True value of communities

Ilike driving. It’s a great time to chew things over, to cogitate. And I’m lucky, I’ve been getting an extra special boost when I drive because I inherited my daughter’s car when she went overseas. So I get that essence of her every time I drive it.

It’s black, of course, and grunty – bit like her – the perfect place for my thinking time. It carries my thoughts and I in my community.

Two reports have made me think in a new way about how we consider ourselves and our community.

The first is a 2degrees survey of more than 2000 customers. Of course we are right to be cautious about any survey but the findings are likely to be illustrative of aspects of current New Zealand experience. And this is what I found fascinating: 23 per cent of those surveyed said no community was important to them in their daily lives.

Let’s take a moment to digest that – almost a quarter did not value community on a daily basis.

The other report on my mind is written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a nutshell, this says human activity has already raised the average ground temperature of the earth by one degree. The trend is that this will continue with a high likelihood of reaching 1.5 degrees above the preindustrial base line between 2030 and 2052.

Human activity-related CO emissions (burning of oil, gas, coal, and deforestation) are massive contributors to the problem.

You would have to be living under a rock not to notice weather extremes. These are going to become more prevalent with the rising average surface temperatures.

Islands in the Western Pacific are already under water.

According to the report even if we could limit the sea level increases by 0.1m – just 10 cm – 10 million fewer people would be impacted. And every living thing will continue to be irreversibly impacted if we don’t.

My question is, why are we not all treating this like the emergency that it is? Why are we not addressing this comprehensively, openly, at every level of government, business, and community?

This is where the findings of the first report hit me in the gut. If significant groups of us don’t have any sense of community, of connection with our fundamental relationship with our planet, maybe that’s why we just don’t feel it. Maybe that’s why we aren’t profoundly bothered.

But maybe there is some hope. Thirteen per cent of the 2degrees survey respondents said online groups were most important to them. At first glance this horrifies many of us. It might feel easier to interact behind the keyboard, but doesn’t this continue to erode any sophisticated, nuanced social skills that are at the heart of what it is to be human?

There is opportunity here too, though.

Harnessing the power of online communities enables the discovery of people’s motivational levers, and then the traction to pull on those levers. Much like the impact of pictures of birds with guts full of plastic detritus had on the banning of plastic bags and the increasing social unacceptability of plastic water bottles.

So what are you and your community doing about climate change?

I want to do my bit and I am privileged to be invited with 90-plus other women in science to work on this very issue.

Homeward Bound is a global leadership programme which will support us to use our collective science to inform urgently needed anti-climate change action. We will be visiting Antarctica at the end of next year and your support is much needed. Have a look at my Give A Little page and share with your friends and wha¯ nau.

E kore ta¯tau e mo¯hio ki te waitohu nui o te wai kia mimiti rawa te puna.

We never know the worth of water until the well runs dry.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Hinemoa Elder PhD is a Fellow of the Royal Australia NZ College of Psychiatrists, and Professor of Indigenous Health Research at Te Whare Wa¯nanga o Awanuia¯rangi, and Ma¯ori strategic leader at Brain Research NZ.