The film ended. There was a heavy silence - a few deep sighs in the audience - before our Co-Director, Professor Tony Ryan, struggled to get his words out to lead the group discussion.
“The facts were not new to me. But what it did do was highlight the true scale of the problems - and just how bad it will be for my daughters, and their generation.”
It was an authentic, emotional response to the People’s Emergency Briefing. For the last hour we had watched leading UK scientists and senior officials issue stark warnings about the climate crisis. The data was clear: this is no longer a "future" problem. It is a threat to our weather, our wildlife, our food security, and our national stability.
The Experts’ Warning
“The climate we live in today is the least extreme climate we will experience in our lifetime.” - Professor Hayley Fowler (Professor of Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle University)
“For generations a stable climate has given us reliable harvests. But that era has gone.” - Professor Paul Behrens (British Academy Global Professor, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford)
“Tackling climate is central to our national resilience today. It’s part of our today’s security threat, not tomorrow’s.” - Lt. General Richard Nugee (Former MoD Non-Executive Director for Climate and Net-Zero)
Our Community Response
After each presentation, Chris Packham spoke to a broad range of people from the UK public, including some well-known names, such as actress Jennifer Saunders, comedian Adam Buxton, and entrepreneur Deborah Meaden. Their responses ranged from disbelief and frustration to fear and anger.
These reactions were echoed within the room during our group discussion, which focused on how, as an institution, we should respond to the climate emergency.
Here are just a few of the points raised during our frank and honest discussion:
“The one thing that I really liked about this is it was factual - there was no fluffing about. It also didn't put the focus on all of us as individuals to do something. It really faced the fact that actually, although we need to do our bit, it's the government that needs to do stuff, it's industry that needs to do stuff. [...] It's not saying you need to recycle your yoghurt pots. It's saying, actually, it's bigger than all of us and therefore we need to be lobbying our government.”
“Yes, there are the deniers and the sort of delayers and ignorers - the Trump people and the Reform voters and all the rest - but there's a chunk of people in the middle who, if they understood, would act more, and I think we need to try to engage with those people.”
“When I used to go on climate protest marches, one of our slogans was ‘system change, not climate change’ and I feel like this film really gets across that idea. When it comes to decision makers and policy makers, and people making decisions at institutions, including universities, they're often thinking that they don't want to act. But you're going to have to act. It's just whether you act in response to the crisis, or try to prevent it. Both options are going to have to involve systemic change.”
“It would be interesting to know how many people in this room know where their bank holds their money and what their bank invests in. Does anybody with a pension know what their pension's invested in? I did this about ten years ago and completely divested all my banking and everything. It's those nudges that we can do as individuals that have a much bigger macro effect on things.”
“The one thing that I am hopeful will come out of the Iranian debacle is everyone now realises the stranglehold that fossils have on the way we live and this will accelerate the move to de-fossilisation. They talk about decarbonisation in the film. What's actually important is de-fossilisation, not decarbonisation.”
The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures hosted the live film screening as part of the National Emergency Briefing campaign. There are live screening events taking place in villages, towns and cities all across the UK. Visit the website to find a screening event near you.