For those of us who admire Antoni Gaudi's architecture, it is fitting that the latest round of international climate change negotiations (before the big ones in Copenhagen) are being held in Barcelona.

Gaudi loved nature, and he was inspired by the shapes and forms that only nature can create. Yet he believed firmly that architecture, or at least differences in architectural styles, were influenced and underpinned by society and politics.

His work articulates the tensions that can exist between aesthetics and the hard-nosed reality of politics.

It should come as no surprise that the word 'beauty' is never mentioned in the context of climate change negotiations. I, however, believe an aesthetic understanding of climate change is essential.

What I mean by this is that we need to be able to think beyond the rhetoric concerning economic and political imperatives and start to think about what climate change means for the beauty of this little planet that supports such a plethora of biodiversity and cultural diversity.

Unless the discourse on climate change (or at least the narrative that underpins it) changes then we will we have missed the point of what climate change and global environmental degradation really means - the destruction of much that we, as a species, consider beautiful.

A focus on the aesthetics (or lack thereof) of climate change should call into question the ugliness of a globalised economy that grows as nature dies. It should also question the political and economic structures that render billions of people impoverished and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Surely, we would all agree that poverty and the death of nature are ugly? If we don't, then the problems we face are even greater than I thought.

Many of us see aesthetic value in the outputs of diverse cultures. We like to read literature, listen to music and view the art of other cultures. However, when people are hungry or thirsty, the creative impulse is crowded out, and there is no space, in either heart or mind, to create objects, words or sounds that are beautiful.

Many of the future projections of climate change suggest a more hungry and thirsty world, a world with less music, less art and less writing. Will such a world be aesthetically pleasing? I think not.

As a species we need 'wild' places. Even if we never visit the Amazon or the Arctic, we need these spaces to exist somewhere. As Henry David Thoreau said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world."

In this context, it is chastening to note that if we do not take concerted action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, up to 85 percent of the Amazon rainforest could be lost within 100 years.

Will a world devoid of 'wilderness' be aesthetically pleasing?

Of course we need an agreement from Copenhagen that is politically and economically just and binding but we also need an agreement that has, at its heart, the protection of Earth, our beautiful planet.

Gaudi was an architect who appreciated both nature and politics, and inter-wove the two into beautiful architectural forms. Let's hope the world's politicians can do the same: Design a climate change agreement that in its political and economic strength protects the beauty that is the heart of civilisation.

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