OPINION: Adjusting to change in a shifting climate and culture

It seems as if the rain since the New Year has been endless, and we have had some meaty storms as well.

Like most people, my residual cultural expectation of the seasons has, like our seafronts, taken something of a battering.

The distinctive characteristics of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter no longer seem to hold true as we move inexorably towards long, wet, mild winters and long, hot, dry summers.

Is this the new norm we must adjust to — the emerging culture of the realities and perceptions of climate change?

Life does have a habit of throwing changes at us, some planned and others not.

Changes in family, friendship and work roles take place, some desirable and some less so.

What is required is that we assess and come to understand these changes — the shifts in our lives and our awareness of their significance.

There is also the context of our lives: expectations and hopes for the present and future, set against a past that may be good, bad or indifferent.

But which past?

Whose past?

A past remembered, or a past cultivated by others?

Eric Hobsbawm, in The Invention of Tradition, suggested that constructing fictitious historical links with the past — the deliberate rewriting of collective or national memory — has consequences for future behaviour.

The extensive heritage industry offers a particular version of those pasts and the events within them.

But how do we evaluate the accuracy and truth of those explanations?

We need to adjust to, and even reconcile with, these changes and be pragmatic.

We are not helpless victims of change; we interpret these shifts and take remedial action to mitigate consequences.

Of course, some people have more resilience than others, depending on character, education, experience, age and more.

I am struck by how, within just two or three years, we have moved from a vague awareness of climate‑change issues to a broad acknowledgement of climate change as reality.

However, this shift in awareness does not necessarily translate into action.

A certain resignation seems to be setting in.

It is clear that the social and personal impact of the Covid lockdown still lingers.

Many people’s health is compromised, and after a brief period of “let’s look out for each other”, frustration, angst and self‑centredness have begun to creep into behaviour.

As a sociologist of culture, I have spent my teaching and writing career highlighting changes in culture and the culture of change.

Recently, while searching for a reference, I dipped into my 2006 book Why Don’t We Do It in the Road: The Beatles Phenomenon, which explored how that cultural moment occurred when and where it did.

In the Preface, I found a passage that resonates strongly with the themes of self, society and climate change:

“…It is necessary to be reminded of the fact that it is real persons that do the social interacting in everyday life and not simply, or abstractly, their cultural forms and stylistic representations. It may well be that the form the interaction takes is shaped, influenced or determined by certain cultural forms at any time.”

So when we consider our response to issues such as climate change, what are we really looking at?

Can we set aside doubts about ambiguity in evidence and trends?

We all have agency.

We all have a choice.

So let’s use it.