Tomorrow, politicians, scientists and campaigners from around the world will meet in Copenhagen for landmark talks, aimed at resulting in a global deal on Climate Change. 

I’m not qualified to get into the science, however I’d like to ponder why we don’t care more, and do more about this important subject.  Here are a few ideas which you may not hear being put forward over the coming few days.  I’m sure that there are hundreds of possible theories.  Here are seven;

1)  We don’t care more because we don’t care about each other. We are brought up to be afraid of strangers and not formally disillusioned of the myth that ‘they’ are dangerous. We don’t grow up connecting with people in other countries, so when we are told of their plight, we find it difficult to get our heads around this.  Modern languages are now optional in schools, which adds to how disconnected we and our children are from the rest of the world.  We don’t have enough substantial global networks, so we rely too much on politicians to represent us.

2)  We don’t care more because we don’t care about our descendants.  We don’t care about our ancestors either.  We are not able to imagine where we come from or what will happen to our genes.  We know that the people who will pay the price for our mistakes are our grandchildren and their grandchildren, yet we find this too difficult and abstract to imagine.

3) We think that ‘change’ sounds exciting.  Any business guru worth their pinch of salt will tell you that we must embrace and accept change.  This is of course nonsense.  If we were talking about Nature’s Destruction or Global Pollution, we would not feel as if this was something to accept. 

4)  Global Warming, when you’re based in a cold and wet country, risks sounding attractive.  This may not be as flippant as it sounds.  Names are important.  Some might care more if they were taking a stand against Global Wetting.   

4)  Too many spokespeople are ‘posh’.  George Bernard Shaw said that “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him”.  In Britain, we confuse conversations about class with conversations about accent.  I have been in enough situations to suspect that millions of our fine country take an instant dislike to what might be called ‘posh’ accents.  Although this might be annoying and a great shame, it is true.  Until we have role models with a wider range of regional accents, this dislike will too often be connected with the substance of the conversation itself.

5)  We have become suspicious of politicians and, recently, scientists.  We tend to be sceptical of anything they say, and as long as they are seen to be the main spokespeople for any movement, we will not buy into it.

6) We don’t care because we don’t understand what’s in it for us.  We must continue to underline how a certain type of food actually tastes better rather than the fact that it is better for the earth.  Similarly, saving money will matter more to many families than saving energy.  We must inspire people to make changes which they will personally benefit from and this benefit must be clear.  The motivating force cannot be penance or guilt. 

7)  We don’t know who to agree with or ‘believe’. The democratisation of voice, the idea that anyone can share their view, brings many benefits.  One risk is that we confuse volume with authority.  We begin to agree with people who quite literally don’t know what they are talking about.  As objects in the mirror may appear closer than they appear, so sources of information closest to us may appear louder, or more authoritative then they really are.  So the verdict of a global panel of scientists can be overturned by a single attention-seeking journalist, or indeed blogger.

So, I suggest;

1) More programmes to connect schools globally.  Gemin-i (with whom I am working) is a great example.

2) ‘Stranger Safety’ schemes to integrate communities and undo the unwitting damage of Stranger Danger thinking.

3) More airtime to genealogy enthusiasts, with a moment to imagine the future of families.

4) A concerted avoidance of phrases with ‘change’ and ‘warming’, replaced by ‘pollution’.

5) More lead spokespeople who are neither ‘posh’ nor ‘politicians’

6) More explanation of the personal benefits of anything being introduced

7) A clearer representation of the weight of certain opinions, as opposed to the relative flimsiness of others. 

Regardless of the science or the overall temperature, it seems to me that we humans are killing our planet.   I hope it’s useful to think about why, in the hope that some solutions may come from a proper understanding of the causes, not just the symptoms. 

I’d welcome your thoughts! 

 

My most memorable phone call came when I was thirteen years old.  I was home alone, my parents were out. At the other end of the line, I was surprised and nervous to hear the voice of my headmaster, calling me Oliver.  He had received some news from a secondary school in Berkshire to which I had recently applied.  I had won a scholarship.   I was surprised and over the moon. If I’m honest, Mr Graham sounded pretty surprised too.  Excited and still feeling nervous, I scribbled a note to mum and dad (mobile phones were still a few years away), and went to bed, only to be woken by a couple of rather excited adults a few hours later.

