 I welcome, I'm Christine Grahame MSP and I'd like to welcome you all to the special edition of the Festival of Politics 2021 in partnership with the Parliament's Think Tank, Scotland's Futures Forum. This afternoon's panel is titled, This is not a drill and we are delighted that so many people are able to join us today and I look forward to hearing comments and questions from you as we get into our discussion. The media's terminology has shifted from climate change to climate emergency, but are we really behaving as if it's an emergency? How radical do we all need to be in the next decade in addressing the climate crisis that's already arrived? What is the best way for Scotland which can integrate climate change emergency into our national policies and improve awareness raising and education on our human and institutional capacity for what lies ahead? This panel aims to address all of those questions in the next 60 minutes, so please do stay with us. We are delighted that they are all able to join us to take part and I would encourage you all to use the event chat function to introduce yourselves stating your name and your geographical location and pose any questions you would like the panel to respond to. To start with the panel, I am very pleased to be joined by our three panellists, Zarina Amad, climate change leader and founder of ethnic minority environmental network. Good evening. Lloyd Austin, who is an experienced environmental policy analyst and is currently working as a part-time policy adviser to stop climate case Scotland. Good evening. And Professor Stephen Riker, who is the Bishop Warlaw professor of social psychology and neuroscience at the University of St Andrews. And good evening to you too. Now there will be an opportunity for our online audience to put questions and views in the panel throughout the event. As I've said, if you'd like to make a contribution, please enter them into the question and answer box and make sure you state your first name and where you are this afternoon and I'll try to get through as many as possible. However, I'd like to begin by asking each of our panellists are we behaving as if we are in the middle of a climate change or an emergency, either as individuals or at a global environmental level? And I think I'll come first to Professor Zarina Amad, Zarina. Just to correct you, I'm not a professor. I'm just Zarina. That's my first mistake this evening and it won't be the last. That's all right. Just in case anybody's thinking, oh my God, when did you become a professor? Yeah, so it's a very interesting question because I suppose I spent my last 10 to 12 years working with communities where climate change was a reality, was an emergency. People have been connected to different parts of the world where they saw the impact of climate change, they understood the urgency of acting on climate change. So for me, climate change was always an emergency, was always a matter of urgency, we needed to act, we need to act now. However, just recently, with COP coming up, I've been involved in a number of events and what I've heard a few times is that people have been coming and saying, oh, we want to interview you because you make climate change interesting. Right? You don't make climate change dry. You know, climate change can be a really dry subject and I'm thinking, well, if we're in a climate crisis and if we're in an emergency, do we really think about making something interesting? I mean, did we think about that with the Covid? Did we think, well, how do we make it interesting? How do we not make it dry? So I would say the answer to that is probably not there. We are actually still treating it as an emergency and we're not thinking of it as a crisis. Right, thank you very much and now I'm going to come to Professor Stephen Riker. I hope you are a professor if I got that wrong too. No, I'm a professor but basically professor means I'm old, sadly. Then I should have the title Professor too. Well, absolutely. Well, I'll call you Professor Christine from now on. I mean, when you ask the question, you know, are we acting as if we're in an emergency? The question very much comes down to what do we mean by we? Because normally, when you talk about states of emergency, they are definitions imposed by states on populations to justify changes of policy very often, actually very negative changes of policy. And this is very different. Climate emergency is very different because it's mainly about populations trying to get the governments and states to take the emergency seriously. And in many ways, the states and governments are revolting and resisting that definition. So when over the next few weeks, we talk about COP26, there will be a lot of talk about the governments in their conference halls and about the protesters on the streets. But I think it should be seen as the other way round. The people on the streets, other people who are following the science, they're responding to all the evidence that unless we do something and do something soon, then the future of this planet is very much in the balance. And actually, it's those in the conference halls who are protesting who are trying to say, well, we can't do it. We want to continue business as usual. It undermines our interest. So I think it's really important to reframe this that, as I say, the science comes from the people and the protest comes from the governments in many ways. And I think that has huge implications for the way we think about the role of the public because often we say, well, the role of the public is to change our consumption. You know, it's to eat different things. It's to travel in different ways and so on. And it's perfectly true that as with COVID, we've all got personal responsibilities and we need to take those responsibilities seriously. But first of all, we can't take those responsibilities seriously unless we get accurate information on what the problems are. And when you look at the polling, most people will say, yes, there is a climate emergency. But then when they go on to say, what do we do about it? On the whole, people don't have the information that allows us to understand the most important things we can do. So, yes, we recycle. And most people will say, recycling is the major thing we should do. But actually, there are many other things we should be doing. So we need that information from governments and states. And secondly, of course, we need the practical support. If, for instance, one of the major things we could do to deal with a climate emergency is to give up our cars. But we can't give up our cars unless we've got decent public transport and affordable public transport. So again, states need