February 23, was the climate-themed day of the Norwich Science Festival and the Forum was full of activities on the subject. 

I run Climate Museum UK, and we were there to share what they know and have their say about climate change. All day long, local families of all backgrounds told us they were worried and could feel the effects of a disrupted climate. 

Norfolk is at high risk from climate change with low-lying land and the fastest eroding coastline in Europe. This newspaper has carried multiple flood warnings since October, many rural communities have struggled with closed roads, and farmers are anxious about sodden fields affecting their crops. 

On Friday, we heard children echo their families’ experiences. They asked why adults had let global temperatures rise so fast, as 2023 was at 1.5C above the pre-industrial global average and ocean temperatures are at extreme highs.

This means that international efforts to limit warming to 1.5C have failed and that we must accept this is now an age of climate breakdown. They also expressed worries about how pollution affects soil, air and water, pollinators and marine life. And they wanted to know how they could help. 

The City Council flew a flag of the Warming Stripes showing how Norwich temperatures have risen from cool blue to hot red over 138 years.

This code of blue-to-red colours for annual global temperatures was developed by climate scientist, Ed Hawkins. With our project Make Climate History, we help people make a history of climate change, to understand how the climate was disrupted by fossil fuels and vast damage to land and nature. We also want to make climate disruption a thing of the past.

We invited visitors to create a long mural of the Warming Stripes, each stripe representing a year since 1885. Children drew and wrote on their stripes something that happened in that year to cause or prove global warming. They also drew their dreams of a future that is climate-safe on a healthy planet. 

But how can we create that safer world for them, as children surely can’t do it without us? 
Labour has rowed back on its £28 billion green spending pledge, and the Government is pushing through over 100 fossil fuel licences in the North Sea.

Both parties seem to believe that public opinion mirrors that of the companies wanting licence to exploit and pollute for profit. Large-scale opinion surveys increasingly show most people support climate action. This is clouded by the work of the Atlas Network of 6,000 think tanks worldwide funded by fossil fuel and related industries that influence politicians and public opinion in their favour. 

New roads or oil rigs are justified with claims of providing jobs and cheaper goods, but these claims do not account for knock-on effects leading to more extreme weather, higher food prices, worse health and lower productivity.

These knock-on effects are already harming people and wildlife, but their impacts will increasingly fall as burdens on our children’s shoulders.

A low-carbon economy means lower energy prices, warmer homes, and cleaner air, and it helps meet the UK’s legally binding targets for net zero emissions. Norfolk’s councils should prioritise insulating homes, increasing access to healthy food, investing in green skills and encouraging active transport. 

Everyone here can play their part in this, building on the expertise we have in our universities and businesses and the many groups working to tackle environmental problems.

Alongside this, we need a shift in mindsets, to overcome misinformation that breeds denial and delay of environmental action. In our work in Climate Museum UK, we are sharing inspiring stories of what works, and we help people to imagine, demand and build the more just and safe world we urgently need.

Bridget McKenzie is founder of Climate Museum UK and Culture Declares Emergency