Climate change, myth and religion: Fighting climate change may need stories, not just data

Main image:  ALEX EVANS is a development wonk with an engaging streak of vulnerability. As an adviser on poor-world economics to Tony Blair’s government in Britain, and then a co-organiser of the UN’s first climate-change summit in 2011, he has seen first-hand the waves of optimism and pessimism that have washed over the inner circle of politicians and bureaucrats with an interest in cooling the planet. He sensed the eager anticipation ahead of the Copenhagen summit in 2009 and the bitter disappointment at its failure. He confesses to feeling "giddy with excitement" when asked by the then UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to help prepare a "summit on sustainability", which promised to be a phoenix rising from the ashes of Copenhagen; and recalls his dismay when a coalition including America and Brazil joined forces, as he puts it, to "block anything remotely ambitious". Compared with all that, the far more positive outcome of the Paris climate-change summit (pictured), just over a year ago, came as a blessed relief and in some ways a pleasant surprise.Doubtless there are lots of climate-change activists who have ridden a similar roller-coaster. What makes Mr Evans a bit unusual is the diagnosis he makes of why (at least in part) Copenhagen failed and Paris succeeded. One of the problems, before the ...

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