Adapting to Loss and Damage

Callum Lindsay speaks to 18-year-old Billy Mackay in California and Hannah McGeehan from Scotland for the ‘100 Voices: Home and Away’ project.

Air pollution in Toronto, Canada. Photo by Kristen Morith on Unsplash.

Billy Mackay- Weed, California

Travelling across America to play football, Billy Mackay, who is on a football scholarship has experienced first-hand the climate crisis in California. The 18-year-old moved from Wishaw in North Lanarkshire to Weed, California a couple months ago. But despite this short time in the US, he has already felt the effects: “Our Campus was closed over the summer due to home evacuations and the fire service having to use our campus as a base. It’s also hard to train outside due to the poor quality of the air.” Regarding solutions to combat climate change, Billy feels California is not doing a lot to help in comparison to what he has seen back home in Scotland. He said: “A lot of people are getting around to using solar panels here but really that’s it.”

Hannah McGeehan- Inverkip, Scotland

Although Scotland’s green policies are promising Hannah McGeehan, 18, an athletics coach from Inverkip feels there is a lot more we could be doing. Her main criticism is towards transport. She said: “I’d like to see full nationalisation of buses and railways, to make it attractive and affordable. We need an easy alternative to driving – railways can be fully sustainable and carbon neutral.” Hannah would also like to see a complete switch to electric cars with greater investment towards producing more charging points: “I think there should be an incentive introduced to make people switch to e-cars such as a grant towards a charging point installed outside people’s homes.”