Episode 49 : Impact of Repressive Laws on Climate Activism: Insights from Dr Nigel Gould-Davis and Prof Rupert Read

Ever wondered how climate justice ties into our daily lives and decisions?

 We sit down with Dr Nigel Gould-Davis and Professor Rupert Reed, leading academics in their respective fields, to delve into this urgent topic.

 They dissect the impact of hasty legislation, exploring how it can lead to oppressive outcomes for climate campaigners. They shed light on the disproportionate effect of the climate crisis on women and discuss the profound need for imagination to bring about systemic change. 

Brace yourself for an intense exploration of China's environmental vulnerabilities and the potential of ecological diplomacy in combating climate change. 

They also examine the transformative promise of regenerative agriculture as we move away from harmful industrialization. 

Listen in as they address the grim reality of repressive laws, and their impact on climate activism, while emphasizing the importance of depolarization for creating progress.

 Lastly, they critically scrutinize the COP process, suggesting a radical shift towards more effective alternatives.

 So, tune in and join this important conversation on collective action and transformation towards climate justice.

Chapters

• 0:00 Collective Action and Climate Justice
• 14:55 China's Vulnerability and Ecological Diplomacy
• 24:40 Repressive Laws' Impact on Climate Activism

Transcript

Speaker 1 is Madalena Alberto 

Speaker 2 is Nigel Gould-Davies 

Speaker 3 is Rupert Read 

Description
MA:  1: 0:00

Welcome to The View Magazine's Rebel Justice Podcast. This week, we continue to listen to the conversation between Dr Nigel Gould-Davies, former Ambassador and academic, and Professor Rupert Reed of the Climate Justice Project. In part one of this two-part Climate Justice Podcast, we spoke at length about Rupert's campaigning epiphany the realisation that climate is his life's calling. A piece he wrote called This Civilization is Finished went viral and led to him devoting his life and energy to raising awareness about the dangerous ground our civilization is on. We spoke about his beginnings with Extinction Rebellion being arrested and how that has led to forming his own Climate Majority Project, a more voluntary, collective and less polarizing approach to climate action. We looked at previous examples where unlikely alliances have been formed to face down the biggest political and healthcare threats, such as after the Second World War, in the time of national government or during the time of the COVID pandemic. This week, we take a deeper look into some of the dire consequences of ill-thought out and hastily enacted legislation, resulting in the alarming encroachment of our rights and the oppressive judicial outcome campaigners are facing. We also discuss how the climate crisis is affecting women.

NGD: 2: 1:19

It sounds like as much as anything, in order to begin to tackle a task as enormous as system transformation, that what you're calling for is a new act of imagination, of challenging the limits of what is possible and creating a vision of something that has not been thought of as achievable before. Your examples are very interesting the Second World War and, much more recently, covid, of course. Now it seems to me that there's a difference is that in both those cases, we saw the government take on extraordinary powers, and you're hinted at national government a moment ago suggests that there may be party or thinking which is moving in that direction as well. But you're also, I think, more fundamentally talking about a collective civic or societal approach to this. And one challenge, as you know, with environmental issues of this kind, is the collective action problem the fact that, even if people want to save the environment, each individual action, each individual decision, for example, to fit a clean engine or drive an electric vehicle or an energy saving light bulb or something, won't on its own have more than a miniscule effect. You need a large number of people to make small decisions. And the second one, as you are hinted at a moment ago, is the shadow of the future, that this is, as it were, a slow and steady emergency. It's not like an invasion that will reach out shores next month. So the question is how do we mobilize around that? So take you back to one of the examples used earlier. You talked about insurance and try to generalize that point, because the thing about insurance is that it's a market-based approach, a market-based mechanism, and we've seen other civic regulation movements use these effectively and increasingly so. So we are all consumers. We can make choices about what we buy or what we refuse to buy. Most of us are investors, even if we don't realize it. We have pensions, right, that's invested, so disinvestment decisions. And then, finally, most of us are employees, so we can choose to work in one company, one sector or another and on a whole range of ethical issues. That kind of approach consumer decisions, investor decisions, even kind of employee decisions is putting pressure on companies to improve their standards and reform their conduct. Is this again, if we get back to the question, well, we as individuals practically can do. Is there a scope here for tackling the climate crisis in these terms?

