Tag: National Emergency Briefing

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Activism Event Report

Getting to the NEB of the issue: The National Emergency Briefing and what is to be done.

Last November eight experts made short presentations to hundreds of people gathered in Westminster Hall, London.

The topic? The climate and biodiversity emergencies that have been unfolding for decades now (the biodiversity crisis for centuries, tbf).

It was the National Emergency Briefing on climate & nature.

Well, now that has been turned into a documentary, with film showings in Europe and the rest of the world being encouraged. I went to a film showing last week in Adelaide.

In this short (ymmv) blog post I am going to talk about the film and what is missing from it, and what needs to be done now, (without holding out more than net zero hope that it will be).

What is good in the film

One is that it is short – 50 minutes is a nice round number.

All of the presentations are good (several are better than good). The presenters don’t waffle, they don’t batter people over the head with jargon.

What is cringe

NB I am not the target demographic, but the ‘Gogglebox’ side of things (cutting away to reaction shots, ‘chummy’ conversations on sofas with performative swearing was …. cringe. A mix of celebs (Deborah Meaden, Jennifer Saunders) and Joe and Jane Punter (mercifully not all white home counties). I understand why they did it, and maybe it is landing with other people. What the hell do I know.

What is ‘bad’/problematic in the film

I don’t know the order of the presentations, I suspect it more or less followed what appears in the film. The first five are ‘here is the nature of the shit we are in’. The last two are much more ‘but things are being done/can be done’. I TOTALLY get that you need to have some kind of arc, some kind of call to action. But you also need to remind people of the scale of the challenge and the need for much much more action at all levels of society. My fear is that those last two presentations will allow people to tick the box marked ‘I at least informed myself and anyway, things could get better.’ I wish there had been some sort of acknowledgement of this dynamic (which has played out repeatedly already).  Which brings us to

What is missing

Fifty minutes is not long, and if you’re trying to give all the speakers a fair shake, then, understandably you are going to end up with a certain “present-ism.”


But we really need to step back and see three things.


First, that the biodiversity crisis has been going on for a very very long time (hundreds of years). I may be wrong, but I didn’t hear anyone say ‘Sixth Extinction’.

Second, we should remember that Thatcher was told about carbon dioxide build-up repeatedly, from 1979 (that’s not a typo) onwards until finally making her pivotal speech in September 1988, and that until very recently there was an all-party consensus on the need for ‘urgent’ climate action.  And that there really wasn’t, once you take out the accounting tricks, much real UK action (Prof Kevin Anderson – a friend – nailed this, as he always does). So, it’s not as if our Lords and Masters weren’t dimly aware (and some of them are very dim) of the issue. It may be that information is not the actual problem here. 

Third that there have been repeated spasms (or, if you’re being less pejorative and more shiny happy) “waves” of concern about environmental matters.  The first big one was in the late 1960s through to the early 1970s.  Then another one between 1988 to 1992, then another from 2006 to 2009, and then one from 2018 to about 2020, when Covid came along and fried everyone’s brain. Alongside this we have seen states learn how to insulate themselves from public pressures. 


I have written about this a lot.  The two pieces I wish folks would read were these

There’s a third article I think is okay – Dear New Climate Activist (written 2018). And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole there are these about XR’s moment of maximum danger and a debate about whether it has (well, had) the right tactics. 

The point is, that social movements really struggle to sustain themselves, but withOUT an energised and engaged civil society, then governments and corporations do business as usual. The same business as usual that is wiping us out. See this from BHP, the world’s biggest mining corporation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/25/bhp-files-internal-memo-revealed

George Monbiot’s latest column (May 27) is about the current government insulating itself from all critiques, all civil society input. It’s a good column but it too (for the same reasons as the film, mostly) also neglects to join the historical dots. There 

So, two final things.

The film calls on people to do three things

1.Spread the word

2. Join a group near you

3. Keep the pressure on the government


Hmmm.  That number two is – for a whole host of reasons – really really difficult. Groups fall apart, fingers and hearts get burned, and not in a ‘phoenix will rise’ kinda way, but in a ‘where shall we spread the ashes while singing a dirge?’ kinda way. If we are not honest abou t


The idea of film showings is great, but I have real concerns about how well this is executed.

The film showings MUST be short (intro, 50 minutes and then at most 40 minutes of other people, including a well-facilitated Q&A that is not (I repeat, NOT) dominated by speeches-’disguised’-as-questions from the usual suspects.

There are some really simple facilitation/meeting design techniques that can help with this, but I don’t see them being used anywhere, and I have my own reasons for believing it won’t happen (call me a cynic).

