Strong female characters. (In real life, as well as fiction.)

Katharine Hayhoe has been named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s top 100 most influential people. Her peer-reviewed work is included in UN climate reports and has been featured in the Emmy-award winning documentary, Years of Living Dangerously. She introduced Leonardo Di Caprio’s documentary film, Before the Flood, at the White House with Obama.

In Spring 2017, I met Katharine on Twitter and we started a conversation which resulted in my setting up an event, ‘Facing the reality of a changing climate’. 

The evening also featured human ecologist Alastair McIntosh and leading mediator John Sturrock QC. Over 150 people gathered to hear these three hugely influential figures discuss how to find hope in the climate crisis. You can listen to a recording of their inspiring conversation here.

I really admire this woman, and not just because she’s a fantastic communicator about the most important issue of our time. In a blog last year, she wrote about being targeted by anti-science bigots. Hate mail was increasing. And as you can read in her blog, it was deeply misogynist. She responds to these personal attacks with truth, intelligence and grace.

My main character in Black Snow Falling, Ruth has a secret copy of the revolutionary works of Copernicus. She is fascinated by the early science, which was perceived as complete heresy and a threat to those in power.

With the current resident of the Whitehouse who doesn’t believe in experts, it could be said that things don’t seem to have moved on much.

Watch Katharine Hayhoe’s videos on her YouTube channel.

Thanks once more to Tearfund, Eco-Congregation Scotland and Core Solutions for sponsoring the event in Edinburgh. Thanks too to the Edinburgh Network of Eco-Congregation Scotland, Inke Milligan, Joanne Baker and Pete Entwistle for their help. Special thanks to James Rae and Andrea Burke, the two climate scientists we found ourselves sitting beside on a train to London in January, as I worked on a climate talk for St James! They praised Katharine Hayhoe’s work as a scientist and for bridging the wide, deep gap between science and many Christians in the US. Our subsequent Twitter conversation about her work started the ball rolling.