COMMUNITIES across the country and throughout Cornwall are coming together to watch and discuss the public information film ‘People’s Emergency Briefing’ on climate change and nature breakdown.

The film presents perspectives on changes to our weather and climate and poses a number of scenarios about the impact on key infrastructure such as food security, health, national security, nature, economics and energy supply.

Key to the proposition of the film is that it is watched in communities and that consideration is given - not only to our responses - but to possible actions that could be taken by the community at local, regional and national level.

The premise of the initiative is to inform and empower, to galvanise individuals and communities into action, to make the case that more people are worried than not about the changes they experience, and to demonstrate that collective action has influence on outcomes.

What this throws up, is the interconnection between individual, community, governmental responsibility, and action. What is the responsibility of politicians and each of us as individuals?

I grew up in a household informed by a tabloid newspaper, not a discussion of current affairs. I had to go back to night school as a mature student to get the qualifications to apply for higher education, as a first-generation university student in my family. I emerged into adulthood believing politics was not for me.

However, I came to understand, over time, that politics is not just about those people who appear in our newspapers and on TV, about politicians and policy, it’s about our individual and collective principles and how those intersect with the world within which we live.

I stood as a councillor to try to make a difference in my local area, motivated to work within my own sphere of influence having become overwhelmed by the geopolitical landscape over which I felt I had no influence. Wherever one stands on the spectrum of views on the content of this film, there is one thing that remains true for us all. Individually and collectively, by standing up we can influence, and if we stand up for what we believe we can make a difference.

My experience of this film is that it is not just about climate change, net zero or biodiversity loss, it is about ‘system change’ and the notion that the symptoms we observe are a measure of the intrinsically wider principles on which we have built our models of policy and governance.

My hope is that by engaging in community conversations, we can address what appears to be manifesting as a systemic breakdown of our world, not by fighting each other, or blaming those on the other side of the political divide, but by working together, across political boundaries, to rebuild the social, political and economic fabric of our world.

Because, wherever we stand, like it or not, we are all intrinsically bound to each other and to the natural world within which we all live.