Inside Out | Can big banks and bosses look Greta Thunberg in the eye as they talk the talk on climate change?

Last week was surely the week Sweden’s diminutive teenager Greta Thunberg stormed the world from her pulpit at the UN Climate Change Summit: “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing and we are in the beginning of a mass extinction – and all you can do is talk about money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you …”

It is not just Ms Thunberg who is speaking truth to global financial and political power. Henry Paulson, former US Treasury secretary, berated US business and political leaders: “We are fast approaching a tipping point of irreversible loss to naturally functioning ecosystems that will cause catastrophic – and frustratingly avoidable – economic losses at an enormous global scale.”

Paulson was attacking the climate crisis from the vantage point of his personal passion for birdwatching, and news that since 1970 the US and Canada had lost around a third of their breeding bird populations – around 3 billion birds.

Paulson provided a valuable reminder, that for most of us the climate crisis does not get serious until it gets personal and local. I needed Typhoon Mangkhut to feel the silence of our country parks, as doubtless thousands of birds and other wild life suffered from its onslaught.