WEB PEB - A packed audience engages with climate and nature challenges

Around 150 people, including local councillors, representatives of local organisations and ordinary members of the public, packed St Leonard’s Church in Watlington on Monday for a screening of the People’s Emergency Briefing film. The screening formed part of a wider UK programme of events designed to help communities engage with the climate and nature crisis, and was jointly organised by Watlington Climate Action Group, Benson Area Nature Group and Watlington Environment Group.

Co-organiser Mike Chadwick said: “Despite the scale and urgency of the issues laid bare in the film, it also highlighted what can and must be done to address them, and how taking action now ultimately saves money, as well as often delivering ancillary benefits for health and wellbeing”. Amongst the points made in the audience discussion that followed were:

• Surprise and concern about the proportion of the population that still seemed unaware of the issues despite how long the science of global warming has been clear, and how this can be overcome;

• The benefits of trees for both carbon sequestration and mental well-being;

• How, for people struggling with poverty, the messages regarding climate change may seem unpalatable, overwhelming or just irrelevant, and how can that be dealt with;

• The parallels with Covid and the type of public briefings associated with that crisis; and

• How young people have and could be engaged in this topic, for example, by creating films, or a young person’s version of the national briefing developed by and for young people.

Overall, audience feedback demonstrated a hopeful degree of collective determination to push for action, along with frustration and some bemusement as to why the government isn’t fully on board already.

Local MP Freddie van Mierlo was amongst the audience, and highlighted the importance of concerned citizens communicating those concerns to elected representatives. He said it was even more important for electors to expressly communicate their support when representatives are actually “doing the right thing”, since this helps to balance the flow of negative lobbying and kickback that inevitably arises when governments take any form of novel action. He confirmed he had already expressed his support for a national televised briefing, one of the main asks of the Emergency Briefing initiative.

The audience were also encouraged to think about what actions each of them felt able to take individually, collectively, and by engagement with government and decision-makers, and learnt about some of the activities already happening locally.

Follow-up activity is planned, beginning with Green Drinks on Wed 1 st July at 7.30pm in The Spire and Spoke tipi, and there will be further opportunities to get involved – watch this space. The full expert briefings to national decision-makers, on which the People’s Emergency Briefing film was derived, are available at www.nebriefing.org/expert-briefings.