RR 3: 4:07

Yeah, absolutely so. There's a lot there. So let's start with the collective action problem. Of course, you're exactly right, the climate crisis is kind of the ultimate collective action problem. It makes it very, very difficult to address because, from a kind of mitigation and prevention perspective, the easy thing to do is to hope that other people are going to act and not act yourselves. And, of course, if everyone does that, then we are absolutely and completely stuffed, and right now, that is kind of what's happening. There are, by the way, of course, other dimensions of this where the problem is not so desperate. So, in regard to adaptation, there are more short term interests and more immediate interests to taking adaptational action, which that's another reason why I think that actually an intelligent focus on adaptation, what I call transformative adaptation it's not just me who calls it that is actually a key way into the broader problem. But yeah, fundamentally there's a collective action problem, which implies that international action has to have a role and states have to have an important role. But, as you say, also, what we are offering in the Climate Majority Project is a kind of program or theory of change which is largely bottom-up, which is largely to do with citizens collectively taking various kinds of initiatives. Now, of course, one crucial reason why we think that that is the way to go is the simple fact that right now, governments are pretty chronically letting us down. The COP process, in my view, is frankly almost becoming a kind of a parody, a sad shadow of what it should be. Cop28 is going to be probably sort of the worst COP of the whole lot, at a time when we need it to be the best. I don't have any faith in the COP system at all anymore. I think it should be exited from and abrogated, but what I think should replace it ultimately and ultimately, hopefully, we could mean as soon as possible would be something that actually did have some potentiality at working. What we need is for governments which are of good faith in this matter to start to name how dire the COP system is and consider breaking away and building something better themselves. But of course, that isn't going to be very many governments initially because, as I say, we know that most governments are just way off the pace on this issue. So a key reason why the Climate Majority Project is essentially a bottom-up project is because that's where the potential for a change is right now, and what we need to do is to try to co-create a situation where, in two, five, ten years' time, governments do not find it as easy as they currently do to act in a climatically and ecologically disgraceful manner. It's going to take some time. The Climate Majority Project strategy is a medium-term strategy. People sometimes say, yeah, well, we don't have time for that. But as I said earlier, look, there just is no quick fix. If there was, you know, I'd be all for it, but there just isn't. There is no tech fix, there is no elite fix, there is no pure fix just through the radical flank alone. There isn't going to be a worldwide eco-socialist revolution tomorrow or anything like that. So we have to take our time as quickly as we can. But we have to take our time and we have to do stuff which is actually strategic and which actually has a real chance of being effective. This means that, yeah, there is going to be a rising tide of disasters for some considerable time to come. Things are going to get worse for a long time to come. These are facts. They have to be dealt with, they have to be processed and they have to be turned into energy. You know they have to be turned into power. When one comes to terms with the fact that our governments have let us down so chronically and that we're moving into a more and more unstable world for a long time to come, that can lead one into a space of a great deal of anger and fear and grief and determination, and those things can all mobilize and transform into action, and that is a key part of what needs to happen, more than it already has happened, although you know, we saw some of that emotional energy and manifestation in Extinction Rebellion with Gretchenberg. This is part of the key to the success, such as it has been, of those initiatives, and what we're saying in the Climate Majority Project is that same kind of capability needs to be democratized. It needs to be for everyone. Anyone who is now feeling some climate anxiety and that's most people well done, that's rational, welcome to the real world. And what we now need to do is to process that climate anxiety together into a determination to act in all the ways that we can. So, yes, there is absolutely room as part of this for market-based elements. For example, right now in the insurance industry, as you mentioned, we need to be looking to green our pensions. There's a very important role that can be paid by young people. In saying to corporate recruiters, I'm not willing to work for you unless you, and you know, then there's a sort of wish list or ask to do with being a sort of climatically nature-oriented, responsible corporate citizen, et cetera, the phenomenon of conscious quitting, I think, is certain to increase. That's people leaving their work because they no longer comfortable with it, and that, too, exerts pressure on corporates and you know. To go back to what we were talking about earlier, the big picture here is that, as you say, what we're talking about is necessarily, ultimately, system change. It is transformation, it is civilizational transformation. What comes out the other side is going to look very different from what we currently have. The continuation of anything like the status quo is not an option, because the longer it gets pursued, the higher the chances are that we're going to simply collapse, and what we need is through topian style visions. What we need is realistic visions of better futures, or at least of OK futures, in which we get to get through the coming profound and challenging transformations that will be forced upon us, and we do that in as wise way and as aware way, as ethical and humane way, as loving way as is possible. That is another way of putting the wonderful challenge that is taking shape for all of us together in this time. Thank you.

