INTERVIEW
Are we too lazy to save ourselves?
Communities made radical changes for Covid-19, but will they do the same for climate change? Emma Noyce, Assistant Director for Culture and Information in Hampshire County Council and chair of the Green Libraries Partnership, explains how libraries can help. Emma will be leading a session on Working towards net zero at CILIP Conference and Expo on 8 July – book your place at
www.cilipconference.org.uk.
FEAR sometimes motivates humans to change, but generally we don’t act until something happens that forces us to. Emma Noyce, Assistant Director for Culture and Informa- tion Services at Hampshire County Council, was an archaeologist before moving into the library sector. She says: “My dissertation was about Upper Palaeolithic art and whether that was a response to climate change and adapta- tion. My work has always been about the relationship between people and the envi- ronments they live in, and how they react to changes in those environments. You asked about radical change and, looking back through the history of humankind, radical change isn’t something we do. We are a lazy species. We don’t do radical change until we hit a crisis point. And the problem with climate change is that it is always a little bit further away, always never quite in your face.”
Emma says Covid-19 may have shown us that we can change, but our action came when the crisis was happening. However, she sees libraries as valuable tools for helping society accept change before our environ- ment forces it upon us.
“To me radical change is about significantly changing systems and governance,” she says, “and that’s only tolerable to people if
22 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Mackinlay (@cilip_reporter2,
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is Senior Reporter, Information Professional.
there’s a general understanding and consen- sus that this is an important issue. You’ve got to build that understanding and belief that society wants to change. People will only tolerate radical systemic change if it’s a cause they truly believe in; otherwise, we all just revert to what is easiest for us. Change has got to be the easiest option to get most people to agree to it.”.
Inclusion
“I’m not the greenest person in the world. I would class my family as average – we make
June 2022
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