I've joined a group working on Local Sovereignty, which is a fancy way of saying communities taking power and responsibility for themselves. In my opinion this is absolutely crucial to being able to avoid runaway climate change and build communities that are resilient, but also, i believe it's the bedrock of a better society - one that is human friendly and flexible enough to respond to the real and individual needs of people.

Anyway, here are a few of the ideas i scribbled after the meeting

  • sovereignty should rest at many levels, but primary sovereignty should rest at whatever level allows optimum balance between individual sovereignty and community involvement.
  • this optimum level will be the level at which consensus decision making works best.
  • consensus might work among 10,000 people of similar mind, but not among 10 people who fundamentally disagree so the size of a local community depends on the people in it.
  • this might tend communities to move towards ghettoisation – people living only with ‘people like them’, however, shared larger scale institutions and networks (especially online networks), interdependence of communities and a constant flow of people between communities to another should be. I also believe that the differences between people in our current society will fade when people are free and able to express their power.
  • we should think about structures and arrangements that might help these communities to thrive, but NOT prescribe a blueprint of how we believe these should look – the only people who can do this are the members of each community themselves.
  • we should focus on practical, small scale, bottom-up steps that communities can take to move towards local sovereignty.
  • these steps fall into 2 categories a) taking power from institutions that already have power (council, government, corporations, landowners) b) making new power (communities setting up and running schemes themselves)
  • we should actually DO these things – people interested should come together in a community and start working on it.

idea for what people could actually DO at copenhagen

the real danger is the that hordes of lobbyists and government who want an ineffectual, but profitable carbon trading system get their way.

actions should target these 'bad guys' in copenahgen - (and back in their home countries) stop them from getting off their planes, out of their hotels, into the conference centre, holding meetings or doing anything! whilst at the same time demanding the rest of the delegates 'don't trade away our future'

despite my overall negativity about the whole UNFCCC process i still think that a good copenhagen with scientifically based mandatory caps and no trading would be a hugely helpful framework for people to force governments and corporations to act responsibly, but that if they don't manage it now they probably never will.


I just don't care if people care


I've just come accross a few files on my computer from the autumn of 2007 where i was thinking about where we were in the climate change communication issue. They're full of ideas about how we persuade people about the need for action, how we enthuse and engage people who are just on the edge of caring about climate change.

How different things are now

I just don't care if people care, we don't have the need or the time to persuade people who need persuading. And the action we need is just so much bigger than what i was thinking of back then ('back then' - it was only 16 months ago, but things really have changed!). But also i am much more optimistic than i was then, ok so we're quite a lot closer to the tipping point but the big economic story has broken the whole thing wide open. In terms of communication the only thing I'm concerned with is cementing the idea of the triple crunch of which the first part is only just beginning to bite, and that if we react in the right way to this we can avoid the worst of all of them. I no longer even think about climate change really (although I know it's the most frightening of the 3 'crunches' by a massive distance) because people are totally focussed on the economic story and possible solutions to that and, as a happy coincidence, the timescales to solve that crisis are just about right to solve the real crisis (rather than the timescales people were folowing on climate change - as if we've got decades) the recession may or may not directly reduce emissions (i tend to to think it wont - in a growth oriented economy businesses don't just accept recession meekly, they fight to reduce every cost and that mean more pollution) but if we can channel the global focus on one issue and clamour for action in the right way, we might just have a chance.