s the obscure blog of Ben Pile, again not a climate scientist, or any other kind of scientist - but another far-right politico. He was a paid researcher of former UKIP MEP and climate science denier, Godfrey Bloom (another - non-scientist - in fact a former army officer and investment banker, known mainly for assaulting a reporter who asked him about sexism in UKIP, after he referred to a group of women as ‘sluts’).
Pile also spoke at UKIP events. and was a regular contributor to articles by the late Telegraph climate science denial columnist, Christopher Booker. Now he writes for Spiked - funded by the notorious Koch brothers (a study by Yale University published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined over 20 years of data and found that ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers have been key actors in funding the distribution of climate change disinformation).
I’m appreciating everyone who has voted on the poll, please keep it coming, it helps.