Giddens feels that there is a huge disparity between the reality of climate change and the political and economic response. As well as system-level change, the situation needs action below the level of the nation state, he explained, with activists and civil society taking steps worldwide to obtain change on the ground, as the Transition Towns movement tried, for example. "The United Nations (UN) has lost a lot of influence, so we will need to look to states and groups of states," he said.