This week I took part in a conference here in Leipzig called Connecting Climate, Biodiversity and Human Behaviour (CBC). This was exactly in my area of interest, and it’s what I’m planning to focus on in my research long-term: I want to investigate the ways in which human, planetary, and ecosystem health are coupled (short answer: in many ways! More on that at a later point). This conference wasn’t about health specifically, but about the broader connecting points between these fields. The aim was also to identify possible research directions, expand one’s perspective, and get to know other people and their work.

About 270 people from 30 different countries took part, and there was a great mix of talks — from biodiversity to economics, climate science, and psychology — all connected in some way to the overall question: what do we actually know about the problems we’re facing, especially climate change and biodiversity loss, and how do we get out of it?

Now, I am a socially awkward person. Large groups of people, especially unfamiliar ones, intimidate me - I tend to feel like I’m six years old again, fresh at school. Somehow everyone else seems to know each other, greets most people like old friends, or at least knows someone who knows someone. Me, on the other hand, knows no one. That’s a great exaggeration, of course. I did know some people, and I talked to them. But I still fall into this position of the silent observer. I try not to draw too much attention, and I go on walks between sessions to calm my nervous system. On top of that, my resting face apparently comes across to people as annoyed.

I’m not writing this to describe my unsuitability for science, nor to fish for sympathy. Part of my job is to present my own work to clever people, engage with theirs, and get food and drinks while doing it. That’s a huge privilege, and I’m aware of it. I have two intentions with this piece. The first is to describe a feeling I’m sure I’m not alone in at any conference, ever.

Endless schoolyards

Science is a diverse system made up of a diverse set of people. There’s the stereotype of the shy, nerdy math type who doesn’t enjoy small talk. And then there are the very confident people - everybody’s darling - who connect quickly, start conversations without hesitation, approach strangers easily, and present their own work fantastically. And there’s everything in between and beyond.

If you’re like me - transported straight back to the schoolyard, social insecurities kicking in like the neighborhood kids kicking their football every morning (I do, in fact, live next to an elementary school) - then a conference is Mount Everest levels of workload. Because there are always two competing needs that can’t both be satisfied: I want to connect, discuss work, and expand my perspective. But I also want to go home urgently. Because that’s where I can work peacefully, process what I’ve learned, apply it to my own research, or at least think it over, read some papers, work through some ideas. And that’s practically impossible to do at the conference itself. There’s just too much stimulation.

This conference was a long one — four days total. So how did I end up managing these two needs? Easy! I skipped most of the social parts. At first, this always feels like a mistake. The social events are supposed to be what eases you into connecting with others, right? After the party, the next day gets easier, and you can pick back up on conversations you already started. But knowing myself, the social events - especially the ones that stretch into the evening - are exactly what leads to complete burnout for me. If a conference day runs from 9 to 9 (or later), I’ll either miss the next day entirely or spend the days after the event indoors, alone, completely drained. This time, though, I was genuinely proud of how I handled it. I had two real conversations with people I’d never met before. I learned a lot about a wide range of topics, and I made it through all four days — no migraine on day two, and even a normal workday on Friday. And the everlasting fear, that this will be outcalled, that this is where my weirdness is identified, never happened. Because surely, I am not the only one handling conferences like that. It’s just that there is no social connect for the ones that are too tired to connect. We do not know each other, we do not have the data.

With knowledge comes…

We do, however, have the data for climate change. Throughout the conference, a lot of the social science talks focused on who convinces whom that human-made climate change is real. This research was genuinely interesting. One Professor talked about how different messengers - climate scientists, but also firefighters and veterinarians - were more or less believed when it came to climate change communication (scientists lose here). Within the US system, the trend was quite clear and depending on your own political belief: hearing it from Republicans was more convincing to Republicans; hearing it from Democrats convinced them of nothing.

The thing that stuck with me from these talks — and connected to another one, by an economist studying people’s willingness to pay for climate damage — is this: there’s a huge gap between acknowledging there’s a problem (or even being willing to pay for it), having and gathering all the information and the thing we actually need most urgently, which is the willingness to act. And that bothered me. It still does.

