Climate Breakdown
I’d like to start by admitting that I am not a vegan.
I have been on many airplanes.
I have had two children (on purpose).
I am complicit in the climate change we see happening around us. Climate change is a peculiar and specific challenge within science communication, because we are all complicit. We are all causing it in some way or another. Its uncomfortable. And, yes, we can all make some personal tweaks which may ease our guilt. However, trying to solve a global problem with individual actions feels like trying to dig a hole in the sea.
The solutions to this crisis are not going to be primarily about individuals making lifestyle tweaks. Middle class people agonising over whether they should use almond milk in their lattes is not going to save us. The latest IPCC report comes as close as a scientific report can come, to screaming and banging its head on the wall.
Here are two quotes from the press release:
‘The report highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70–90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.’
‘Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would require rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’
The report itself uses even drier language, giving levels of confidence for each statement and trying to appeal to policy makers through numbers and the sheer weight of scientific expertise which has gone into it, but what it boils down to is this: we need change. We need big, radical change and we need it now.
When I brought the IPCC report to my MP it was the first time she had seen it. She and her assistant talked about plastic straws and about Labour’s anti-fracking policy. She is tied up with Brexit. No one had ever come to her about climate change before. Politicians and policy makers need to know we care about this. The conversation needs to change. For some, it just needs to start.
And perhaps it will; Extinction Rebellion, a newly formed climate activist group, are changing the rhetoric. Climate breakdown and climate catastrophe rather than climate change. Human extinction rather than sad polar bears. Civil disobedience rather than quiet internal panic.
I went to an act of mass civil disobedience organised by Extinction Rebellion on Saturday and helped block one of five London bridges. I am not the sort of person who usually does things like this. I don’t fit the profile — I’m a middle-aged mum of two, a science graduate, a former primary teacher and now a university lecturer. I’m not comfortable with conflict; when I was a teenager I had a Saturday job where everyone got my name wrong — I never corrected them, and answered to Elizabeth for three years. I’m not a disobedient person. I arrived at the protest 20 minutes early, because being late for anything makes me nervous.
The other protesters were a wide mix of people too — families with children, pensioners and farmers, students and clergy. I saw quite a few people eating milk chocolate, so I’m not the only non-vegan who cares. We all need to be able to protest about this. We need to be able to demand change from those who govern us. Not everyone has it in them to be arrested for their convictions, I’m not sure I do, but I stand with the Extinction Rebellion.
