Professor Karen O’Brien: People are the most powerful solution to climate change

In a new video, Karen O'Brien shares her perspective on why all kinds of behavioural changes are important, and how to encourage them.

Professor Karen O’Brien: People are the most powerful solution to climate change

This article is part of the ISC’s Transform21 series, which features resources from our network of scientists and change-makers to help inform the urgent transformations needed to achieve climate and biodiversity goals.

As findings from the recently released Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1 make abundantly clear, climate change is already happening in all regions of the world, and rapid action is needed now to curb the most dangerous effects.

In a new video, Karen O’Brien (University of Oslo, Norway, and cChange) talks to Nuala Hafner about what we can all can do to mitigate climate change, and to inspire others to make changes towards more sustainable behaviours.

“We really need to widen the solution space: we really need to begin to see lots of different possibilities”

Covering topics like how COVID-19 has affected behaviour change and how to speak with skeptical friends, Karen O’Brien says that only by seeing people not as objects to be changed but as agents of change themselves, can we open up space for thinking about new possibilities.

Karen O’Brien is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is also co-founder of CHANGE, a company that supports transformation in a changing climate. Karen has participated in four reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and as part of the IPCC was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Photo: @markheybo via Flickr.

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    Note: Please note that the ‘Science Summit at the UN General Assembly’ in September 2023 is not an event of the International Science Council. The International Science Council has no association with this event nor with the organizer of the event.
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