Humanist Climate Action interview: Dr Helen Czerski on oceans, humanism, and the planet’s life support system

Dr Helen Czerski is our patron, Professor of the Environment and Society at University College London, and a scientist who specialises in the physics of the oceans. At our Convention in Sheffield last year, Helen gave a fascinating talk on how the ocean shapes our world, based on her book Blue Machine. This interview was conducted by Humanist Climate Action, and originally published in their February newsletter.

Hi Helen! How long have you been a humanist?

I grew up in a non-religious household, so religion has never been a part of my life, apart from having to sit through occasional prayers at school. My Mum was a member of the British Humanist Association, as it was back then, and I remember seeing BHA leaflets around the house. I don’t remember much specific discussion of ‘humanism’ as a concept, but living a meaningful and empathetic life by taking responsibility for your own actions was there in the background all along. So I’ve always been a humanist.

How did you come to be interested in environmental concerns?

Some of it comes from my Mum (she has a lot to answer for!). She was a member of the local Friends of the Earth group when I was a child, and she participated in their campaign work. So I grew up with a background awareness that our planet is something to protect. My secondary school let me have a noticeboard that I covered with green paper and notices about conservation volunteer work and local environmental campaigns, and I was the student environment officer for two years at university. So it’s always been there. While studying physics, I was interested in how the world works, and an important part of that was how the planet works, but no-one showed me the links. Eventually (and it didn’t happen until I was about 26 or 27) physics and the planet came together and that became my career.

How do your humanist values lead you to want to take environmental action?

I think that each of us has three life support systems: our own body, planet Earth and the infrastructure of our civilisation. If we care about people, we need all of those three systems to work well. Our planet is a beautiful and complex system, and it supports us in all sorts of ways that we take for granted. I think that the great challenge of our time is to understand how that planetary life support system works, and then learn to work with it rather than against it. The first stage is appreciating what it means to be a citizen of planet Earth, and being part of this huge system rather than separate from it.  But if you care about people, you have to care about the planet.

Do you think it is important for Humanist Climate Action to exist as a part of Humanists UK?

I think that ‘climate action’ is just another way to say ‘we want our beautiful complex planet to continue to be a good place to live, and to continue to be both beautiful and complex’. So much climate damage comes from assuming that Earth is simple, that it is easy to control and that it will bend to our will. Standing up against those simplifying assumptions is fundamentally a humanist thing to do.

What one thing would you encourage people to do to live a greener lifestyle?

To normalise the conversation about the impact of the things we do, and to make it clear to politicians, business leaders and any other decision-makers that we care about this stuff, and we’re prepared to change our voting/buying/supporting habits to make it clear that we want to live in a more sustainable system.  Oh, and stop eating meat (or significantly reduce the amount you eat), especially beef. The land that would free up for forests, nature, energy generation etc is incredible.