At a party you find yourself squeezed between two old friends, both scientists. Uncharacteristically they start to bait each other. Facts explode and temperatures rise. One is a climate change denier, the other a believer and they argue over the biochemical cycle, MMTCO2Eq, thermohaline circulation, mixing ratios, flux adjustments and halocarbons. Hot numbers and mathematical equations fly, but to you its gobbledegook on speed.
Both of them look down. 'So what do you believe?'
You may have read some science delivered by the celebrity climate change posse like Flannery and Monbiot, which left you thinking that the best thing you could do for the planet was swallow cyanide and slip off to die under a tree. You may have read the sceptics and felt relief that the status quo would continue and your children had a chance at the good life. You looked at the Garnaut report, saw Al Gore's movie, and have been unable to grow anything colourful in your garden for three years.
You might be suspicious of how the Carbon Emissions Scheme is appearing in convoluted layers over an already questionable economic system. You might wonder at how living simply now seems rather complicated. You may have felt the weather change: down at your place, up at your folks' by the Murray, and you have lived through a few heatwaves.
You have engaged as much as you can and, especially if you're sitting between scientists, honesty demands you admit that white noise appears every time graphs and calculations are shoved in your face. You also might believe that science is another human endeavour, as fallible as we are.
You note that your friends have not asked about facts. They have couched their question in terms of faith.
At the base of the climate change debate lies a rousing giant. A massive question demanding an examination of not only the particles that comprise daily life but also what we believe, how we relate and find meaning in the place we find ourselves, and to explore this issue doesn't require a science degree. The scientific debate has encouraged many to question and rediscover their relationship with the dirt upon which, despite our best efforts to run away to places like the moon, we all stand.
Perhaps we are getting closer to collectively exploring what Judith Wright called a 'poetics of place' where through story telling, for many of