Combating the climate crisis through community

how many of you

have heard the story of the beach

covered by starfish

so the story goes that one day after

high tide

thousands of starfish have been washed

up on the beach and they’re all starting

to die

one young woman goes down to the beach

picks up a starfish

and puts it back in the ocean then she

grabs another

throwing it back to the waves time

passes

and she returns starfish after starfish

to the ocean

but the beach is miles long and she’s

barely even

cleared the area around herself a

bemused passerby

stops her and says why are you doing

this

there are thousands of starfish here you

can’t save them all

what difference can you make in reply

the woman picks up another starfish

throws it into the sea

and she says i made a difference

to that one

i love this story it’s a great fable

about the importance of taking

individual responsibility

and the impact that we can have by doing

our bit to make the world a better place

and we

know that the problems society face

today the climate crisis

systemic racism a global pandemic

they’re huge and we live in a society

which stresses the importance of

individual actions

and it’s true we all need to do our bit

reduce our carbon footprint challenge

racism when we see it

hands face space but i don’t know about

you

but sometimes i can’t help but agree

with the passerby

some of the global challenges that we

face are just too huge to be overcome

by any one individual

but i wonder how different

would that story have been if the young

woman had persuaded the passer boy

by to join her they could have saved

twice as many starfish

better yet what if she’d gone back to

the nearby town and persuaded

others in her community to do the same

well they could have cleared the whole

beach

and that’s the power of individual

actions when they take place

in the context of community and in fact

we don’t need to write a new fable to

demonstrate this

power of community there are real life

examples

let me paint a picture for you so cast

your mind back

to the starfish beach but instead of

starfish scattered across

the sand imagine plastic and garbage

and instead of an idyllic scattering

imagine

that in some places the garbage is five

and a half

feet deep this is versova beach

in mumbai in 2015.

