Four years in the making, Helen has brought together collaborators and supporters including Holition, Unilever, Met Office and the UNHCR, people from very different backgrounds in science, business, education, technology, humanitarian work and fashion, to explore ways to engender a public debate about these most critical questions.
When Helen first learnt that we consume 30% more resources each year than our planet can replenish (this figure is taken from WWF’s The Living Planet Report), and that if we continue at this rate we will need at least 3 more planets to survive, she knew that all of her work needed to be directed towards finding creative and unusual ways to help engage us in the urgent issues of our time. The project began with a meeting where Helen gathered climate scientists, business and researchers to look at how we as a species are, or are not responding to climate change. A date was mentioned during the discussion, the tipping point for us as a species – 2020, and this date has changed everything for Helen.
With various partners, voices and agendas it’s been an interesting and a continually developing journey, one which has and still raises many issues and concerns for us as a team; crucially, how we communicate difficult and often scary subject matter? How do we engage people on this? Especially when the most common responses to climate change have been ‘technology will save us’, ‘God will save us’ and/or ‘it’s not happening’, ‘it’s too complicated’ or ‘no-one else is doing anything, why should I?’
And from Helen’s personal interviews, the worst thing she’s heard is, ‘well, everybody I know and love now will be dead by then, so I don’t care.’