NGD: 11:05

There's a lot that's absolutely fascinating and your critique of the COP process, the Conference of Parties process, just been the most important For him for international cooperation on climate issues the some years. Your critique is a very, very striking and clear one, and one of your suggestions there is that it should be replaced by something Better, more effective, but that might at least initially involve fewer countries. And that takes us into the question international politics. And seems to me this is.  Perhaps the most difficult part of a of a so-called wicked problem. The all countries contribute to global warming and some of them are not democratic, they're not inclusive, they're not the kind of countries where it's easy to organize kind of grass roots consensus from below. So you have china, which is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. You got major producers, russia, middle eastern countries as well. How can we begin to think about extending, adapting, spreading the approach that you propose to countries where governments are inherently suspicious of hostile towards inclusive movements, waves from below of the kind that you are calling for?

RR: 12:37

Yeah. So the question you ask that it's an obvious question. It's a very pertinent question. It's a very difficult question. One place to start in relation to it is to say, even if we don't have any answer to it whatsoever, we still have a responsibility to do the right thing within our own fears of power and influence and, at minimum, we need to have answers to questions like what did you do once you realize how bad the situation was questions that children, grandchildren and nephews and nieces, etc. They will ask us if they're not already doing so. One of the reasons why the school climate strikes were somewhat successful is that they kind of consisted in a lot of children around the world, millions and millions of children and young people, asking those questions. I was at the world economic forum in davos In early 2020 and I can't I can't tell you how many cms etc. Were literally saying well, you know, I wasn't really interested in the climate until very recently when my teenage daughter started hassling me about it every friday morning at breakfast, before friday's future March, etc. So we have to do the right thing regardless, and that includes dimensions I was talking about briefly earlier, such as adaptation, which salient and crucial, no matter what goes on for good or for ill In relation to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and on the world stage. Turning directly to the to the heart of your question, as I say, it is very difficult and I don't know if I really have a great answer to it, but let me have a go. I start by noting you mentioned china that china has a declared ambition to become an ecological civilization. Now, one doesn't know, you know, how much weight to give to that. A lot of what china is doing in terms of the belt and road initiative, in terms of the number of coal fire power stations they have, etc. Doesn't really seem to support that aspiration. What china knows that there is no future for it without a different path for it and for the rest of the world. China is very vulnerable in terms of water. China is vulnerable in terms of desertification. China has an absolutely vast population, of course, to feed and water, etc. Etc. China has faced pressure from within in recent years from its population who, many of whom, wanted to become materially better off. But they're now also facing pressure from within visa, the issues such as air quality and land grabs. This is one reason why, for example fascinating the chinese government basically banned the film avatar when it first came out. It's it's pretty clear that the reason they banned it was they were worried it might ignite and land revolts and, more generally, environmental actions, that we think of china as a highly highly controlled society. What are you doing to tell a society? And it is. But it would be a complete illusion to think that the chinese government is not worried about the opinions of its own Citizens. It is, and they do engage in various kinds of eco action and political activism, even, and it sometimes is successful on a local level, even on a national level. Look at the way that very strict cover policy was finally overturned as a result of citizen pressure. So is the pressure is relevant even in horrible Repressive regimes. That's one important thing to say. Another important thing to say is these oppressive regimes, in response to various kinds of potential actual citizen pressure, and perhaps also through Enlightened reasons of their own, are in some cases aware that an ecological future is no future and we have to try to make this aspiration in china for an ecological civilization. We have to contribute wherever we can towards helping that. One way that we can contribute Is by providing a kind of lead and by not kind of stupidly saying things like well, we in industrialized, but you shouldn't all be allowed to do so unless and to the extent that we are actually willing to be serious about moving beyond industrialization ourselves, which is, I think, something we should take more seriously. In other words, I think that a wonderful way that we could lead in countries like the UK would be by supporting organic agriculture and regenerative agriculture, by enabling more people to return to the land, by starting to question some of the values which have led our civilization into the disastrous cliff edge that it's now in. In other words, if we were actually willing to lead down a different path, then other countries would be less determined to follow us down the disastrous path on which we have been pathfinders. And finally, what I would say is that if I have a real hope for the future for us to, as a species, avoid civilizational collapse and instead to transform voluntarily and collectively and it's going to be very hard, and you know I wouldn't luckily I'm not a betting man, but I wouldn't necessarily, you know, literally bet on it but if I have a hope for such a future, then one of the places in which that hope is vested is in the concept of the emerging concept of ecological diplomacy, what part of what we need in the future is for countries to recognize that international geopolitics simply cannot any longer be a kind of zero sum game, a set of kind of negotiations of collective action problems in a selfish way, that we need to actually think and act way beyond that, in a way which is for the broader interest, because if we don't, there will be a series of collapse events over the next century, and that is not to the benefit of anybody. So ecological diplomacy essentially means that that sort of ecological sensibility and a sense of our absolute dependence upon our ecosystems becomes, has to become, a foundation for international action, for diplomacy, for the way that governments think and act towards each other. And at the moment, ecological diplomacy is little more than a sort of theory and an aspiration. But I think it's highly likely that if there is to be a non-collapsed future for humanity, it will include a key, powerful role for acting according to the emerging principles of ecological diplomacy.

