Climate Conversations is a Southampton-based network of people who want to talk about global and local environmental change and respond through positive action. We urgently need a step change in the discourse around climate change and believe that such a change must be generated by community action. Our aim is to encourage conversations about sustainability across our community – from residents and community organisations to the council, businesses and universities.
Our current members include local representatives from Transition, Dangerous Ideas, the Southampton Climate Campaign, Clean Air Southampton and academics at the University of Southampton. We first came together as a group in November 2015 as part of a local response to COP21, the UN conference on climate change.
Our inaugural event took place on 27th November and focused on what we can do locally to tackle climate change. Community groups hosted stalls and gave 30 second pitches about their work. Paul Maple’s short documentary The Environmental Litmus Test was shown, Grant Sharkey provided music and Sarah Filmer sketched out the evening with graphic recording.
The keynote speaker was Alan Whitehead MP (Southampton Test) who spoke about the importance of local action on sustainability:
“It is down to us to make that important contribution… If the [rest of the world] knows that we in Southampton are determined, then this will help spur them on.”
This was followed by an audience and panel discussion that explored what Southampton residents can do to tackle climate change.
More recently we hosted a screening of the Naomi Klein documentary This Changes Everything. This was a chance to carry on the conversation about making Southampton a more sustainable city, and some great comments were made during the post-film discussion. One key idea is that we need to be engaging with people outside of the green movement, perhaps by re-framing the climate change debate. For example, air quality and fuel poverty are serious issues for our city, especially for areas with high social and economic deprivation.
We are keen to raise awareness of a range of local green issues, both through running events and also via the Climate Conversations website. We publish blog posts from a wide range of local community organisations and individuals on different themes relating to sustainability, such as air quality, urban food projects and local action on climate change. We were the first to report on fossil fuel divestment by the University of Southampton and have published important revisions of the number of premature deaths from air pollution in the city.
As well as informing and connecting people we’d like to provide the inspiration to make positive lifestyle changes. Our next project may be to collaborate with the cultural side of the city to create works of art or music relating to sustainability. We would love to work with local artists and musicians on interpreting local environmental issues.
In the meantime, please do join the conversation online. You can sign up to our mailing list, comment on our blog posts and connect with us through Facebook and Twitter. Do you have questions that we can put to local Councillors on sustainability? Do you have ideas for greening your neighborhood? Are you running a local event that we can promote? If we can all share our creative solutions for a sustainable, livable and healthy Southampton, we can make it happen.