My most memorable email arrived on the 17th of October just last year, at twenty past eight in the evening.  I was sitting in the Village Tandoori in Clapham with Verity, and I certainly shouldn’t have been checking my Blackberry.  It was from Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo.  At one minute past nine that morning, I had written to him about Make Your Mark with a Tenner, the scheme I had started a couple of years previously. It was a long shot, but we were a hundred and fifty thouand pounds short, for a challenge we wanted to launch the following January.  Over Cobra and poppadoms, an email arrived.  A red light flashed.  He said yes, to the full amount.

Messages can be memorable because they are unexpected, or because they bear especially good (or bad) news.  They can surprise us when they come from unexpected people, or in unexpected ways.  So imagine my surprise, when just over a fortnight ago, I received a message from none other than Sarah Brown, wife of the British Prime Minister.  Stranger still, the message arrived not on embossed notepaper, nor by secure phonecall, but via Twitter, the social networking site.  Now, it is well known that Sarah, a supporter of the Million Mums campaign, is an avid Tweeter, and has risen to become one of its most followed users in the UK.  But could this really be her, by direct message, asking for my address, because she wanted to send me something? 

A quick phone call to a colleague in Whitehall confirmed that yes, this was indeed the case, and I should pass on my details worthwith.  Which is why this evening I am to attend a thoroughly modern gathering for a new and connected era;  A Downing Tweet Christmas Party.  My friend and colleague Holly Shaw, who I met through Channel 4’s Battlefront will be there and I’ve already discovered several others from around the UK who will be meeting at Number 10 to raise a glass to the Million Mums campaign.  I’m looking forward to it.  I’ve even told my mother, who herself is one in a million.  I might call my old headmaster.  He’ll probably be surprised to hear from me.

A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square, the location of this morning’s Stone Club meeting, hosted by the inimitable and brilliant Carole Stone.  The question being discussed was whether or not technology is overwhelming us.  Our speaker was, Ian McCaig,  CEO of lastminute.com and the group proceeded to have a stimulating discussion over a delicious cooked breakfast. 

Over scrambled eggs, I confessed that, having replaced my Blackberry several weeks ago, I have not reactivated the email on it.  I can still access my webmail, I just don’t have the constant dripdripdrip of incoming messages.  Without doubt, this has been a blessing because I have enjoyed more books, newspaper articles, brainstormed ideas not to mention refreshing downtime as a result than I have in several years. 

One of the guests felt that the rise of the digital age was producing young people whose social skills suffer.  I disagree.  For years the UK has been churning out millions of repressed individuals who don’t know how to connect with each other. Through web technologies, relationships can be developed and people can discover their passions in life, including other people quicker and more easily.  Better still ,this can lead to face to face meetings.

Of course, as sure as a nightingale sang, someone slagged off Twitter.  This mildly annoys me as I compare it to someone slagging off mobile phones, which would be seen as a daft and grumpy comment. I encouraged them to see that Twitter, unlike email (portrayed as the villain of this morning’s piece), allows you to see only who you want to see.  It also encourages people to be brief, which is a blessing.  Many people use it to share links to things they find interesting, so it’s like a personalised news service, brought to you by some of the smartest people not only in your world, but also in the whole world.

Back when I were a lad, we used to be taught how to write letters.  We made sure that the address and the date were in the correct place and we knew when to sign off sincerely and when faithfully.  Yes sir, them were the days.  Today, we have tools (like email) which we are untrained to use.  I see trouble ahead.  Because one day soon,  we’ll have to admit that children need to be taught how to use email in the same way that their grandparents were taught to write letters and their parents weren’t taught to write anything .  This will be greeted by howls of derision and the politician involved will, sadly, have their head blown off by someone claiming, wrongly, that they are trying to replace History with Twitter.  In a world of information overload, if you don’t know how to get the most from search engines, email and, yes, Twitter, then you will drown a sea of information.  Ultimately, they are like essential fats or sleep.  A healthy balance is what we’re all after.  Too little or too much and we sometimes end up all at sea.

What is the future of news?  I don’t know, do you?  What I do know is that for my daily junk, I don’t especially mind who it comes from and I’m not inclined to pay for it.  At the fine dining end of the spectrum,  if Daniel Finkelstein, Matthew Parris, Charles Moore and Andrew Davidson would like to form a quality journalism publishing  skunkworks, I will happily pay the four of  them ten pounds a month to read everything they have to say about anything they care to write about, if that allows them to write more often. 

Speaking of fine dining, over on Comment Central, and inspired by this excellent list from the New York Times, Hattie Garlick wants to know what your pet peeves are about restaurants.  I’ve given her eight of mine to be getting on with.  For some reason, the memory of my six months going through Disney’s training process in Florida lingers on…