Climate Crisis Insights – Page 2

Climate alarm? Learning to live with it

The recent IPCC report on the climate crisis has left me alarmed and unsettled, maybe you too. I’m writing this blog for myself as much as anyone, as part of my long-running search for ways to live with this. There are plenty of good processes out there, and many of us have been using them … Read more

Taking climate responses beyond the usual suspects

Good news! It looks like this challenge is getting a bit easier. My hope arises from recent research by Climate Outreach, a UK charity (formerly called COIN) who specialise in communication strategies on climate issues. Climate Outreach and Cardiff University commissioned a major public opinion study in late 2019, which has encouraging findings, and plenty … Read more

UK Food Strategy: the Dimbleby Report offers a clear, positive direction

It was only last year that Professor Tim Lang, one of the UK’s top experts in this field, published Feeding Britain, an exhaustive and exhausting 567-page account of why our food system is so dysfunctional: see blog here. Henry Dimbleby and team deserve a lot of credit for crystallising a set of major issues, and … Read more

Book blog: Deep Adaptation – Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read

I regard Deep Adaptation as one of the most important approaches to the climate crisis, and this new book will give you a thorough grounding in what DA is, and isn’t, and in the various ways it might evolve over the next few years. It’s not easy to define what Deep Adaptation is: I wouldn’t … Read more

Helping businesses get real about zero carbon

This guest blog is by Harry Humfrey, co-founder of a start-up business, aklimate, who have a very practical approach to helping businesses move towards zero carbon emissions. aklimate was started with a simple goal, to help businesses of all sizes join the net zero revolution. While it is a real cause for optimism that 65% … Read more

Lifestyle sustainability: The New Green Frontier

Why are consumer attitudes to energy saving, and even those of policy makers, so preoccupied with home heating? I think it’s because this is a pretty easy, safe, non-controversial sector. Who could possible object to pensioners getting help with loft insulation, or young couples putting in a wood pellet boiler? Yet the harsh truth is … Read more

What we think about when we try not to think about global warming

By Per Espen Stoknes: guest blog by Jane Sanders There’s a Permaculture principle called the ‘edge effect’ which describes the incredible richness and diversity that is to be found where two habitats meet … for example the edge of a forest. This book brought this to mind as I experienced the weaving together of psychology … Read more

Trees and Carbon Reduction

Crisis fatigue wears all of us down, so you may not be too aware that climate change is worsening. Our weather is a clue. For a useful objective update from the US National Climate Assessment, follow this link. Trees and agriculture have a major potential role to play in absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, and even offsetting … Read more

Earth Visit Report from Prostetnic Vogon Jelfs

To: Controller, Zone 581, LIP Group. (Less Interesting Planets) Your Greatship, I grovel before you as I make this report. This is the scheduled 50-year update on my visit to Earth in 1969. Your Greatship will recall that in 1969, the outlook here was promising. Many people were thinking about quality of life, there were … Read more

An ET view of earth

The Only Planet of Choice: book blog Are the mysteries of life on earth explainable from other planets? Someone once said, when you try to understand a situation, start with the probable, move on to the unlikely, and if need be, look at the almost incredible. This book may feel to you as if it … Read more

Current Events

Hearts and Roots: adaptive communities in Herefordshire

Saturday October 15 at Castle Green Pavilion, Hereford 10-5pm Castle Green Pavilion, Hereford This is an exploratory space, inviting individuals and representatives of networks and organisations across Herefordshire to come together to consider the disruptions and opportunities of the next 5-10 years arising from climate change and other big issues of our times. We will use Deep Adaptation, Active Hope, Cultural Emergence and other methods to help us to feel into what’s ahead for us and our local communities. We will then explore practical responses for local communities and organisations, focussing on the topics we choose as a group. These could include nourishing community resilience, practical and emotional; local food supplies; decarbonisation; regeneration; and how to face into the combination of social and environmental issues. Limited numbers: please book soon to be sure of a place. Cost £5 to cover venue hire and refreshments, concessions £2. Book via Eventbrite. Bring-and-share lunch. For any queries, please contact Alan Heeks: alanheeks@gmail.com or 07976 602787.

Higher guidance and mutual support in uncertain times The worsening climate crisis is a valid reason for alarm, bewilderment, and other difficult feelings, and… this is also a chance to find spiritual insights, blessings and positive change amid the turbulence. The idea of the Fellowship Circle is to offer a safe and creative space to explore both of these aspects. Following a positive pilot session in March, this will be an ongoing monthly group, for up to 12 people. It is intended for anyone wanting to work through painful emotions about the climate crisis, and willing to explore spiritual approaches in the widest sense, which can help us find inner peace and outer purpose in these confusing times. Some of the approaches and processes we could explore in an ongoing group could include: Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, to help us share our painful feelings about the climate crisis, be witnessed, and move through them to new perspectives.Sharing relevant teachings, prayers and meditations from the faith traditions, for example Buddhist (e.g. Thich Nhat Hanh), Christian (e.g. Richard Rohr), Sufi (e.g. Llewellyn Vaughan Lee).Drawing on Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach for loving, compassionate ways to meet rising turbulence around us. This invitation is being initiated by Alan Heeks, who would like to work with a few others to hold and facilitate the group jointly. Alan has been facilitating groups for many years, with a focus on resilience and climate change since 2016, and is also involved in local climate responses, including the Bridport Climate Forums, Bridport Food Matters, and pilot Climate Cafés. See more at www.seedingourfuture.org.uk. Practicalities: The group meets in central Bridport, on Thursdays, 7-9pm. Requested donation £5 for room hire. Limited to 12 people: to enquire or reserve a place, contact Alan by email or on 07976 602787.