to act. So in many ways, the most critical psychological question, and I speak psychologist, is not what people do individually, but what people do collectively and what we do together to make the states which claim to represent us take seriously the threat to all of us. So, yes, I think people are individually taking seriously the fact there's a climate emergency. We need to do it collectively so that governments and states themselves treat this as a real and very serious emergency. Thank you very much. I know Paul Lloyd Austin, please. Thank you, Christine. Like you, I'm old and also not a professor. First of all, I think it's worth welcoming the change in terminology that you mentioned. It's not only in the media, of course. Many governments have adopted the term climate emergency. Our First Minister in Scotland did so in early 2019, and I think that is welcome. But in answer to your question, are we behaving as though that's an emergency? I think in a word, I'd agree with Zarina that the answer is no. I mean, if we look at other emergencies that governments have had to respond to, whether that be at war, natural disasters, or even the current pandemic, government's responses have been weak. I think that that is illustrated by Stephen's description there of the different attitudes of government and individuals, whether those individuals are individually responding or collectively responding. I think too often climate change is still seen as one of many sorts of issues that governments have to deal with rather than being the overriding emergency of our time. So there is, there's a lot of rhetoric, there's a lot of tinkering around the edges, but there's not enough major change. There's not enough real leadership. I think from the stock climate chaos point of view, we're very much a NGO movement, a campaigning movement. We do see that kind of public engagement in the debate that is not reflected by government action. It's reflected in government rhetoric, but not in government delivery of change. Thank you very much. I encourage those in the audience to put their questions forward, please, because I'll start off by answering a few to get the ball rolling. I'll put this to Zarina, and then I've got one to follow up for Austin. I think that it's probably the way it should be directed. Zarina, are you frustrated with the piece of change and the commitments to climate emergency? I mean, is it that COP26 will just be blah blah blah as somebody said, and there'll be very little change? Totally frustrated. The reason why I'm frustrated is because the way that climate change is spoken about and the narratives that we have, there's total inequity in it. What I mean by that is that there's discussions that are happening in the global north, the western countries, that aren't the same conversations that you're having in the global south. The global south are the ones that are being impacted by climate change. It is an emergency, and there has been an emergency there for many, many years. However, we don't think about climate change as a global issue, but when we're talking about legislation or politics, it becomes very insular. We think about what is Scotland doing? What is the UK doing? However, we don't put Scotland in the context, in the global context. That's where the discussions are missing. We don't link what we do here to other parts of the world. That's where some of the big frustration for me comes from, because from the work that I do, I meet many people who have connections to their homelands, their families, where climate change has been real for a number of years. When we sit here and listen to the First Minister with their targets, it's not enough and not so enough. That's what really frustrates me. We tend to ignore things that don't impact us. If we're not being impacted, we don't need to act. It's only when we get impacted that it's become very reactive. Our behaviour, our policies, our strategies all are reactive, rather than proactive. I don't know if anybody else wants to come in from the panel on that particular thing. I have concerns about COP26 as well, but I'm not on the panel, but I'd love to hear what your concerns are. Just put your hand up if you want to come in, Lloyd or Stephen on that. I feel Serena's frustration. I think that everybody is frustrated to some extent. I think it's not frustration because it's too late. More could have been done already, but it's worth stressing that the longer we leave it, the harder it's going to be, and the more disruptive it will be, and the costlier it will be. It's an issue that is absolute classic example of that thing called preventative investment, that if you invest now, you can prevent costs in the future. Therefore, I think that there is a real desire amongst people to see action. Whether or not there will be action coming after COP, I don't know. Subject to pandemics, there's a COP every year, and they all move the process on a bit. What real change has got to happen at the Government level after COP? Governments have got to live up to the rhetoric that they make going into those meetings in their actions after the meetings. Yes, Stephen. The frustration for me is that Governments—well, not just Governments, but there is a tendency to talk about climate change as an emergency, but to want to graft it on to business as usual, that it's just something you do alongside everything you did before. The whole point about an emergency is that we have to rethink the things that we've been doing that got us into this mess. I thought that was exemplified the other day by Boris Johnson's speech about green is good, likening to greed is good. Now, I think there are some really profound changes that we need, both cultural and economic changes. One comes down to the very way in which we look at ourselves and understand who we are, our identities as human beings. More and more in contemporary society, we position people as consumers. Neoliberalism puts us as individual consumers competing with each other. First of all, that atomises us, divides us, stops us acting collectively, but it makes the measure of our worth how much we consume. You are a valued human being if you have a bigger car, if you go on longer holidays, if you consume more. We've simply got to change that understanding. We've also got to change our basic understanding of our relationship to nature. For the last 50 years and more, we've had a conception which is we dominate nature. We ignore nature. The rhythms of nature have got nothing to do with us, so in the winter we don't have to worry about the cold because we generate so much heat to overcome it. We don't have to care about our diet because we