Profile:

Alastair is a writer, lecturer, social activist, broadcaster and campaigning academic.

He works in the field of human ecology.

Some define human ecology as simply being the relationships between population, environment, resources and technology.

McIntosh prefers to study the relationships between the natural environment and the social environment which incorporates the psychological and spiritual side to things.

What I'm talking about:

Climate Change - a Challenge to Community and Spirituality.

In this talk I will speak in reference to my new book, "Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition."

I consider that politics alone is not enough to tackle the scale and depth of the problem that faces us. At root is our addictive consumer mentality. Wants have replaced needs and consumption drives our very identity. Western societies and many others influenced by it have fallen prey to a numbing culture of violence and as part of it, the motivational manipulation of marketing.

The inner life has become hollowed out, and a disproportionate share of our energies and identies are focussed on the outer life. At its deepest level, this is a psychological and spiritual sickness. We have become addicted to false aspirations and become weakened in our authenticity. Such hubris leads to violence not just against one another, but to the Earth.

We must therefore fight climate change in all the outer ways, for sure, but also, we must seek to rekindle the inner life. That draws us towards the essence of what it means to be a human being and that, in turn, draws us towards the imperative of building community with one another. As such, there may not be many grounds for optimism about what our mainstream society is likely to do about climate change, but there is considerable scope for hope - hope in the gradual restoration of both ourselves and the human condition in general.