NGD: 19:42

As a former diplomat myself,  I'm very sympathetic to that view. Could you say something about the role of gender equality and climate change? What is the relationship between these two issues and, following on from that, could there be a distinctive role for women and girls to play in helping to achieve the system transformation that we need?

RR: 20:12

Well, that's a super question. It's not necessarily a question which I'm highly expert in, so I'll restrict myself to a couple of remarks which I do know something about. One is the well known fact that if we are to stop human populations from endlessly rising and as they do, say they they fragile lives are planned to take living space etc away from non human beings. If we are to succeed in doing that, then the best way we know to help bring that kind of future about where the human population finally stabilizes is to educate women and girls and to create a future in which it's not the case that women and girls feel that their only role in life is to have a family, and preferably a large family. I think that's that's really important. It's the future has to be a place in which there is more mindfulness about family size. Empowering women is a crucial dimension of that. In fact, just to kind of expand on that point slightly further, I think that a big wave of the next decade is going to be something emerging from the shadows, which is in the shadows but is very much happening now, which is more and more people in countries like this one certainly questioning whether they want to bring children into the world, not just because they don't want to put more pressure on the world's ecosystems, but because they're worried about the world that they're bringing those children into and they're unsure whether those children may, for example, have to endure a civilization collapse, may die, etc. Etc. So consciousness about population and, as a crucial part of that, empowerment of females, is one critical dimension of our time. The second remark I would make is coming at this from a sort of philosophical point of view. I think that it is very important to pay real attention not just to Indigenous wisdom and to the wisdom that we can garner from traditional peasant societies that continue to exist in some parts of the world, but to the wisdom of women and to the concepts of what women may have to contribute, more than men, to the values of civilisations that are workable. So I'm thinking of values that are traditionally gendered, feminine, such as care. For me, care is an absolutely crucial dimension of human being. It shouldn't just be the preserve of women, but women have been its traditional upholders and possibly partly for that reason, it hasn't been as respected often as certain kinds of male-identified kind of projected power, including violence and so on and so forth. Care is at the heart of what it is to be a mammal, at the heart of what it is to be a human being. It's a beautiful thing, and if there is going to be a human future, it will be a future in which values of care and practices of care are absolutely central, and that implies listening to wisdom that has been traditionally coded female and to parts of the rich foment that has been feminism, such as maternal feminism, versions of feminism that have emphasised virtues and practices that patriarchal societies have not been good at Making central and have, if they've cared about them at all, they've tended to restrict those practices or those values to a sort of sequestered, secondary kind of women's space. Really, what care feminism, in my view, and maternal feminism, if you will needs to be, is something which is actually quite central to the kind of values that we need and the kind of future that we need. I'm thinking, for example, of the work of Carol Gilligan, who some listeners may be aware of, but I'm sure that the kind of general points I'm making about the importance of care and love for humanity and of how this is something which requires us to respect and listen to women and what they have to offer, I'm sure that that's an idea which will resonate with quite a lot of listeners.