have strawberries and everything else all year round. We act as if we are there to dominate nature. It seems to me we need really profound changes in the nature of the culture, the nature of who we are, the nature of our economy, and the sorts of things that got us into this mess are not going to be the solutions of getting us out of this mess. I see no indication of that on the whole by Governments or by COP26. You simply cannot continue with business as usual if you want to acknowledge there's a real emergency that needs to change fundamental things about our society. I'd like to bring Vivian in Edinburgh, Zarina. I think that this will pick up on something that you said. He's asking how do we get people interested in combating climate change when you were saying that it's not an outdoor step? We've not got the floods, the droughts or the fires, so we tend to be reactive. How do we interest people? That's for Vivian in Edinburgh. First off, it's never assumed that people are interested in climate change. They might not be interested in the jogging, but if you create space to have a discussion and then understand where someone's at and what I mean by listening to the issues that they face, those issues are going to be compounded by a climate crisis. For instance, if somebody is in food poverty, food security is a huge issue for climate crisis. Having those conversations and making those connections to the climate crisis is really important. That's how we can engage everyday people is when people are—whatever the issues that they're suffering—for instance, somebody might be suffering from food poverty. Again, access to energy—I was going to say free energy, which would be great, but it's not free energy, but access to affordable energy, again with a climate crisis, our food security, our transport system, all the different areas, looking at health and health inequality, how is our health going to get impacted, looking at the green spaces that we have and who has access to those green spaces and what does that mean, connection to nature and me. If we look at different parts of our lives and we think about how those are going to be impacted by climate crisis, that's where we can have those really important discussions. For example, if we start just talking about the carbon footprint and carbon emissions, that doesn't really mean anything to the everyday people. I've been doing this work for many years. When I talk about carbon emissions, yes, I get it, but I can't visually see it. It's still very abstract. Yes, Stephen, you're muted. Normally, that's my problem, but I think it's being handled automatically from the centre at the moment, so I won't take blame for that one. I think we need to make a really core distinction between caring about the environment and seeing yourself as an environmentalist and taking action. There was some really interesting research in the States I saw about a year or two ago, and what that showed is that, not surprisingly, more deprived groups, ethnic minorities, Black Americans are more concerned about the environment because they suffer more. When there's a flood in New Orleans, who is it who can go in there four by four to the hills and be safe and who is it who sits in the floods on the roof of their house? It is the deprived who suffer more and who are more concerned. However, they were less likely to define themselves as environmentalists because they saw environmentalism as a movement as being primarily white and middle class. That goes back to something that Zarina said, that we must make inequalities at the very core of this, in the same way that we've understood through COVID that inequalities are central. They're central both because more deprived groups and ethnic minorities suffer more and because they're more alienated from the state and trust the state less and therefore don't trust them when they, for instance, try to roll out vaccines. So unless the environmentalist movement is an inclusive movement which understands those differences and understands those different impacts and changes its way of action so that people come into it, I think that we've got a very real problem indeed. As I say, what's crucial here is not just as individuals being concerned but coming together collectively and that's the way in which we will actually achieve change. Forced Governments take this seriously, forced states to change their policies in profound ways. I'm glad, Stephen, that you mentioned inequalities because my concern is a lot of the discussion about the things that individuals can do to protect the environment. That's okay if you've got money, but if you're worried about just heating your house or food or whatever, I'm afraid you haven't got time to bother about that. I'll bring in Lloyd. I just mentioned that because you've touched on the inequality worse both ways, would you agree that inequality works in that they are the people who are most affected by it in these other countries but also they are the people who are least able to contribute individually or collectively as a group to the environment because they are poor themselves? In a way that goes back to my comment about Johnson and his green is good because if you see this in consumerist terms and if you see the solutions in such terms, so for instance making it more expensive to go on holidays, more expensive to buy food etc, well that means that those who are well off can still buy it and those who are in food poverty get even more in food poverty and that's why you cannot solve this problem on the basis of what brought it about in the in the first place. Those consumerist solutions, those solutions that make it more expensive to do things that are bad for the planet are not going to be a solution and they're going to reinforce resistance to the environmentalist movement. We've seen that for instance in France that Gilles Jaune, a huge social movement, were profoundly alienated by moves which made it more expensive for instance to do the fundamental things they needed to do. So you've alienated social forces that we need to bring on board to make this a comprehensive and united social movement. Lloyd, do you want to, I think, if I can get Lloyd's microphone on? Yes. Thanks Christine. No, I was going to agree with yourself in terms of the need to view this through the inequalities lens and I think we need to recognise that the policies that we need are the ones that are going to help address inequalities as well as address carbon emissions. I agree with Stephen in terms of that. Just adding costs to what you might call undesirable bad activities is not the solution. There is a place for that but it has to be within a