Climate change needs all our attention not just COP26 leaders

A public event in St Enoch Square to demonstrate the need for improved energy efficiency was taking place.

For the next two weeks there are two huts in the square. You can find out more about it elsewhere in the Glasgow Times.

READ MORE: Why will there be giant ‘ice boxes’ in a city square this weekend?

But as the people involved were making their speeches and outlining the scale of the challenge and actions needed, most people simply passed by.

Two young men stopped, very briefly, one said “whit’s this?” heard a snippet of a speech and looked at the information on one of the huts.

One then said to the other, “climate change sh*te”, and on their way they went.

On their way they went in hi-vis vests and hard hats to a nearby construction site, having dismissed an event about the role that construction can play in reducing climate change.

Yes, speeches about climate change can be dull and boring and for those of us who are not scientists or climatologists can be difficult to understand.

But we are all living with the consequences of climate change, we are all contributing to the causes and we can all take actions to help reduce it.

READ MORE: Glasgow asked to think of 'small changes' to battle climate crisis ahead of COP26

Much stock is being put in the COP 26 summit, coming to Glasgow later this year.

World leaders are expected to put their heads together and agree a plan to reach the targets set at the last significant COP, in Paris six years ago.

While they have a huge responsibility to set targets and ensure compliance within their countries, it is not only world leaders and governments who can, and should, be doing more to tackle climate change.

We can all do something.

It is how we are all living our lives in the 21st century that is the cause of climate change.

Well, those of us in the wealthiest countries anyway.

If we leave it to our leaders who knows were we will end up.

Donald Trump, a climate change denier has held the USA efforts back when it, as one of the biggest polluters, should be taking the most action.

Boris Johnson has not exactly been consistent in his record on climate change and many in his government are what could generously be called ‘climate change sceptics’.

Many, in positions of power, are unwilling to take actions that they think could hamper economic growth.

But economic growth depends on continued and increased consumption, which is adding to the problem of climate change.

So, if it is markets they are worried about then, the markets respond to demand and not a lot else.

No demand, no production, which is where we, as individual consumers come in.

As long as we want to buy throwaway products, consume vast amounts of meat and use private transport more than we need to, unless government regulates, then nothing will change.

There is still a sense that the COP 26 is about big government, international politics and science.

It is, but it is much more than that.

It is about the rest of us trying to understand how this affects us, now and in the future.

How we can contribute to the effort to prevent is becoming even more of a catastrophe than it is. And how those efforts will actually benefit our lives and our communities.

The Ice box challenge that the two construction workers dismissed as “climate change sh*te” is one example.

Better insulated homes mean every household spending less on heating bills.

Better constructed homes mean less maintenance cost, which means reduced bills for homeowners and should mean less chance of rent rises in the private sector.

The construction industry and housebuilding is just one of the many ways that we can be tackling climate change.

The COP 26 will be in Glasgow. It could be anywhere.

But the fact it is in our city gives us an opportunity to understand more about climate change.

It gives our governments, local and national, a responsibility to better explain the need for action.

If it matters to people and we can see how it affects us then people will take an interest.

Look at the coronavirus pandemic. Pretty soon everyone was trying to understand what the r number was and people were paying attention to graphs and charts like never before.

We all knew what ‘flattening the curve’ was and how viruses spread was at the forefront of our minds.

And because most of us could recognise this was a serious issue that affected all our lives we wanted our governments to act and we also wanted to take individual actions ourselves.

The same has to happen with climate change. It is of equal urgency. We all need to understand the immediacy of the problem, it is no longer a future problem.

We all need to understand what we can do to make a difference and how it will bring benefits.

Then, maybe it won’t be as easily dismissed, whether by a construction worker in Glasgow, a Prime Minister in Downing Street or a (no longer) President in the White House.