Climate scientist leading event discussing how to tackle the climate crisis at Southampton event

A community talk in Southampton will give people the chance to express their feelings about the climate and nature emergency and what we can do about it.

Bors Hulesch, a climate and social scientist from Eastleigh, will lead the discussion at the Friends Meeting House in Ordnance Road at 6.30pm on Thursday March 16th.

The event, called ‘Act Together: How We Tackle the Climate Crisis’, is free and open to everyone, with a talk on the climate emergency followed by time for discussion in small groups and free vegan food.  It will include short testimonies given by local residents affected by the climate crisis who will describe what action they are taking.

‘Act Together’ is also a chance to find out about a campaign to unite climate, nature, and community groups, and bring 100,000 people together outside Parliament in London from April 21 this year in a peaceful gathering that is open, inclusive and focuses energy on pressuring the government instead of ordinary people.

The campaign, called ‘The Big One’, is calling on the Government to stop funding fossil fuels or granting new licences, but instead allow ordinary people to decide on a fair and sustainable transition to green energy.

It is also an opportunity to connect with like-minded people and learn about other campaigns, including ‘DIRTY WATER,’ which is challenging water companies to stop dumping wastewater in our waterways.

Bors, who specialises in climate sociology, warns the biggest impact of climate change on Europe over the next 30 years is likely to be mass migration, as large regions of the Global South become uninhabitable due to extreme heat, drought, or flooding.

“We’re looking at the biggest migration flow across the globe ever,” says the scientist. “We’re talking about up to a billion people being displaced, so it’s unprecedented.

“We need to remind ourselves that migration is a positive decision, as compared with staying put and starving, for instance. If my family faced starvation, I know what I would do. The task is therefore to prepare the people who we know are going to have to move, as well as the host countries where they’re going to have to move to.”

The scientist warns urgent action is needed, with the world on a current trajectory to reach three to four degrees Centigrade of warming by the end of the century.

“We have all the fossil fuel infrastructure in place already to go past two degrees of warming,” he said. “Any new infrastructure will put us beyond that – and it’s easy to see that when they explore more oil fields, install more rigs and build more pipelines, all that infrastructure wants to be used.”

Nonviolent direct action is the most effective way to bring about the urgent change necessary, says the scientist, who writes, edits and delivers climate education talks for Extinction Rebellion.

“Exerting pressure on the seat of power is critically important, because they alone can take the necessary action on our behalf. Our individual acts of commitment and lifestyle changes are not going to solve this global problem. Nonviolence is also important for movement building – and the larger a movement is, the more likely it is to succeed,” he says.

Bors runs a small and global healthcare research agency called Brains and Cheek and has three young sons who call him ‘Climate Dad’. He adds: “I worry for the future, I don’t know what it’s going to look like. But I’m trying to create some sort of security for them, locally in our own community, but also globally, by being an activist.”