We are wired to trust each other, to communicate our ideas, identities, and beliefs through stories. Every one of us has a story about how climate change has impacted them and everybody has a friend or family member that will listen to that story. Although our old wiring with these ancient evolutionary roots makes us recalcitrant if we all leverage that power of trust and storytelling, we can create the popular movement we need to stop climate change.

One of the best parts of my close association with GWCN was the ability to conduct and write my own scientific articles, which after being vetted, were published on the GWCN website. This was excellent more so because of the global links GWCN has with environmental research organisations and NGOs and my published research was immediately being shared with my peers across the world. I gained some incredible feedback and a chance to view my own work through many different perspectives.

The path to a pandemic is clear. Individuals have caused disruption in land use by way of the intensification of agricultural practices, unviable trade, overproduction and overconsumption. We destroy nature, create a massive loss in biodiversity and clear a path for wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people to walk casually together, hand in hand.