NGD: 24:40

So, Rupert, a climate majority does not take part in illegal and disruptive protests, but you'll be aware of some of the legal issues that have arisen recently in regard to the prosecution of those who do. A particular case in point concerns another environmental organisation, insulate Britain, whose goal is to achieve the insulation of all British homes by 2030, and several dozen activists took part in a blockade of the M25, two hours or so. A series of trials were conducted and they were instructed by the judge that they could not explain to the jury what their motives for their actions were. But that was one concern. They, in effect, sort of gagged in the courtroom. The second arose when a retired social worker, trudy Warner, stood outside the court holding a placard saying jurors, you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience. She now faces charges of contempt of court and potentially a two-year prison sentence. These developments have evoked a great deal of concern and even the suggestion that the government and the legal system's response to climate protest is catalyzing a more far-reaching set of restrictions on civic rights in this country. Could you share your thoughts about this?

RR: 26:25

Absolutely so. I want to make three points about this. The first and by far the most important point is that I think it should be obvious to anyone of good conscience that these developments are concerning and that they should be resisted. This government are proving extremely repressive. The way they're cracking down on climate protesters and others is deeply concerning. We're drifting further and further towards being some kind of police state. That is not an exaggeration. That is obvious, actually, if you listen carefully to the things which the UN is saying, which Amnesty International is saying, if you look at the ways in which Britain is slipping down the rankings of being a free and civil country and the USA, by the way, is experiencing similar kinds of difficulties. But in this country we're doing particularly badly in terms of being illiberal, and this must be resisted. But there are two other points I want to make as well. One is that in this context, where these repressive laws are in place and where the Labour opposition are saying they will not repeal these laws, we have to be realistic that many people are going to be put off from undertaking action which is potentially liable to criminal sanction etc. And that, in a way, makes the climate majority project theory of change all the more important. In other words, it's going to be more difficult for the foreseeable future for the radical flank to attract supporters onto the streets etc. When people know what they will risk if they engage in that support. And that's just an extremely kind of pragmatic, ruthlessly realistic observation on where we're now at. And my third and final point also is that we do have to ask that some responsibility be taken, not just by the instigators, who are obviously the main responsible actors here. In other words, the main blame for this move towards illiberality rests fairly and squarely with the government and also with the media and also, frankly, with the opposition. But we must also acknowledge that it wasn't exactly a surprise when the government did this. You know, if you have mass nonviolent direct action, you need to expect this kind of response. And in particular, if you have mass nonviolent direct action that is losing public support and irritating very large numbers of the public, you are going to get this kind of response. And again, that is just a point of pragmatic politics. So I'm not saying, obviously I'm not saying it's just up oil's fault and insulate Britain's fault and the fault of the Canning Town Rail protesters, that this has occurred, that these changes have occurred. The main fault clearly rests with the government, but it was completely predictable that the government would do this in response to mass, unpopular public disruption, and that's why there is a great responsibility on all protesters, on all activists, always to think carefully about the consequences of their actions, and I'm sorry to say that sometimes that hasn't happened in this country in the last few years. In Extinction Rebellion in 2019 in April, we thought very carefully about what we did and we calculated it all very carefully to force a difficult national conversation successfully and, of course, a lot of people. The point was that a lot of people were initially enraged or annoyed or whatever, but then quite a lot of them got through that to the other side. But some of the actions