On board we have many discussions on climate change and what responses might be globally needed to mitigate its dramatic development. We also have more formal lectures, which are a great way to spark debate.
Simon Boxall and the team of scientist spoke about the facts behind the science of climate change and illustrated the scientific experiments that are going to take place in the next 10 days to measure the currents and the composition of the sea bed…
Today after lunch Sunand Prasad, Joe Smith and myself did a presentation about what can be done to reduce the impacts of climate change, and focused on the environmental impact of the building sector which, in the UK only, is responsible for approx one third of the entire carbon emissions of the country. The fact is that we know how to design very efficient buildings that emit almost zero emissions; technology is there; people demand greener and healthier buildings… so why is it happening so slow?
We drew an interesting comparison between the social changes required to mitigate climate change to those that occurred at the time of the abolition of slavery, in which social structure need to be fundamentally shaken up to allow change to take place. I spoke about the top ten easy things that we can do with minimum effort to respond to the challenges of global warming, starting from the affirmation that ‘yes, we can do something!’ and challenged the widespread though that the scale of the problem is too big for the individual to be effective. What a lazy and negative thought! I believe that we can all play a fundamental role in combating climate change and in reducing the associated social and economic tensions. As citizens we have a huge power to influence how the world is going, locally and globally. We have the power to vote and choose who best represents our ideas and values. It is up to us to make the difference.
