People's Emergency Briefing: Why it's coming to Sutton
How did you feel over the summer when it seemed to be heatwave after heatwave?
If I’m honest - I struggled with the heat. I love the heat when I’ve got access to air conditioning or a pool/beach. But like so many of us, that's often only when I’m away on holiday, not when I’m at home in the loft room which got stifling hot over the summer (because heat rises!). The heat, and the climate anxiety, felt inescapable.
Earlier in the year, I started to hear about a film called the People’s Emergency Briefing. I knew it was causing a stir - having captured the imagination of so many people across the country about the real lived impacts of climate change in a way previous documentaries failed to do. I also was impressed to hear that the main way it was being distributed was through community screenings - with community groups up and down the country stepping in to provide an amazing public service by putting it on for free and welcoming everyone in to watch it. It sounded like something out of the early days of cinema!
But I couldn’t find a local screening that I could go to - and at the same time, several people I know in Cheam were talking to me about Climate Change and their worries, both before and during the election campaign.
I’ve personally been interested in Climate Change and the Environment since I took an Environmental Engineering module at university. Ironically some of the groundbreaking technologies that I studied are still viable but as a society we haven’t managed to make the changes to adopt them as quickly as we could.
Don’t get me wrong - some of those technologies needed wholesale change such as moving from Gas Boilers to Heat Pumps but others, such as solar panels, seemed a no-brainer!
But I realise that it takes big coverage of climate change to really make everybody sit up and do something about it. I remember watching Al Gore’s film called an Inconvenient Truth 20 years ago - and was pleased then that it did have an impact on policy makers.
Now, twenty years later we have the People’s Emergency Briefing to fulfil that role. It gives us the facts but also is focused on starting conversations and encouraging localised community action.
So, now as a Councillor and local activist, my passions for the environment and building community collided and from it was born the Cheam Climate Action Group with the aim of raising awareness of the climate and nature crises, as well as working collectively to create the conditions for our local community to thrive in the face of them.
So you won't be surprised to hear that its first project is to organise community screenings of the People’s Emergency Briefing film here in Cheam - as has been done up and down the country in a remarkable example of people power.
If you live locally - I want you to come along. People in our area deserve to see this remarkable film too. Everyone does.
Chris Packham, the film's presenter, has said: "I'd encourage people everywhere to attend a screening of The People's Emergency Briefing. It creates exactly the kind of honest local conversation we now urgently need, both about what these changes mean where we live, and about what we can do together to address them.”
You don’t need to be a climate campaigner or an environmental expert. In fact, you don’t even need to know very much about climate change at all.
Come along if you’ve ever wondered:
- What does climate change actually mean for me and my family?
- How serious are the risks really?
- What does the science tell us?
- How might climate and nature affect food, health, energy and the cost of living?
- What can Sutton do?
- And what can we do as individuals and as a community?
Most importantly, bring someone with you.
Get your tickets for the screenings and bring a friend or neighbour!
Watch the film. Hear the evidence. Ask questions. Have the conversation.
And then as a community we can work together to tackle this crisis.