and i don’t know about you but when i

hear stories like this

i feel a weight in my stomach because of

the seemingly irreversible damage

humans are doing to our environment

but a young lawyer moved to the area

at about the same time in 2015 and

similarly shocked

by the devastation set about clearing up

the beach

but when he realized he couldn’t do it

alone unlike the young woman

he went and gathered volunteers from his

community to come and help

and over two years together they

recovered the beach

and now it’s an area of natural beauty

benefiting the community

making the seemingly impossible possible

that’s the power of community action

because the truth is that individual

actions are most

powerful when they happen in the context

of community

i’m part of a community called people

power and we’re a collective

whose mission is to make the planet a

more sustainable place

and we recognize that tackling problems

such as the climate crisis

is only possible in the context of

community

i’m going to share with you three

elements of community

that i’ve picked up on through my work

with people power that can help us

face global challenges empowerment

influence and resilience

and i’m also going to share with you

what i think

is the secret ingredient that underlies

every successful community

hopefully by the end i will have

persuaded you that you should join

forces with your community to save your

starfish

and the environment that they live in

so firstly empowerment well making

choices for the lofty purpose of

tackling global challenges

like the climate crisis can feel futile

like a single drop of water in the ocean

and that can have really negative

effects on our psyche

in fact a national yougov poll last year

showed that 70 of young people

experience anxiety about climate change

but engaging in community has been shown

to reduce

anxiety and in a diverse setting it

increases the motivation people have

to learn about and act to prevent

climate change

and this makes sense if you think about

it because humans are social animals

which of you doesn’t run faster or

longer

because you have someone running beside

you

we can empower and be empowered by those

around us

because we’re made to feel less alone

and because we can learn from each other

so one example from my life

is when my husband and i decided to

reduce the meat content of our diet

and we did this because about 15 percent

of global greenhouse gas emissions comes

from meat and dairy

to put that in more context a typical

barbecue

has the same carbon footprint as an

80-mile car journey

that’s 8-0 anyway so we became

flexitarian and it was a big change

to our diet we had to find new meals to

cook

experiment with meat alternatives and we

didn’t always remember or get it right

changing our habits was hard and this

isn’t specific to us forming new habits

as

individuals can take between half a

month

and nine months which is a long time

and it can be a dispiriting process and

i’m sure that you can appreciate that

if you like me have ever made a new

year’s resolution

that doesn’t last past january 9th

and that’s before you even take into

account the feeling of futility

that accompanies making an individual

change in the face of global catastrophe

but our community empowered us we have

friends who are also trying to improve

their sustainability

and some of whom were already vegetarian

or vegan

so we didn’t feel so alone and we also

shared ideas and approaches between

ourselves

like new meal ideas or the best places

to buy our favorite meat alternative

and that made things practically easier

as well

because we felt part of something

suddenly what as an

individual seemed like a drop of water

in the ocean in the context of community

became a tidal wave of change

one important caveat that i want to

mention

regarding empowerment is diversity

much of the empowerment we get from

community comes from this idea exchange

and this is most effective when the

ideas being exchanged are varied

coming from a variety of different

perspectives

so the usefulness of a community in

empowering us

is proportional to the diversity of the

perspectives

represented within it a slightly trite

demonstration of this might be

that if our friends had only been

recommending us meal ideas from one type

of cuisine say

french cuisine we might have quickly got

on board and it would have been harder

to maintain our motivation more

seriously

evidence shows that a lack of diversity

within a community

can prevent openness to learning about

the climate crisis

so to create truly empowering

communities

we must value and nurture diversity

now i quickly want to bring us back to

the starfish story at the beginning

was that young woman making the biggest

difference that she possibly could

well i would argue that no she wasn’t

because

she wasn’t harnessing the second power

of community that i want to discuss

the power of influence

making climate positive choices within

our communities

should be regenerative it shouldn’t stop

with us

by talking about our choices we can

influence the choices of those around us

gradually changing the cultural norm so

for example over the years my husband

and i have discussed our food

choices with friends and family not with

a bullhorn

on a street corner not overtly

evangelizing or anything

just chilled out conversations about our

choices

and the reasons for them and we’re

starting to see the effects of those

conversations

like ripples moving through our

communities

influencing the choices of those around

us

so for example this valentine’s day my

dad brought

a vegetarian wellington instead of a

beef wellington to celebrate

with my mum when my mom was telling me

about this

she said she thinks it is partly because

of the steady influence of our

flexitarianism

over the past few years despite the fact

that perhaps it would have been more

romantic if the meal hadn’t come out of

the packet

so it wasn’t the direct result of any

one thing

that i said or did but the drip drip of

my husband and i

and others within our community changing

our lifestyles to mitigate climate

change

is shifting the cultural norm in a

positive direction

and this makes it easier and more normal

for people like my dad

to make climate positive choices too

so let’s all talk to each other about

our climate positive choices

because it really does make a difference

the third element of community that we

can harness

to help us tackle global challenges is

resilience

now it’s no revelation to say that

communities have greater capacity than

individuals

but because of this communities are more

resilient to disruption

and as part of an empathic community we

can help

individuals to face and overcome

challenges

so for example in the run-up to the uk

lockdown the first uk lockdown

my now husband lost his living situation

he lost his home because his living

landlord was

seriously concerned about the additional

risk of infection

posed by living with a teacher who was

going in and out of school

luckily even but before my husband asked

for support

our church community offered him a place

to live

and this was hugely meaningful to him

practically of course because

he didn’t have to find a new place to

live both while teaching

and during a rising pandemic but also

emotionally

because he was made to feel welcome and

loved and valued

because he was lucky enough to be part

of an empathic

community the impact of disruption on

him

was significantly reduced compared to if

he had

faced the disruption alone

now i’m going to come on to that secret

ingredient that underlies

every successful community and i’ve

given you a couple of clues there

because i used the word

empathic a couple of times i think

an essential feature to a resilient

influential empowering community is

empathy so the church community for

example displayed empathy

by identifying the instability of

micah’s living situation

and the impact on him even before he was

evicted in fact

and then providing a solution

so let’s talk a bit more about what

empathy is

and the different components of it

empathy is to understand or to feel with

someone

and there are two components one is

cognitive empathy

and this is perspective taking or

empathy by thought

it involves logically putting yourself

in a person’s place

and thinking about the reasons behind

their actions

the other component is emotional empathy

and this is feeling the emotions

alongside someone

so say your friend is hurt and you feel

sad

not you feel sorry for them you feel sad

yourself because you’re

mirroring their emotion but there are

downsides to these two components if

they’re used

alone on their own cognitive empathy

can be used badly to manipulate people i

mean even torturers

have to use this type of empathy to

understand how their subject is going to

respond to a particular torture method

on the other hand emotional empathy on

its own has a bad side too

so in the example before if you got so

overwhelmed by that

empathic emotion of sadness at the your

your friend being hurt that you started

crying

and then your friend has to comfort you

even though they were the ones

who was originally hurt well then the

emotional empathy

hasn’t been useful at all because now

you just have two people who are upset

instead of one the best kind of empathy

combines these two component components

into compassionate empathy

compassionate empathy is understanding

someone’s perspective

and their emotions and then taking

action to help

and compassionate empathy is an

essential attribute of a supportive

community

idea exchange to help overcome barriers

to climate positive behavior change

is only effective if the community

involved

is sensitive to the particular situation

of each individual or group and then

gives personalized advice

so for example i have a friend who has a

disorder

unfortunately that results in iron

deficiency

and she’s under doctor’s orders to eat

red meat

twice a week if i tried to persuade her

to become vegetarian to reduce her

carbon footprint

but was not empathic to her particular

challenges

then i would alienate her instead of

empowering her

i mean who among us would change their

behavior at the urging of someone who

doesn’t seem to be listening to us or

interested in our particular situation

so compassionate empathy really is an

underlying

principle of every successful community

so what does all of this mean for you

when thinking about making a difference

to the climate crisis

well yes absolutely make those

individual climate positive choices

reduce your meat consumption set up a

compost buy a bike

take personal responsibility

but just don’t stop there go further

engage with your communities maybe you

do want to do something like

joining an environmental community like

people power

but for a lot of us engaging with our

community can just mean

talking with and sharing ideas with our

friends and families

about our climate positive choices and

supporting them to make their own

climate positive choices

but we need to do all of this with

empathy

so that we can reach a greener future

faster together

thank you for listening