framework that is addressing inequalities as a whole so that good carbon reducing alternatives become cheaper and more easily available to everybody and issues like addressing heating challenges through the lens of fuel poverty is the way in which we should go rather than simply taxing or making gas more expensive or something. I think that it's a mixture of appropriate policies that are appropriately designed to achieve the carbon ends at the same time as the social ends. I think it's important that the social and the cultural and the environmental things are treated together so that we don't see one as competing with the other. I'm going to ask another question. I think I'll start with you, Stephen, because it actually touches again on what you said about the people who are changing attitudes and that's what makes the difference. Is it behind the scenes diplomacy at COP26 because we know that that's where it will really take place? Already it probably is taking place and the politicians will simply come out with buzzwords and things like that to make government policy changes or is it the demonstrations on the street? If people really took it into their own hands, I'm not encouraging unlawful demonstrations but peaceable demonstrations, would that have more impact on pushing Governments rather than meeting COP26, or is it both? I'm going to be at COP26 because we're going to be doing some research around the crowds and crowd dynamics. That's my main research area, in fact, so we're looking at the dynamics of protest. The reason why I'm interested in that research is that for a long time crowds have been seen as a problem. Crowds have been seen as irrational. Crowds have been seen almost as the antithesis of democracy. For me, a participatory democracy is one where people can raise their voice and can raise their voice collectively. For me, the sound of protest is the noise of a healthy democracy, of people articulating their views and feeling safe to do so. I think one of the really important points about how we handle and manage and police such events is to understand that they are not a threat to democracy, they are democracy and they should be facilitated and supported. The more that happens, the more inclusive they become. If protest is seen as something which is dangerous, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only the street fighting men turn out and you don't come with your children, elderly people don't come, disabled people don't come, vulnerable people don't come. I do think that inclusive protest is important and I do think that protest is the sound of democracy and I hope we have very, very large and peaceful crowds making the point very clearly to governments that they should do what the science says. As I say, the real protesters at COP26 will be the governments who are refusing to do what is necessary to keep us safe and we mustn't allow their protests to succeed. I see you nodding, do you want to say something and then I'll come to Zarina? Thanks, yes. No, I agree, we need both. We do need the behind-the-scenes policy work, he says, as a policy geek, but Stop Climate Chaos Scotland is, to some extent, a classic example of the diversity of approach that we do put in. We respond to government consultations, we lobby government, we come up with policy solutions, but equally, we're very much involved in public engagement in trying to campaign and raise awareness and encourage our members to go on the march. So, there's a big COP26 coalition organised march on the middle Saturday. I'll be there and I'll look forward to being researched by Stephen. So, we need both because governments do listen to some extent. Obviously, we hope they'd listen more, but if you look back in history, all significant changes have come about by people protesting and people campaigning and people raising public voices, whether or not that's about social or economic concerns or now this one, we're talking about an environmental concern. All of significant changes in government policy and government actions have been convinced themselves that it was their bright idea at the time, but it was often came about because through political parties and through other social networks and so forth, they were influenced to do what they felt the public wanted and demonstrating that the public want greater and faster action on climate change is necessary. Equally, it is helpful to the movement as a whole for specialist NGOs that know what they're talking about in specialist policy areas to do behind-the-scenes diplomatic work. So, a bit of everything and hopefully, Government will listen to some or all of it. Zalina, you've been very patient. Yeah, I was just going to say that it's not about one moment in time, right? Having a march COP26 is really important because it shows how many people, the numbers of volume, and it means a lot and it says a lot, but you also need to have that constant conversation, those two-way conversations, and I want to say the drip-drip effect, but it's probably more than that. That's really important, but my interest is probably meeting those voices that never get heard or being heard, whether it's COP26 or whether it's in front of a politician, because sometimes we forget that we actually live in a democratic country. Sometimes politicians are held on a pedestal and they're not approachable. I've never been on a pedestal, Zalina. I've never been on one. I know we're looking in Scotland, though, that our politicians are much more approachable, but recently I've been working in the rest of England and it's like, oh, you can't have a conversation with this politician or that politician, and you're like, really? But we are the taxpayers. We pay for their positions, we hold them, but for me, those that are marginalised, like the BME communities, people that are in poverty, people with disability, all of these marginalised communities, they very rarely get their voices heard, they very rarely get brought to the table, and there's always people in think tanks and other NGOs speaking on behalf of them, and that's what I would like to start seeing a change of. Having COP and embedding any qualities and climate justice at the heart of climate crisis is so important, because we will then have a truly more democratic approach to our political system. I mean, I would get rid of the political system, but that's another conversation. Oh, that's hurting me, that's hurting me. I think some of us tried to do our best at Lloyd. Thanks, I was just agreeing entirely with what Serena Say and just thought of another thing to plug, really. Stop Climate Chaos has worked with the Scottish Government on what's been known as the