Finding hope from the climate change talks.

I have to confess I'm not a great climate change activist. It's not that I don't care, I absolutely do. It's just that like so many people, when faced with the relentless juggernaut of global warming, I often feel overwhelmed and unable to act.

As the recent floods in Cumbria have shown, climate change affects all of us, and yet it often feels difficult to work out what I, as an individual can do. On the plus side I am a vegetarian, I live in a city where it's easy to walk, cycle, use the bus and I often do. I haven't flown in eighteen years, though that's more due to money and circumstance than choice. On the negative side, I live in a Western economy that continues to base its existence on fossil fuels. Since I've started working from home, I've found myself using the car more often. Next month, I'll fly for the first time since 1997, and even though I've had all that time without flying, in the previous decades I did my fair share. Every positive step I take to reduce my carbon emissions often feels negated by another choice which creates even more.

Even though I try to do my bit, I'm always aware that there is so much more I could be doing. And that's compounded by having read one too many articles and books that tell me all the negative stuff without giving me a sense of how we might stop global warming, or if we can't do that, how we might survive it well. All of which often makes me want to put my head in the sand and ignore the whole subject, particularly as I won't be around in fifty years time.

So I'm very grateful to all those who have travelled to Paris in the last fortnight to put pressure on world leaders to get a deal at the climate change talks.  Friends like Ellen Teague who wrote a series of wonderful blogs whilst she was there. Friends like Zoe Broughton who has been filming activists in action. Friends like Milan Rai and Emily Johns who have cycled with a group from Hastings to be part of the protests. Friends who've inspired me to think, what can I do?

Knowing so many people have gone to Paris has given me a sense of hope I haven't felt in a long while. Because people coming together and caring about an issue makes me feel it isn't impossible to change things - that something can be done.  

Though I'm always wary of whether such talks can achieve anything, I do have a little glimmer of optimism today. Listening to the Jeremy Vine Show yesterday, for the first time ever, on a mainstream radio show,  I heard the voices of people affected by climate change in the Marshall Islands and elsewhere. And it came with an acknowledgement that, yes, we have a responsibility to Bangladesh because our emissions are causing their floods. That, yes, there is a powerful case for the worst offenders compensating the people most badly affected.

As I write, the talks are still continuing, and with powerful countries like the USA still resisting calls from others for compensation, there's no guarantee of success.  Yet, I do feel whatever happens something has changed, if not in the world, in me.

Because today, I know that I need to do more than I have done, that I need to be part of the solution rather than the problem. My personal contributions may be tiny but they are definitely worth doing. As my favourite  author, David Mitchell, puts it,

'My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?'

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© Virginia Moffatt is Chief Operating Officer of Ekklesia