The Devon venue and facilitators for these programmes will be the same as the October 2021 group described below, and the content will be broadly the same. Details of how to book will be available in early 2023. For indicative details, click here. Please note that the course is only open to Tamar and Wessex Faculty members.

Featured Blog

Deep Adaptation and climate change: an introduction

Back in 2018, the sense of urgency about the climate crisis rose sharply, helped by several key voices, including Greta Thunberg, and Professor Jem Bendell. Whilst he strongly supports all efforts to reduce climate change, he cites extensive scientific evidence that it is too late to avoid serious worsening. Jem uses the term Deep Adaptation as a focus for facing and adapting to the major climate and related challenges of the coming years: I agree with his view that we need to find responses which go well beyond resilience in the way it is mostly understood. Deep Adaptation has attracted widespread support and involvement, and pushback, some of this from within the environmental movement. Jem’s work highlights the dilemma between giving people the bad news and alarming outlook full force, or softening the message to avoid turnoff. Both sides in this argument cite experience and psychological research that supports their view. It’s not a debate that can be resolved, but it highlights a key factor: that emotional responses, not factual information, are what limit many people’s engagement with the issue. As of 2022, Deep Adaptation is best summed up as a large informal network and body of online groups and resources (blogs, videos, special interest groups etc.) which have grown around Jem’s original paper published in 2018. This blog offers my view of the main elements of DA. You can get a good overview and entry routes at www.deepadaptation.info. To see Jem’s updated version of his original 30-page paper, click here. One of the many things I value in Jem’s approach is that he acknowledges the deep emotional and spiritual impacts of facing a bleak outlook, and points to ways to process these impacts, including faith, and “a vision of people sharing compassion, love and play.” Having led various groups on Deep Adaptation, I support the view that the first step in engaging with the climate crisis is to face and work through emotional responses, which may include fear, grief, bewilderment, and despair. I share Jem’s belief that one of the best ways to process these feelings is the Work that Reconnects, initiated by Joanna Macy. Having space to voice your emotions in a supportive group, and have them witnessed, is an alchemical step that enables people to move forward whilst living with their feelings, and I’ve seen it work repeatedly. For my summary of Joanna’s process, click here. A distinctive part of Jem’s outlook is his belief that societal breakdown is likely in many countries including the UK within the next ten years. The most probable trigger for this is global food shortages. He shares the view of many experts that a Multi Bread Basket Failure is possible anytime from now: this means major crop failure in the same year for the few countries and staples most world population depend on. Jem’s expectation of societal collapse puts him at the pessimistic end of the climate experts I’m aware of. At the 2019 Findhorn climate change conference (see my blog here), I asked some of these other experts for their view, such as Jonathan Porritt, Vandana Shiva and Charles Eisenstein: they don’t think societal breakdown is likely. My view is that there will be major turmoil in many countries, and huge stress on western Europe and elsewhere from refugees, as well as food shortages. I believe that emergency resilience should now be a high priority for households, communities and government on all levels: see my blog on this topic here. I have commissioned research on how UK food growing can adapt, see research report here. I am also leading pilot work on raising food security in my hometown of Bridport, and we are happy to share what we learn: see more here. Overall, DA has two major, related strands: Inner adaptation: exploring the emotional, psychological, and spiritual implications of living in a time when societal disruption/collapse is likely, inevitable, or already happening. Outer adaptation: working on practical measures to support wellbeing, ahead of and during collapse (e.g. regenerative living, community-building, policy activism). One of the most widely used DA frameworks is the 4R’s, summed up here using some quotes from Jem’s original paper: Resilience: recognising what we most want to keep, and skills to do so, including how to handle deep emotions such as fear and grief. Facing the emotional impacts enables us to act more clearly and coherently. Relinquishment: This “involves people and communities letting go of certain assets behaviours and beliefs where retaining them could make matters worse. Examples include withdrawing from coastlines… or giving up expectations for certain types of consumption”. We need to make voluntary choices where we can. Restoration: This “involves people and communities rediscovering attitudes and approaches to life and organisation that our hydrocarbon-fuelled civilisation eroded.” For example, the mutual support of local communities. Reconciliation: “With what and whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our mutual mortality?” This recognises that the pressures ahead may intensify polarities, extremism, scapegoating, and we need to get beyond them. The Deep Adaptation approach has attracted widespread support and participation: you can get a flavour of this at the Deep Adaptation Forum here. It has also attracted criticism from various quarters. You can see a good response to this in the article in Deep Ecologist by Naresh Giangrande, who is a Deep Adaptation Advocate, and was previously a leading figure in the Transition Network: see article here. Jem has published a blog with his response, and introducing the updated version of the original paper: see more here. If you start exploring Deep Adaptation online, you can soon feel overwhelmed. So here are a couple of suggestions on where to start. This 2020 blog by Jem gives an overview in a few paragraphs of how DA has evolved, plus a listing of his blogs, in categories, with links: click here. The Love in Deep Adaptation: a really well-considered piece about the huge focus in Western culture on individual needs and control, and how deep adaptation and […]