In sustainability discourse, people often talk about the so-called knowledge-action gap — the idea that we know a lot about climate change and how it’s going to mess up our lives, more so the less we act. Interestingly, from a natural science perspective, it’s actually a fairly simple problem, because you can pin it down to one molecule: CO_2. Even where other molecules are involved, we can convert them into CO_2 equivalents (CO_2e — you’ll sometimes see that in climate accounting). Too much CO_2e is the problem; producing less is the solution. As a biologist, I find the simplicity of that almost impressive. In biology, it’s rarely one molecule that causes the trouble. Every disease, every genetic variation, every metabolic pathway involves dozens of molecules or more, all interacting in horribly complicated ways (which is exactly why I love biology so much). So the idea that climate change comes down to one molecule is, in a strange way, deeply satisfying — a complex problem with a solution you can actually calculate. It’s a dream.

That was roughly my perspective as a teenager, when ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ aired. As I got older, I started to recognize that this isn’t really a natural science problem, even though it emerged from that discipline — it’s a social science problem, which brings us right back to biology and, even worse, the way biological organisms interact.

Still, I assumed we were evidence-based, rational people, and that the reason our actions were insufficient to tackle the climate crisis was simply that people didn’t know how to act. That was my second mistake. It turns out that not only is the solution unclear to a lot of people — even when people fully understand the solution, that knowledge doesn’t reliably translate into action. It’s not about the data. Even people convinced that human-made climate change is real often don’t adjust their lifestyles accordingly. Or consistently.

This realization has hit me hardest in science itself, and it hit me again last week. If scientists are what they claim to be - driven by evidence, willing to change their minds when presented with facts - then scientists should be among the most sustainable people around. We should be the ones acting on the data, not just producing it. We care about ecosystems. We care about the planet. And we have all the information we need, thanks to years of education and our own research. But we’re not. And this fits the broader trend: it’s not your education level but your wealth that predicts how sustainable your everyday life is, in terms of CO_2. The less money you have, the less you fly, the less you travel in general, the fewer cars you own, the less you buy.

Doing nothing is a political statement

Alongside my realization, there was a discussion at the conference about whether scientists should be raising their voices more. What impact does your research actually have on ecosystem resilience if only other scientists ever hear about it? But then again — is it “scientific” to engage in political discussion? And what about political topics outside your own discipline?

In science, this has practically a tradition of its own. Science is taught as apolitical — serving only the truth, no crown, no party. Even though I’m convinced science is the best truth-seeking system we have, I resist agreeing with that framing. Science has always been political, in the sense that it’s made by humans living in a politcal system. Consider the old idea that the female egg is passively “penetrated” and fertilized by the male sperm — a concept that has since been scientifically shown to be wrong, but one that was shaped by scientists who believed women could only ever be receiving.

The same goes for the common misconception of humans as inherently selfish and incapable of compromise — the idea of an “evil” human nature. That concept comes from a system that profits from competition over cooperation. Why people behave the way they do is far more complex than the “selfish gene” narrative suggests. And along the examples trying to prove this point, there is a myriad of examples that show the opposite.

In the end, the discussion at the conference boiled down to this: with knowledge and power comes responsibility, and that includes making political statements when it comes to scientifically established facts.

And that’s where it connects nocely to the question I was wrestling with myself: if we have the knowledge of climate change and the power to influence society, which scientists actually act on that responsibility?

Humans are not evidence-seeking animals — they’re belonging-seeking animals

In the end, scientists are people too (who would have thought), and people seek belonging. Since the scientific system creates belonging through conferences, papers in prestigious journals, and status, that’s what scientists chase. The actual CO_2e impact — and sometimes even the research itself — becomes something of a byproduct.

Beyond my general personality, this is also an explanation of my awkwardness at these events. I don’t fully belong to this group. Not because I don’t want to — if I didn’t, it wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, just neutral. But the decision I made to actually align my lifestyle with the data, resolving my own cognitive dissonance, leaves me with a strange disconnect from the rest of academia. I can’t discuss climate action without wondering how the Australian professor got to Germany. Or without quietly doubting whether the vegetarian lunch is enough to feel justified about any of it.

In the end, the image I selected is not compleltly right. The decision we are facing is not between hope and despair. Because contrarily to many other people on this planet, we have a decision. This decision is mostly between ignorance and holding ourselves responsible. And of course, it is complex - it is not natural sciences. But when everyone takes over responsibility for one’s own climate molecules, we expand our actions. And we might inspire others to do so.