I’ve been really enjoying the interactions around this week’s course material, but I’m also aware that many of you taking our MOOC are beginning to get thoroughly depressed by what you are learning about climate change. I know the feeling, and I wanted to say that it isn’t hopeless – there are lots of things we can all do to make a difference – and we are stronger doing things together to start addressing such a seemingly huge problem. Hopefully the course is the start of that – a community of interested learners have come together from all over the world to wrestle with what could be the defining issue of our time. We also need are own local communities. For example, where I live and work in Exeter I enjoy being parts of arts project ‘Kaleider’ (kaleider.com) which is supporting all kinds of creative responses to climate change, like the project ‘Ancient Sunlight’ (http://kaleider.com/projects/ancient-sunlight/). As we progress into the last couple of weeks of the course we will focus more on empowering practical action. But I have to admit that if I designed the course again I would devote more time to the solutions side of climate change. We know so much about what can and needs to be done.

Professor Tim