Glasgow climate dialogues, which has been a means by which our members in Scotland have worked with their partners in the global south to ensure that the global south voices are heard, and there's a communique that's been produced from that process, and we very much hope that the Scottish Government will pick up that communique, which they agreed with us and the partners from the global south, and do what they can to promote that to all the other participants at COP, because in this global situation, it's voices from the global south that are often not as heard as they should be. I have a question from Liz, who hasn't told me where she's from, but she asks, and I'll ask you which one wants, which one if you want to take this. Do you think that the Government needs to remove the growth imperative from the economic system, and if so, how can this be done? Well, it's gone all quiet. Zarina, adden nhw. I think the economic growth framework is what has got us into the trouble where we are, because it's based around greed, it's based around more and more and more, it's based around competition, it's based around what's in it for me, rather than the whole collective way that Stephen was talking about, that we should be thinking about collective, also recognising our position within the planet, within the planet's boundaries, the planetary boundaries as well, because what we're doing is exploiting and extracting, and if we keep doing that, the economic growth model just will not work, and we can see it was already causing a crisis, so yes, we do need to move away from it, but I'm going to pass it over to somebody else who can talk about how we can do this. Lloyd? Yeah, I agree. We need to move away from it. It's an issue that's been around for decades. It was in the 1960s that Robert Kennedy said that GNP, as the Americans call it, or GDP as we call it, is a measure that measures everything but what's important, and so it's always been an issue that, just simply adding up the value of all the transfers of goods and services in the economy doesn't measure things like friendship, things like education, things like poetry and culture, things, or all the things that contribute to our wellbeing, and so it's a very simplistic, it's a very monetised, very money-centric way of measuring our success, and actually prosperity and wellbeing means a lot more than that. I think obviously given the discussion we had earlier about inequality, there's still an important aspect of being able to meet people's needs or people being able to meet their own needs, but that isn't necessarily measured by the traditional means of measuring growth, and we need to move away from that, so we need a different measure, and bodies like the wellbeing alliance are doing a lot of work on this and creating new measures, but Government needs to be brave and Government needs to be able to stand, Governments are all levels, Scotland, UK, EU, all Governments need to stand up and say they will not be measured by the comparison in growth between one country and another and be seen as trying to compete with those other countries. We need to move to, I think it's butan that has a gross national happiness measurement, and I think we could all adopt similar methods like that, and Government needs to say what we are here for is to, for the wellbeing of our population, not for simply maximising growth, because that can actually result in greater inequalities that alone dealing with social and environmental questions. Before I bring in Stephen, how do you measure happiness? I think so. I wonder whether Stephen might be a better person to answer that, but there are various ways in which prosperity in the widest sense can be measured. I'll bring in Stephen, perhaps he'll help me there, how you measure a nation's happiness. Okay, so I'll come on to that because actually there's a lot of work on that. But I'm just going back to growth, I mean the modern environmentalist movement in many ways came out of the book The Limits to Growth and the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth was published in 1972, so next year is the 50th anniversary, and the reason why I know this is the foundation, it's a German foundation which is funding our research, comes out of people who were linked to the Club of Rome and want to celebrate the anniversary next year, and our research will feed in to what they're doing. So this issue of growth and the growth of as the be all and end all has been critiqued for a long, long time. Now there is a danger of course in saying oh it's not about material goods, it's all about happiness because there is a danger that people who have say to people who have not, don't worry about that, let's just all be happy, it can be under certain configurations a very conservative thing indeed. And again it can feed into this issue of inequalities of sort of privilege middle-class people to just saying oh well it's all fine, you know you don't need to worry about many goods and they don't because they've got many goods, and when you look at the research on well-being and happiness up to a certain level then material possessions and material worth is absolutely critical, but interestingly they're critical because they're about social participation. If you take something like say having a mobile phone or having a television or having a computer, actually as a young person you can't be part of the social network without it, you can't meet up with your mates without it, you don't know what's going on if you don't have Snapchat and so on. So even when material goods are important they are important in relation to well-being. Now when you've got a certain level of material goods actually more don't make you any happier at all. You know once you get past that threshold but many many people in our country and many many people in our world don't meet that threshold. So it's a pretty good argument for taxing those who've got a lot because it doesn't make them any happier and giving it to those who haven't got enough to be happy in the first place. In terms of happiness there have been many people who've argued in this country Richard Layard for instance was very much at the centre of this work and was trying to urge the Government to make indices of happiness which were measured various using various psychometric types of scales to see how happy people felt to use that as an index which went alongside issues of GDP. But let me just finish with an anecdote. I remember a number of years ago sitting in the over gate in Dundee, I don't know how many people know it in the over gate in Dundee, it's a shopping centre, a typical modern shopping centre with a friend who came