not all, but some of the actions that have occurred since the radical flank of undertaken have not been carefully calculated in that way. They have been designed, it seems, merely to attract attention and to disrupt, and that's why I think it was a smart move for Extinction Rebellion to say that they are no longer going to disrupt the public in January of this year, and we in the Climate Majority Project are welcome to that move on their part and that's also why we think that now is the time for well, for the emergence of the climate majority. This is the crucial thing that needs to happen now, and it is starting to happen, and this is also why we put depolarisation very strongly in our DNA and in our theory of change. There is no way we get to really make progress on the climate calamity that is coming unless we manage to find ways of effectively setting aside most of our differences. Depolarisation is crucial, and actions that deliberately polarise in the way that some of Insulate Britain's and JustUpAll's actions have done are, in that way, I'm sorry to have to say, actually not helpful and not productive, and some people aren't going to be very happy with me saying that, but it's basically just common sense and obvious. And JustUpAll are trying to achieve a laudable objective of no new oil in this country. Any sane person can now see that that's what we ought to do, but they have failed to achieve that objective. They have lost the battle, and it's possible that part of the reason why they have lost is because they have polarised opinions so much. So those are my three points. First, and by far the most important, these illiberal laws must be resisted. Second, the fact that they are there means that there will be some people who are thinking well, actually, I'd rather then take a kind of new moderate flank climate majority type route with my action. Thank you very much. And thirdly, although the main responsibility for this illiberality rests firmly with the government and their backers, on this, some responsibility must also be taken by those who have undertaken actions where they knew full well that this would be the kind of response that the government and the police and so forth would look to undertake in response.

NGD: 32:34

Rupert, thank you very much. That makes good sense to me. You did hint that this is not only a matter of the way that trials of protesters are being conducted, but also the government's own actions and, in particular, the introduction of new legislation. And I think there's a lot of concern now directed at the latest public order act that was passed just a few months ago, and I think one of the concerns there is that it appears to give much further reaching powers to the police to stop even legal protests, even those that would cause more than minor disruption very minor disruption in the words of the act. Is there a concern that even the more moderate, depolarizing, consensus-based approach could be intimidated by what seem far-reaching restrictions, restrictions indeed that have been strongly criticised by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights?

RR: 33:43

Sure that's possible. I'm not sure it's particularly likely. The kinds of things that we do in the Climate Majority Project probably are unlikely to fall foul even of these highly repressive laws, but it can't be ruled out. As I said in my reply to the previous question, britain really is now on a slippery slope to becoming a kind of police state through a death by a thousand cuts. That really is not an exaggeration. As you say, the UN and other extremely reputable bodies have expressed their grave concerns about this legislation. This legislation is wrong. It should be withdrawn. But it's unlikely it will be withdrawn unless the public are brought quite thoroughly on the side with the cause of the activists etc. Who are, absolutely rightly, deeply concerned about the situation that we are in, very, very deeply concerned. And how is that going to happen? How is that bring on side going to happen? Well, we think it could happen through something like the Climate Majority approach, and that is why depolarization is so central to our whole approach.

NGD: 34:50

A final question and a more personal one. You just used the word love there a moment ago. Earlier in our conversation you referred to the importance of love forming a consensus, being done in a loving way. That was an intriguing turn of phrase. Now you're a Quaker and I was just wondering whether you could offer some thoughts about how your faith has influenced your approach both to the theory and the practice of environmental action.

