Ruth Carruthers: Climate change tales
Global warming is more than just graphs and statistics.
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How many times have you seen a line that goes something like this: “The majority of scientists now agree that climate change is the single largest threat facing our planet”? Nearly every day I bet.
But I’ve decided it doesn’t matter what the scientists think any more - which is a slightly surprising statement for me to make as I’ve got a longstanding background in the subject. What should be said is: “The majority of people living in developing nations know for a fact that climate change is the single largest threat facing our planet.”
You can talk about ‘hockey stick graphs’ and ‘parts per million’ all you want but it doesn’t mean much to most. The real evidence comes in the form of stories not science. This is something I realised at the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen last month where I was a Climate Advocate for the British Council.
Walking along in search of food on the night we arrived, my friend and I were offered ‘soup on the street’ by a local café serving free broth to passers by. We were soon joined by three Nepalese mountaineers who also took advantage of this free snack. The obligatory question of “so, why are you here?” soon came up. Their answer was simple: “We are here because we notice so many changes in our mountains over recent years. This is proof of climate change. Leaders need to know this is happening.”
The next day at a British Council meeting, Mary Robinson (the former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) spoke about some of the ‘climate witnesses’ she has met at the summit through her work as Honourary President of Oxfam. One story that really stood out was that of a woman called Caroline from Mali in West Africa. Caroline’s village is suffering the effects of the changing climate so much that woman are selling their bodies as a means of survival. But Caroline is disappointed she can’t do that because she is HIV positive. “How low can you go?” asked Mary Robinson.
At the same meeting, a young Indonesian guy called Ibnu Najib stood before us in a traditional Batik-style shirt. Najib explained that the traditional art of making Batik cloth is under threat from climate change because the plants that they obtain their dyes from can no longer survive. Subsequently, their traditional art is fading away.
Although not as shocking as the others, this is the story that surprised me the most. I usually think of people producing art in response to climate change, not losing it. Sure Najib and his family are not starving or sinking, yet, but the loss of cultural identity for them is equally heartbreaking.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard such stories but meeting these people and listening to their tales in person has altogether made me question the evidence on which I base my climate opinions.
To me, these stories say it all, and they are evidence not only of climate change in action, but above all that we need a human approach to climate change not just a scientific one.
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Climate change tales (text) by Ruth Carruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (3)
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we're in the shit and science is only telling us whether that's to a greater or lesser extent!
It is true, I think that perhaps people switch off to the threat of climate change due to not being able to digest the science which is presented to them. Children for sure cannot understand the majority of statistics/numbers and whilst individuals may not be able to relate directly to personal stories like those in this article they are circumstances/situations that are easy to understand for all.
There should be an intiative to better broadcast or reveal this 'human approach' to climate change especially to those far removed from the already noticable affects.
Ideas anyone?