from a country where you know it's been very very different and she was saying she found it quite bizarre because everybody was buying things they didn't need you know they were buying you know a top but they already had 20 tops or they're buying another pair of shoes right because again consumption and having a new top at the party on new shoes were seen as important in various ways but they didn't need them and when you saw it through her eyes this behaviour was quite bizarre this relentless you know accumulation of so many clothes so many goods which quite frankly it's only because culturally there are norms saying you've got to do this that you do it and if we challenged and change those norms of consumption then those things wouldn't make us any happier so the first thing I would say is let's not throw out the baby with the bath water material goods are important and everybody needs a certain level of them and denying that will get us back into the same old problem that this will be seen as a movement of the privileged however the gross inequalities and the gross overconsumption that we have you know we live in a society where many people throw away about 30 percent of their food while more and more people are going to food banks we need enough so people aren't going to food banks but we don't need to be buying so much food that 30 percent of it is thrown away given that there is this direct link between consumerism materialism and goods and things that we throw away and the production goes into them that I'm presuming from what you're saying that is in part due part leading to global warming the way we live our lives the things that we buy that we don't need and so on that's only a small thing but part of it do you think Covid and the fact that people have been as I am tonight as you are speaking from our homes working from homes people much more having to stay at home less social contact less going out as it made them in any way do you think revaluate their attitude to consumerism and to global warming in that you know here we are in a pandemic it was very very scary you think that has had any impact on the way we've viewed the world and our responsibilities. Stephen we'd like to answer. Okay we wrote a book last year called Together Apart which was free and you can get it as a free download or you can buy it and the proceeds go to save the children but we called it together apart for a very simple reason. One of the mistakes I think of the pandemic is we talked about social distancing now we needed physical distancing because if you are physically close to people you could infect or even kill them but we needed social togetherness because we learnt more and more how those connections are absolutely central to our well-being in fact there's a whole research literature on how feeling part of a group of a community is good for your well-being the importance of connectedness is really important. Now the danger in saying we will have learnt that and it will go on is that we forget things these things will not endure of their own but we have an opportunity to build on that one of the biggest pandemics for instance we have is loneliness loneliness of old people and the importance of understanding those links is really important. I think that we've learnt other things one of them is we don't have to travel all the time it is a bliss to me that I can have meetings on zoom whereas in the past I'd have to get up at four o'clock in the morning and get back at two o'clock in the morning to go to a meeting in London we don't need as much as long as much travel and long haul travel in terms of the way we do work in part it's important to go to work and come together because that collect collectivity is important but at the same time we don't need to go to work all the time and suffer the costs and the hassle of commuting so I think some of the lessons that we've learnt from covid we can build on to rethink the way we live our lives the way we're connected the ways we travel and so on so I think those are really important lessons yes and I'll come to Lloyd then Zareen about that and I'm trying to tie into our attitude global warming and how we have connected to this you know how this has been a huge shock the society I think covid and some it may have had a collective change in the way we look at things I'm not sure yet and I think where I gave a Stephen we are liable to forget quite quickly which is unfortunate but Lloyd I'd like to see if you think it's made any you know this input of covid is any difference to to our attitude to global warming consumerism as they're all tied in and I'll come to you Zareen if that's okay well to be perfectly honest I don't know I'm just going to reflect anecdotally on my own experience I don't have the research and the sort of social attitudes background but last year when the lockdowns were at their height you know I think there were several things that people noticed you know the the quiet clean air where there was no travel the value of green spaces somewhere to go and exercise and get fresh air etc and unfortunately I think those sorts of things seem to have sort of been one of those things as you say that we've forgotten the way in which traffic has bounced back has been I think to some extent a shame because you know the the benefits of of of less congestion and less traffic were were appreciated but then they were discarded if you see what I mean and I think one of the difficulties is that is that leads back to the whole challenge of can individuals change things by individual actions or how much do responsibility to governments have to lead and create the circumstances where people can take the right individual actions because you know we're talking about travel one of the biggest challenges is the respective costs and ease between private cars and public transport and the lack of investment in active travel and in public transport and so forth from governments and the lack of penalising aviation and private car travel in in different ways notwithstanding the comments we made about inequalities which have to be taken into account has meant that it's been very easy for everybody to jump back into their cars again and so the benefits of the absence of traffic during lockdown were just sort of forgotten and I just think that there's there are lessons to be learnt but what we've got to do is we've got to draw them out and and shout about them and encourage government to to step up to the plate in both leadership and in policy change Zarina yeah it's just interesting hearing Lloyd and Stephen because the examples that they've given actually the some of the communities I work with are