Opinion | Trapped in a climate echo chamber

Initially, it was somewhat nuanced. I wasn’t sure, as it was complex, overwhelming, and my brain, conditioned by decades of business-as-usual thinking, instinctively categorised the dilemma as fanciful.

But after about 20 years of listening to the sharpest minds in the world, reading incessantly and paying attention to evidence from all parts of the globe every skerrick of doubt I had is gone — climate change, or global warming if you prefer, is real, it’s here and with it will come droughts, downpours, hot days, cold days, windstorms and weather about which we are quite unfamiliar.

A road collision late in 1997 ended my role as editor of this newspaper and because of that, I limped through the last years of the 20th century.

It was in about 2006, after attending a free lecture at the University of Melbourne answering my interests in community, that I entered my echo chamber.

Yes, that first lecture was about community; community and the impact climate change would have on human affairs. I was hooked.

Everything, and I mean everything, is impacted by climate change, and even though the United States heard as early as the late 1980s from then-NASA scientist James Hansen about the seriousness and implications of human-induced damage to Earth’s atmosphere, many still deny the reality.

The US has a new president-elect who sees the science underlying climate change as a hoax, a conspiracy and something taking society in the wrong direction.

Let’s call out Donald Trump — he is wrong, desperately wrong, and it angers me that he is gambling with my future, as limited as it might be, that of my children and, particularly, my grandchildren.

And so while I admit to being in my echo chamber, any forensic examination, peppered with honesty, will demonstrate you also live in and operate from within an echo chamber; a chamber that resonates with your ideologies, personal values, concepts, beliefs and cultural interpretations, often to the exclusion of all others.

I’m happy to be consigned to my echo chamber and ask only that you turn the mirror upon yourself and exercise personal reflection before lambasting others.

The day after Trump’s electoral success, I sat through a webinar organised by a US climate group and although the mood was sombre, most saw the result as a call to action and within that, the necessity for them to work harder to protect the climate.

All those on the webinar live in a similar echo chamber, but it is a little different, as the emphasis for this group is not just on the mitigation of carbon emissions, they want to see our climate restored, back to a point where humanity could both survive and thrive.

My friends on the Californian webinar, and as I see and talk with them most weeks they are like friends, reflected to some degree the views of British journalist George Monbiot, who wrote in The Guardian: “Trump has pledged to wage war on planet Earth, ripping up US climate commitments and reverting to unrestrained fossil fuel extraction and burning. If he follows the Project 2025 agenda he will leave the UN climate framework altogether, making his assault on Earth’s systems much harder to reverse.”

Life inside my climate echo chamber is not easy. Those who prefer life as it is, and so reject the idea that humans have disrupted Earth’s atmosphere, accuse me of having fallen for the ‘woke conspiracy’; a conspiracy of which I’m not afraid, as it’s about ensuring people thrive as we step away from confrontation, competition and individualism.

Some resort to name-calling and others argue “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” as they scurry back under the skirts of familiarity, refusing to acknowledge the science that explains unambiguously that the world of tomorrow will be different, decidedly different, from that of today.

The Shepparton-based group Slap Tomorrow, which spent more than a decade doing what it could to help people here better understand the climate crisis, is now in recess.

Beneath the Wisteria, a group I set up about 15 years ago to give people the chance to talk about climate change, has also been quiet for several months, but will return on Saturday, December 14.

The group had always met in Shepparton’s Maude St Mall beneath the wisterias (hence the name), which were sacrificed to progress when the mall was redeveloped.

Those who joined the monthly conversations always took their own chairs, as what existed did nothing to encourage conversation in that the provided seating did not allow for face-to-face conversations.

However, the newly developed La Trobe University Campus in North St illustrates that education, and connection, arises when people can look each other in the eye and subsequently has created a wonderful circular seating area in a breezeway, accessible from both North and Stewart Sts.

Head of campus Elizabeth Capp has given the okay for the seating area to be used for the next meeting of Beneath the Wisteria.

So, come Saturday, December 14, I’ll be taking my climate echo chamber to the breezeway at Shepparton’s La Trobe University — join me and let’s talk, as conversation is always the prelude to action.

Robert McLean is a former editor of The News.