Ep42 - Active hope for our planet and the changes we can make without stressing ourselves out

Emma Woolliams is a scientist who works with the satellites that are used to monitor our planet’s changing environment. She is also a mother of two. 20 years ago, Emma began to understand the evidence for climate change and, more importantly, the implications of a changing climate. Over the last 20 years she has tried, imperfectly, to live in response to that understanding. At times that attempt has been farcical (crying over green beans in Sainsbury’s), sometimes it has been surprisingly easy (cloth nappies even without a tumbler dryer) and at times the scale of the challenge has just felt overwhelming. Over that time, Emma has tried to find the compromise between “being green” and all the other demands on a busy working mother – should business trips to Berlin be by train when the flight gets you home to your toddler faster? Can you justify the flights to take your children to their grandparents in Canada or their cousin in Australia? A vegan meal cooked from dried chickpeas bought from a refill shop is clearly the right thing to do, but the family is hungry, you’re working late at night, and Tesco’s has plastic-packed microwavable chicken curries. And does any of this matter when emissions are still rising – isn’t the problem with governments? Many people are coming to these questions for the first time, Emma has wrestled with them for two decades.