Who do you rely on in a crisis? Someone close to home? Or someone remote? Someone you trust? Or someone in authority?

Why do I ask these questions? I do so, because climate change at present is not real to individuals. It does not feel real because the dominant public discourses are about the responsibility of others, and the risks to others. So let’s think about the type of crisis that may occur to us individually as a result of climate change.  

We come home on evening after dark. There has been a major storm and flood. Our house is in darkness. The electricity is off and water runs through the ground floor. Where is everyone? Our mobile phone is working, but with credit for only one call. Who would you call?

Would you call your insurance broker? Would you call the local government emergency department? Would you call your mother, best friend, husband, son or daughter? For most of us the answer is the last of these groups. While governments protect the vulnerable, and insurance markets provide a service of risk management, it is our kin and friends who sustain us and who we turn to in crisis.

What does this parable tell us about climate change? It tells us that adapting to risks is going to be painful and involve exposure of many people around the world to circumstances they would not voluntarily submit themselves to.

It tells us that the real costs of climate change are measured in things we care about – our security and that of people around us, our health, and our sense of place. As well as our homes, people all over the world care about what climate change is doing to flowers and animals in their back gardens; to icons such as the Great Barrier Reef; to the habitat of polar bears; and to their favourite cultural landscapes.

The parable also tells us that social capital is the single greatest resource in dealing with the everyday risks of climate change. So perhaps we will indeed be able to adapt if we work together.

All of these lessons have little to do with how climate change is being talked about at the global negotiations in Copenhagen. There, for good reasons, we talk about big numbers, big costs and big gestures.

Perhaps bringing climate change to the human scale will generate the momentum for change. This is a difficult task for representative democracy which weighs the needs and desires of all constituencies. And indeed climate change has all the constraints of being distanced in time and place from current actions. These are the reasons why climate change is so difficult to tackle.

But all is not lost. There are many arguments that political systems can make for enlightened self-interest as a response to unforeseeable circumstances. For me, economic growth and prosperity will not solve the climate crisis. But the localizing of democracy and sustainable development will.