just not the same examples of their life experiences for instance many have been many communities from BME communities have been working in the care sector so we're at the front line working in shops and retail again on the front line working in hospitals again at the front line so their lives didn't change but they were impacted because they were at the front line so in terms of like a crisis not just kind of crisis it just highlighted the inequalities and where we make our frames of reference to what a world could be what the vision could be what a change could be so even like access in green space a lot of people I remember a lot of people talking about access in green space and being able to go out for walks whereas I remember speaking to a community group and they were saying that you know there was a family who had like three children they were in a high rise flat and they were stuck there the whole time and they were so scared of going out because the narrative that was coming out was that BME communities are more likely to get Covid so their mum was terrified and said that their children are now for three months they were stuck in a flat so you know so I so it's really hard for me to have this kind of conversation when we're thinking about well who are we talking about when we talk about how people's lives change and that's still and this is what I'd like to see like that more collective vision of what it could look like what a vision could look like for all people in society when we have these conversations would be really really appreciated in a way but yeah that's one thing and then the second thing I want to talk about is is the use of plastics right just because I'm an environmentalist did a lot of work around environment and then there was this whole movement of like trying to get videos like single use plastic getting rid of like you know you know like straws and coffee cups all of this right so we were at this point where we were reaching like a peak momentum I think just before the Covid Covid hits and then it's like okay we've got it we've got this virus that's spreading like the plague so everything has to be disposable so we went back in fact so you know there are some lessons that we can learn but there was also some things that actually unfortunately took us a few steps back so yeah so like disposable masks disposable plastic carrier bags everything that people were just chucking chucking chucking yeah so I think that's a look we've still got a long way to go yeah I can remember walking down the middle of a meme road on a Sunday and not a car in sight it was something in the middle of a town which was something to experience can I ask you finally before I ask you to do a little summing up is does it matter that major polluter like China and Russia will not be coming to COP26 does it matter somebody want to answer that Lloyd I'll try well first of all I don't think it's as black and white as they're not coming I think their representatives will be there it will be lower level than that rather than the presidents so it won't be a head of government type delegation that you know the UK will have and we understand the US will have and the EU countries will have and so on so I think it's I think if it was as black and white as they weren't there at all that would be a concern but you know I think the key thing is that we've got to try our best to get an agreement and though you know I mean I think if you look back at past cops I mean we've got to hope that Glasgow is more like Paris than like Copenhagen but the point is that I think that if the UN framework system can bring all countries along eventually all countries will come along and there has to be some leadership from good countries if you see what I mean those countries that profess leadership have to be able to demonstrate that they are living up to their pledges and to some extent I think that Western European countries in the US and so forth are not doing that as well as they could do at the moment and I think in all terms of all countries I think that the other issue is that as well as demonstrating leadership amongst industrialised nations there needs to be proper concern about the sort of global inequality issues the voices of the global south help you know contributing to addressing the impact of climate change in in the developing world but equally some countries like China and Russia have equal challenges to to ours in terms of inequalities and so forth and we've got to be aware of that so I think that the more countries the better the higher level the better but I don't think just an absence of one president or two presidents is a reason for us not to try and make it work now I've just seen a whole pile of questions and I better I'm going to ask from sandy from grant and on spay he asks a cop 26 ignoring the threat from nuclear weapons do the speaker see nuclear as being in the mix when it comes to developing alternative energy or a threat to be avoided well there's something to throw in it's up in some can one person deal with that so I can get in other ones or do you want to comment on nuclear or do you want to skip it yeah so I'm going to comment a little bit on nuclear because I want to link it to arms and military and that's another thing that in cop discussions that government do not talk about and it's like the impact of military arms how much carbon it produces yeah and how much devastation causes why do we need so much so many wars why do we need so much military and the cost everything so you know that has to be included in the in the climate negotiations so yes in that mix I would also put nuclear power in that mix yes well I've got another yes sorry Stephen please microphone please thank you I want to make a very small point just about the fact that while people will call the climate situation an emergency I mean the polling suggests about two-thirds of people do it we still don't actually appreciate how much of an emergency it is and it links the question in the sense that in the first half of 2020 five million people were displaced because of wars and conflicts 10 million people were displaced because of climate change so I think it's really important to understand just what an existential crisis this is and to understand that all sorts of other social issues are like immigration for instance are tied to climate change people come to this country not because they think well it's we don't like the weather where we are let's come to Scotland and enjoy the beautiful sunshine and they come because they have to because their lives are so absolutely desperate so I do think it's important just understand what a profoundly