Why I’m going to Copenhagen

I’m going to the COP15 talks because I’m fed up with being depressed about climate change.  It started in my master’s degree. Everyone at some point got what we called the ‘greens’, a dip in mood that could last for a month at a time, as just what humanity is capable of doing to the planet hit home.  For me the trigger was reading Clive Ponting’s ‘Green history of the world’, with its lists of lost species and poisoned landscapes.  The evidence that human nature is suited to the challenge of recognising and dealing with mass environmental change is patchy at best. 

Modern science helps, of course. We’re better able to describe and understand long term patterns than ever before.  But the most intractable environmental issues are really social – science can reveal truth and still fail to change destiny.  We need to understand how people use science to get some traction on issues like climate change, which is complicated because it affects the planet as a whole. 

It’s so complicated enough I’ve not often had much hope in the last decade that we’d pull it off, and have concentrated on researching adaptation and what underwrites our ability to work together to deal with the consequences of change.  There’s plenty of evidence that the shape of the social relationships we can fall back on matter – they affect real outcomes. We can also learn from examples of whole societies pulling back from the brink of destruction because enough people were willing to look at what the consequences of current trends and work for alternatives – South Africa in the 1980s for example.

So I’m giving up gloom, or at least going into remission.  These talks are a real chance to agree the foundation for a securer future for all of us.  With the mass of activists, citizens and representatives of interest groups holding their own events alongside the main talks, they’re also an opportunity to build relationships.  My research shows me that you never know when you might need those.  If the talks don’t work, at least the talking might.