“Too often, we portray climate change and its consequences as a nightmare. But people don’t like listening to nightmares. They don’t want to believe in nightmares; they want to believe in hope. They want to believe in something different, something better. We need to articulate the debates and discussion around climate change in that context.

Policy-makers don’t make the environment and climate change real for people, mattering to their everyday lives and their everyday experience. We are too generalist in the way in which we talk about it. Mention the environment or climate change, and people’s eyes tend to glaze over.

But talk to them about their own little patch of environment – about the river at the bottom of their village, or the landscape that surrounds where they live, or the urban streetscape and the way in which it is fashioned – and they become really passionate. They are committed to it. They worry about it. They hope for it. They know what they want to change.”

          For the full interview with Chris Smith – outgoing chair of the Environment Agency UK click here:

        http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329761.700-drop-the-ecopessimism–you-can-make-a-greener-world.html#.U_LyMmNBnw0