existential crisis this is and how important it is Serena I'd like to come in but I want to get Gary in from Inverness oh there's Big Ben chiming in my house Gary from Inverness is asking if Covid might be a warning from nature and how do we get the message over about imminent danger does emdy want to pick up on that Covid being a warning from nature Lloyd microphone please well if the if the hypothesis that Covid originated in bats is true and that it was the interaction between people and those bats then yes it is a warning because I think it's goes back to what Stephen said to some extent earlier on in terms of how it's a warning about our relationship with nature I think nature is part of the answer to climate change because the oceans the rainforests in Scotland our own woodlands and peatlands etc are a massive carbon store they have potential to to sequester more more carbon but they are the they're an indicative of our relationship with nature with the biosphere and the atmosphere and our need to move to a situation where we're living more in harmony with our planet so it is a warning in that sense I think I think we've lost lost Austin I think somewhere don't know where he has gone not you not you sorry not you Lloyd we've lost Stephen I'm getting getting yeah we've lost Stephen I can see that I'm looking at the chat function I've got a last question more niche but it's one that hello we're back it's a game from the free saying why are the temporary infrastructure like cycle lanes introduced during the pandemic now been removed I know some have been removed in some cities some haven't why are these not permanent changes to help with behavioural changes and I know in some cities they've kept some of them and some have been removed so do you want to talk just as a little one at the end of its cycle lanes important as more people have taken to their bicycles Lloyd microphone I can't remember was it Graham who made that comment I would agree entirely I think you know that was one of the lessons from the pandemic that we could learn and embed we need greater investment in active travel and the best way of investing in active travel is to create infrastructure that allows walking cycling wheeling disabled access etc etc because that is one of the biggest reasons why people don't use those forms of travel to get around because they feel that unsafe trying to do so on busy roads and so investment in infrastructure for active travel is one of the best things we can do within Scotland and Stephen you wanted to see something about that okay well I say this is very keen cyclist so the more cycling I would say wonderful but a few grudging cycle lanes I don't think make that much difference I mean not long ago actually before the pandemic I was in Amsterdam and cycled in Amsterdam and was amazed by the fact that there cyclists had priorities and and motorists defer to them it was a completely different world and you felt completely safe I would have had my young children well my child when he was young cycling along I think we need a much more profound transformation in the nature of travel so there are a few sticking clusters around it's a bad idea to take away cycle lines we need to go so much further in reconfiguring the nature of our travel and also as we've discussed before making sure it's affordable that it's subsidised and that it's available we also need to think carefully not only about solutions in urban areas but in rural areas because again as we saw in France a lot of the opposition you know around changes in in the cost of petrol were in rural areas and rural poverty is something we don't take seriously enough well yes so somebody represents a rural constituency I would agree there are many different issues rural areas but as usual a lot of questions came in towards the end that's life isn't it and we must end there I was going to ask you for a minute to sum up I don't if you want to see a final few words or are you happy just to Zarina you want to say a few words yeah I'm I was just going to say that going back to what Steven says is that we have to remember our place within the environment our place within the globe in the global community and just to be connected and to respect one another and also to respect the planet so let's move from the as I see it from the ego to the equal Lloyd you want to yes well my summing up would be that whatever happens at COP whatever happens whether anything is agreed or isn't agreed this decade 2020s is the decade when real change has to happen the sooner it happens the easier it will be and what we need is for the governments at all levels to respond to COP rather than being at COP respond to COP by turning their targets and their rhetoric into real action so I think that the and that action needs to be policy change but it also needs to be leadership because I think there is oh you've been you've been needed I don't know whether we're running I think there is public support for change we can engage the public even more we can encourage behavioural change but that will not happen unless government facilitates it I thought we'd lost our zoom slot for a minute you were being your tail and Steven briefly please thank you so one of the things that I've been rabbitong on about in the pandemic is time and again especially at the UK level governments have failed to take action claiming that the problem lies in the public that the public won't put up with it and the evidence has shown the opposite the public want it and the government aren't doing it and I think it's the same on climate change the public aren't the problem the public aren't the issue governments have got to take this seriously and individuals yes we've got to act but more importantly than acting individually we've got to act collectively to make sure that governments take this as seriously as we are so I hope to see you all at COP26 well can I can I thank you all very much for your time this evening it's absolutely fascinating it was a delight to chair it can I remind everybody for online there's another meeting tonight 7 30 conversation with the world-renowned scientists professor susan simard who will be discussing inequalities in Covid-19 as we have been already dealing with tonight to invent or saving us from the climate crisis in something that's called big brains for big solutions and the role of art and culture in our health and wellbeing so there you are thank you all very much you may be a professor one day Zarina who knows I may have started a ball a ball rolling on the other hand I could have given you the black spot but thank you all very much it was very interesting thank you thank you thank you tonight