Following a busy and action-packed week of climate activity in schools, businesses, communities and in our own office, our Deputy CEO reflects on why she feels it is so important we remain positive and believe that we can have a positive impact combatting climate change and restoring nature.
As I reflect on Scotland’s Climate Week, the overriding message that I believe is important for us all to take away is that we must be positive about the future.
The benefits to the world that will come as part of our transition to a carbon neutral, net zero emissions world are immense. They will include benefits to people as well as protected and enhanced nature and an improved environment.
It is easy to be overwhelmed by the negative side of climate change – the doom and gloom about how things aren’t possible. The fear that our ambitious climate change targets are not possible for us to meet and that niggling feeling that most people don’t care anyway. But if we focus on these negatives, then we really won’t save ourselves and our planet from the catastrophe that will come if we do nothing. While it is so much easier to put up defences, to say no to change and to declare that things aren’t possible, we know that no innovator or change maker ever did that.
The most forward-thinking and positive of minds will certainly carve out a way to thrive as they seize the opportunities presented by the transition to a net zero and nature positive Scotland.
What a lot of us fail to recognise is that the planet is our life support system.
We need it. It does not need us. We take from it every day. But, the big problem is that we don’t give enough, if anything back. As a result, our support system is failing.
Relationships where you do all the giving and get nothing back in return fail. The giver eventually stops giving. I believe that is what is happening to our planet – both in terms of its changing climate and the devastating reduction in its natural environment, biodiversity and eco-systems upon which we ultimately rely. We have taken too much without giving back. Now it is time to change the balance - to work as a team with our world.
Approaching challenges in a positive way creates the right mindset for change and if we all take this approach, then perhaps the collective momentum that is created will make a big difference.
In an event I was chairing during Scotland’s Climate Week, Lorna Slater, our Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity, set out a passionate and positive vision for the future in a net zero nation with a thriving natural environment. This can only be achieved if we all actively get involved, starting by understanding more about what is going on, what the impacts are, what we can all do about it. Most importantly we all need to understand the crucial importance of living a little bit differently and being more respectful to our planet right now.
We don’t have time to procrastinate, put up barriers, make excuses and resist change, we must think positively and find ways to live in a way that shifts from us taking less from our planet to one where we give back equally, if not more.
That’s my idea of a good relationship and a positive one at that.
If you want to find out more about climate change, bust the myths and hear how you can take action to make our world a better place, check out our quarterly Climate Emergency Training and make a choice to sign up today.