RR: 35:25

Hmm, well, thank you for asking that. I will do that. I'll preface it with one or two more general remarks about religion and spirituality, if I may. I think that the time that we are moving into and I intend to be writing about this over the next year is a time where we will see a burgeoning of, in a very broad sense, eco-spirituality, nature-spiritualities, what some call green religion or dark green religion. I think that as the crisis deepens as it is certain to, even if we start to get moving in a better direction for some time to come, then people are going to be looking for the values, practices, ways of being with, or remembering or respecting the world, the place that they live, the other beings they share the world with, etc. In ways which have been neglected in most monotheistic religion and that have been trampled on by the values and practices that have been central to neoliberal, globalized capitalism. So I think we are entering into a time where the kind of question you just asked me is going to be of more and more interest to more and more people In terms of the roles that extant large-scale religions have. I made a critical remark a moment ago about monotheisms, but I should also say that I think this process is happening within the monotheisms as well, and in fact, it's pretty obvious that it is to at least some extent. So you had, for example, the magnificent document, the Lodato Si, written by the Pope several years ago now. It really is one of the great works of ecological writing of modern times. Something similar is starting to take shape in the Islamic world, very interestingly, there's going to be a sort of counterpart to the Lodato Si produced by Islamic scholars of religion and the environment in the next 12 months or so, and I think this trend is also probably going to grow. Now turning to my own orientation to this. So yes, I'm a member of the Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends. I'm also a sometimes Buddhist practitioner. I think that there is a lot that Eastern wisdom has to offer in relation to the civilizational crisis we find ourselves in, and I think it's quite likely that, as the crisis deepens, that China, for example, will rediscover some of that, and that India will rediscover some of that which has been neglected in the in the rush to materialism in recent years and in terms of what my Quakerism has brought to the kind of stuff we've been talking about in this podcast. Well, so one place to start there is with the central Quaker value of simplicity. And well, a simpler life is a life which is makes it much more likely that we'll not collapse our own, everybody else's lives In the future. I think that the sort of stripped down form of religion that Quakerism is with you don't have a minister, there's no, there's no creed, there's no form of service. It is itself a very sort of simple and direct thing. And that connects for me with the way in which Quakers Council of Simplicity and Council, of course also famously Peace and Council are kind of a community. I mean, quakerism is a sort of more perhaps than many other churches or faiths, if it's anything. It is a kind of collective mode of meditation, of reflection, of worship, and that is something which I have much valued in Quakerism over the years. So, you know, if I wasn't a Quaker, would I have done everything that I've done? You know, I don't know, I can't really tell you, but what I do know is that Quakerism and, as I say, you can find somewhat similar orientations in engaged Buddhism and even in the great monotheism themselves Quakerism provides, I think, some help on the kind of path we need to go down. That's perhaps one reason why Quakerism has been an active influence on the Green Party, on various nonviolent direct action movements, and my bet is it will continue to be an influence on these kinds of things in the very challenging but also, as I say, I think, actually deeply hopeful years that we are about to move into.

NGD: 40:17

How do our listeners find out more about the Climate Majority Project?

RR: 40:22

That's easy. Go to climatemajorityprojectearth.

NGD: 40:27

That's wonderfully simple and I'm sure there will be a lot of interest from our listeners in learning more about all of this. Rupert, thank you for a truly wonderful and rich and wide-ranging discussion. We really appreciate it Well.

RR: 40:41

I've much enjoyed the conversation, Thanks.

MA: 40:45

And this concludes our podcast for today. Tune in for the second part of this very important topic. Nigel and Rupert. Thank you for taking us on this journey down the history of Rupert's climate action history. We need to all think about how we can change our corner of the world and what we can do to try and transverse the enormous damage being done on a daily basis by being responsible for our own actions and lobbying for those in power to make better energy efficiency choices. Thank you for listening to this special episode on climate justice. You can subscribe to the View at theviemagorguk. Follow us on our social media. We are Rebel Justice on X, formerly Twitter and the View Magazine on Instagram, linkedin and Facebook. Thank you.