Can we rise above a warming planet? Climate change, democracy and human nature

If you tried to design a human problem to be as difficult as possible to solve, it would probably look a lot like climate change. Demanding agreement and co-ordinated action at all levels from the global to the individual, raising questions about the responsibilities of the rich to the poor and of the living to generations yet unborn, exposing the limits to our ability to imagine the consequences of our actions, climate change tempts some to suggest that it’s too much of a challenge for human nature and democracy. That is overly dramatic, but our social and political responses to climate change are as important as our technological responses, and they need the same things - development, innovation, urgency and commitment.

Marek Kohn is an author and journalist and fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sussex. He writes on scientific thinking for ideas about human nature and society. His books exploring these themes include A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination, As We Know It: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind, and The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science.

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