The innocence of children. It is something to cherish. Their wonderment at the world around them is a tonic. Rosie is now 10. She’s like a sponge for knowledge. She’s switched on. She’s aware of climate change and biodiversity loss. But she is not yet aware of the frightening extent of both of these. And why should she be?

I’ve just done one of the Mott MacDonald training courses on climate change. At the end it encourages us to make a public personal commitment to what we will be doing to address this existential issue.

My personal commitment is at two levels.

Most importantly is to continue to try and be an upstander and not a bystander in calling for system change. This is about questioning and challenging aspects of the current system that (with willful intent or not) are putting power and profit before people and planet. Questioning and challenging can at times be controversial, uncomfortable and make one feel vulnerable. But it is necessary. I can only imagine the emotions and sense of great risk felt by braver souls than me who are compelled to more actively protest in exasperation at a system (and its custodians) that is resistant to change and at the greenwash and subterfuge.

My other commitment is a personal one. Before the COVID-19 pandemic I travelled internationally, regularly, and usually by plane. A year of paying carbon offsets for my travel has not absolved me of my guilt, any more than the UK can absolve itself of its past contribution to global emissions. However, as we are reminded – we cannot change the past but we can change the future. I am now committed in my working life, where at all possible, to no longer travelling intercontinentally, or travelling at all where this would require plane travel. I am committed to only eating vegetarian and vegan food wherever possible. I am still a car owner but my annual mileage has reduced massively.

I know I could and should do much more. I wonder at what conversations I will have with Rosie when she is older. Will she be angry with me and my generation for our spineless subservience to a capitalist system in which consumption and growth were revered, in which billionaires got ever richer while other parts of society struggled to survive? Will she wonder at why I didn’t do more personally? Or might she just thank me for playing a small part in a society that has been changing for the better and in which climate change is addressed in force and with hope?

Each of us must judge for ourselves how we are prepared to change and how far we are prepared to go to help tackle climate change.

I look forward to learning of the commitments others are making.

#climatechange#climateemergency#behaviourchange#systemschange