The Decade of Do

The noughties saw a major global attitude shift on climate change. Will the next decade herald the turning point for action?

At the turn of the millenium I was a carefree(-ish) student, whose thoughts on climate change were – like many people's – limited to occasional, brief ponderings on how it would be lovely to have warmer weather. Fast forward ten years and I now believe it to be the most significant and most urgent threat to human wellbeing, with the subject rarely far from my mind. I am not alone. In the last ten years humanity has gone from generally ignoring the problem of climate change to believing their governments should be doing more to tackle it. I'm currently on a six month trip through Russia and Asia, talking to real people about climate change. The vast majority of people I speak to know it will be a huge problem for their country but haven't yet converted this knowledge into action.

The noughties were all about awareness raising on climate change. Helped along by devastating natural disasters like the Southeast Asian Tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, environmental campaigns pushed this most urgent of environmental problems into the consciousness of most of the world's 6.7 billion people. The major efforts of the decade, like 2007's Live Earth concert, focussed on getting people to accept that there is a problem. But this is just the first step of the twelve step plan for society to wean itself from its suicidal fossil fuel addiction.

Politics, as usual, followed suit and we heard much grand rhetoric proclaiming the urgent need for action but saw very little in the way of follow through. Long before December's Copenhagen climate change summit it became painfully clear that the meeting was to belong very much to the old decade of talk and not what I hope will be the coming 'Decade of Do'.

To have any hope of success, environmentalists must use the next ten years to achieve that most tricky of alchemies – converting attitude into behaviour. Movements like Age of Stupid director Franny Armstrong's 10:10 campaign to get the UK to reduce its emissions by 10 per cent during 2010 offer us a glimpse of the future. The Do Lectures, a sort of cooler younger brother of the influential TED talks, which started last year to inspire millions of people to make good things happen fast, is another sign of things to come.

If we want the next decade to be defined by action on climate change, rather than being lost to more talk, we must start with ourselves. Every action counts because with them we create and change the social norms that shape the behaviour of society on the macro scale but we need to accept that big change needs big actions as well as little ones. It requires us to take more personal responsibility for our behaviour. It demands that we drag ourselves out of the collective mindset of the selfish teenager and into adulthood, where we consider the wellbeing of others as well as our own when making decisions. It means we have to stop making excuses for ourselves. Do you really need to take that flight? Is eating meat every day really that important to you? Can you afford that solar heating system by making a saving elsewhere? There are no excuses any more. We all know what we are supposed to be doing now … all that's left is to do it.

Yan Li - Beijing, China

Almost all of the people Climate Stories talks to are lay people with no particular interest in or knowledge about climate change. However, Yan Li, who has been working as a climate change campaigner for Greenpeace China for two years has some very important things to say about what climate change really means for China.

Yan Li says that China will be one of the countries worst affected by climate change. It's already triggered droughts in the North but flash floods and typhoons in the South. These extreme weather events are set to get much worse. Most projections now foretell a bleak water situation for China. No water means no development so it's the hottest issue.

Most people in Beijing don't realise it yet but their water supply is severely under threat right now. The reservoir that keeps the capital in fresh water is now at a quarter of its usual capacity. It used to be open to the public to visit but now people are kept away so they can't see how bad the situation has become. There's a huge contrast between the situation in the big cities in China and rural life. Yan Li illustrates this with the example of the wealthy city of Guangzhou where the people have everything they want and the surrounding countryside, where the people have no water and are very worried about their futures.

Heavy rain of 100-200mm an hour of rain is common in some of the Southern parts of the country but Xinjiang has had no rain, especially in the Gobi region. Yan met some people there who had no need for a roof on their house because it never rained. In some areas though climate change is improving people's lives. It has brought rain to previously arid areas, so more food can now be grown. Ultimately though, everyone will be worse off as the productivity of China's land declines overall.

Yan Li was disappointed when China's target to produce 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010 was downgraded to non-fossil fuel sources. However she tells me there are other more encouraging signs that China's leaders are taking the issue seriously. Greenpeace are pushing for the environmental cost of coal to be included in coal pricing by way of a carbon tax and the government are currently holding an online debate about it.

The government are also investing in the development of the as yet mythical carbon capture and storage technology, as well as carbon labelling but Yan Li isn't convinced how effective either will be. There is apparently evidence that people here are prepared to pay more for environmental products though.

Greenpeace are currently planning a 'virtual march' through China to raise awareness of climate change. At the moment though Chinese people don't understand what civil society or campaigns really mean for them. The first NGO, an environmental education charity called Friends of Nature, was established in China only in 1994 and there are many restrictions on such organisations here. It's a big dream for her that one day there will be a big movement of people in China on environmental issues.

With water linking climate change with food security, poverty, health and development, Yan Li believes climate change should be a much bigger issue in the minds of every Chinese person. The time to think small is over.