From 2014 – Meetings are institutionally sexist

From 2017 – We’ve got to stop meeting like this.

In their absence, new people will not get a word in edgeways, and the whole thing will be dominated by the usual suspects with – likely – the usual results.

(See also the aftermath of “The Age of Stupid” in 2008, “This Changes Everything” in 2014, Don’t Look Up etc etc (there have been some so bad I have tried to expunge them from my memory, a la Men In Black and the memory wand thing). There is an article to be written – “Documentary films/satires as tools of social change? Well, they could be, but not on their own…”)

Further reading

Interview with Abi Perrin: “academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire”

Does anyone want me to do a seven minute “presentation I would have given at the NEB if they had asked me” post? If so, I will. If not, I am not sure I can be bothered (yes, I know I should use better bait when fishing for affirmation).

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Interviews

Interview with Abi Perrin: “academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire”

Dr Abi Perrin, who was one of the advised the presenters at November’s National Emergency Briefing kindly did an email interview. Her website is here. This post is especially worth your time. She is on Bluesky as @abiperrin.bsky.social.

1. Who are you? (where did you grow up, what contact did you have with ‘nature’ – how much unstructured play in natural settings –  I ask because this is a common thread among adults who have become “campaigners”) and what was the path to becoming a scientist working on malaria?  

I grew up near Manchester, without much connection to the natural world.  I liked maths and science and did an undergraduate degree that covered lots of different disciplines. Having previously sworn that biology was ‘boring’, it was there I became really fascinated by microbial life. I saw a research career in infectious disease as a way to pursue that interest whilst also doing something useful, something that I thought had potential to improve people’s lives. So I followed a pretty traditional academic path and ended up working on malaria parasite biology for about a decade. 

2. When and how did you first hear about carbon dioxide build-up as a “problem”, and if you remember your initial thoughts?

It still shocks me that I didn’t learn specifically about climate change at any point in my formal education.  When I graduated from a Natural Sciences degree in 2010 I wouldn’t have been able to describe the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon that scientists had been trying to raise the alarm about since well before I was born. Climate change was mentioned in passing around me at work and in wider society but there didn’t seem to be much urgency or fear about it. I’d genuinely believed that world leaders were dealing with it. But that changed in October 2018, when IPPC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5℃ completely dispelled the myth that it was all under control, caused a flurry of press attention, and started to activate a much broader range of people. 

3. You mention a presentation by Hugh Montgomery in 2018 as pivotal. What was it he did and presented (was this the IPCC 1.5 degrees report)?

The way Hugh laid out the IPPC’s report felt absolutely brutal at the time, but all he did was summarise what was in that report and make abundantly clear what it all meant for people, including for us in that room. It’s rare to see scientists or most other professionals speak like this, with clarity and unequivocal urgency.  To me this was as disruptive as the information he actually presented. 

4. Do activists expect too much of scientists still working within academia?  Do scientists working within academia expect too little of themselves?

It’s far from unreasonable to expect scientists and the academic community to act in line with their own knowledge and warnings, and I think it’s fair to say that (like most other parts of society) academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire. I think my own frustration lies in the missed potential for academia to be part of really catalysing and facilitating a society-wide response. From the inside I know how futile it can feel to push against the inertia and how risky it can be to stick your head above the parapet in such a competitive, precarious working environment… but I also know that the stakes are too high for us not to try. My message to scientists is that we have more power than we often realise, and that there are many different ways to use it effectively – especially when we work together. 

5. Best case scenario – what changes does the National Emergency Briefing make by the end of 2026? What needs to have gone right – and what do “we” (define as you wish) need to have done differently to make that best case come to life?

It’s an enticing thought that amongst the Briefing’s audience there could have been hundreds if not thousands of people who had a similarly life-altering experience to my own in 2018, and those now-activated people will share what they’ve learned and activate others, leading to vital social tipping points and cultural shifts. From often-bitter experience, I know it’s not that simple. I do think it’s realistic to believe that NEB and the ongoing work that stems from it can contribute to rejuvenating and focusing the climate movement and may already have broadened the range of people who participate. However, the ‘knowledge component’ that the NEB attempts to address is just one of a combination of factors needed to empower action: we need to make sure courage, community, and practical skills are cultivated in parallel. 

6. How can people get involved in NEB?The focus for now is to get the information shared in the Briefing to as many people as possible.  This involves building pressure on politicians and broadcasters to engage with its content and fulfil their obligations to inform themselves, their colleagues and the wider public, for instance via a televised National Emergency Briefing.  A short film based on the briefing is currently in production, with plans for community screenings around the country this Spring. For more information and to get involved see https://www.nebriefing.org/take-action.