Rupert Read is Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (Twitter, Website, Wikipedia entry).

The Climate Majority Project has the mission to "accelerate effective, coordinated climate action by a broad-based coalition of citizens; from grassroots initiatives to high-level policy". Rupert left the relatively stability of academia to wholeheartedly focus on CMP.

Temperature records are falling, and there are signs that climate change is accelerating. For Rupert, the paradoxical insight is that now is not the time to get more radical, but to be ready to welcome more people into the climate movement. Experiencing the weird weather will be the best recruiter into climate action.

In the interview, Rupert unpacks the four strands of the Climate Majority Project:

1. Truthfulness. Shifting the public narrative about climate change towards the truth, through skilful messaging.
2. Cultures of awareness and resilience. Facing the truth together and taking action calls for inner resources and communities of support.
3. Serious action. Helping people from many backgrounds take meaningful action to help drive the systemic change we need.
4. Building shared understanding. Developing the identity and vision of the emerging mass movement, and helping people see that they are powerful together.

Core to the Climate Majority Project is depolarisation, because acting on climate over the long-term needs to be a broad project which reaches across classes, political orientations, identities.

As you might expect from a former philosophy professor, there is a great deal of nuance to Rupert's views. One is that there is no shortcut. Just as a technological fix to our predicament is an illusion, so is revolution. He's wants to create a future which is not based on illusion, which involves a transformation over time, it's going to take the time of political culture.

Rupert very much believes that, yes, the problem is overwhelmingly vast but when you start to see yourself as part of a huge coming wave of action, and you start to feel yourself as part of that, then it's exciting and energising you no longer feels so puny, or hopeless.

Collectively, we are in a time of call-and-response between how the geophysical situation is getting worse, but the human response is also accelerating. The Climate Majority Project is the kind of thing we need so the human response can deal with the geophysical situation, more than just reforming the status quo but not taking the shortcut of revolution, nor settling for ruins.

Links

Rupert's books here.
MP Watch
Community Climate Action
Wildcard
General Counsel Sustainability Forum
Cadence Roundtable
The Deluge By Stephen Markley -- here

More notes

Twitter: Powerful_Times

Website hub: here.

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Thank you for listening! -- David