Residents and Councillors Meet at Latest Cheam People's Emergency Briefing

Our second briefing on 1st October saw local residents and Sutton council members watch the People's Emergency Briefing together, with an interesting discussion on what it means for all of us.

A packed Church Hall viewing the Peoples Emergency briefing film — *Picture: John Triggs*

What people told us

It was wonderful to see a mixture of local residents and Sutton councillors at the meeting on October 1st, including council leader Barry Lewis, both listening to residents concerns and contributing to the discussion.

Many attending the meeting at St Dunstan's Church Hall in Cheam village described the film as informative and comprehensive and – as with our previous screening – lots of people were surprised it hasn't been shown on national TV yet or that we have “only seen snippets of this” and not the full picture in our mainstream media.

Lots of attendees agreed that this information needs to be shared with as many people as possible. There was a renewed concern for young people and how we can help them and some discussion on how we can persuade governments to bring this issue “into the open”.

There was also a lot of frank and honest discussion about what we as individuals can realistically do. We have some excellent recommendations for personal actions with the biggest wins on our website, and with your help, we are hoping to grow these suggestions into a useful and practical resource bank for local residents. There was even a constructive debate in one group about the trustworthiness of the information, demonstrating that all views are welcome and we are not talking in an echo chamber.

Longer reflections included:

"I wish I could galvanise the government".
"Many things are difficult to do as an individual, but moving to a mainly plant based diet is within your control”
“The easiest and most-effective change is ensuring your pensions and savings are invested in companies that are having a positive impact, instead of fossil fuel firms and others that are making the problem worse”.
"Although the first six presentations in the film were depressing, the last three actually gave me hope that we can overcome this."
"I wish some of those numbers at the end were more publicly available and talked about in the open more."
"We need to get to a stage where the changes we make are not presented as personal sacrifices."

Residents discuss what can be done locally — *Picture: Melody Thorpe*

If you’d like to know more, you can also watch the full briefings of each of the experts featured in the film. Each video is around 12 minutes long and focuses on a key issue like food security, energy, national security, extreme weather, etc.

What's next

We have more actions on the way, a bank of resources, initiatives and "things to know" to support you. Keep an eye on our news page for updates, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.

Thanks, too, to everyone who has volunteered to help. If you'd like to get involved and haven't yet, just get in touch and let us know.

Who we are

Cheam Climate Action brings together like-minded individuals and groups in Cheam to raise awareness of the climate and nature crises, and to work collectively to create the conditions for our local community to thrive in the face of them.

Our first initiative is a series of People's Emergency Briefings in the local area this autumn. From there, we hope to build momentum, bringing people together to develop plans and actions we can all take to tackle and adapt to the climate and nature crises.

The Cheam Climate Action team