I’ve had my first request for a speech!! Not a paid gig, of course, but since virtue is its own reward I’m gonna give it my best shot. The brief is “a climate speech to spring on a group gathered for local/community action but not yet directed to climate action…” It is, of course, anti-copyright. If there’s anything in here that is of any use, please take it. Hello everyone. This will be short and hopefully sweet. I want us to ask ourselves two questions. The first is obvious, and perhaps easy to answer. It’s “Why are we here today?” We all have our own answers for that, but I’ll force some of mine down your throats.. The second is a bit more tricky – “Where might we travel together from this moment?” So, the first question. Are we here to get famous? Are we here to get rich? [Laughter, I hope] Of course not. These fame and fortune carrots, that we are told are what everyone is chasing, are not what we have dangled in front of ourselves. Why are we here? To feel good about ourselves and our community. To put names to strangers’ faces, to feel like we belong, that we are useful. Some of those strangers will become acquaintances. Some of those acquaintances become new friends. Not Facebook friends, from halfway around the world at the click of a mouse. These are friends who will go to the corner shop for you when you can’t. Friends who’ll ready with a smile or a cup of sugar or another pair of hands when there’s furniture to move, or hanging pots to plant, children to mind. Why are we here? To learn about each other. To learn from each other. To use our skills to help each other. Did anyone force us to be here? Was there someone from the Town Hall, or Downing Street who told us to do this? Don’t be daft. So, didn’t have the carrot of wealth and fame, and we didn’t have the stick of compulsion. Essentially, we are here because we know we can make our own lives better. We know that if there are problems to solve on these streets, then nobody is better placed than us to solve them. We are the people with the desire and the local knowledge to sort things out. And we believe we can solve problems. And we believe we can have fun as we solve them. So, no-one has pelted me with rotten tomatoes from their allotment yet, so I’ll take that as a sign that I still have five minutes of your time. And I’ll use it to give my answer to the second question – where we go from here. I think we can be confident that energy prices are going to go up and up over the next ten years. And because we use energy to grow and transport food, that means that it won’t just be your leccy and gas bills that go up. It’ll be the weekly shop, for milk, bread and… for those of us who indulge, beer. We will all of us feel a pinch. For some the pinch may well be more like a bite. So I propose the following: that we gather the warmth, the relationships and the possibilities which we have discovered in ourselves and each other so far. That we harness those things to a decade-long local task. The task has three elements. I’m going to sandwich the abstract one in a “practicality sandwich.” First slice of bread: How do we grow more food locally? The abstract filling: How do we create increase the cleverness and self-confidence of us as individuals and as a community? Second slice of bread: How do we spend less bread on heating our homes in a world of really expensive energy? Do we insulate our homes better? Do we club together to buy or create cheap renewable energy? Is there something else that none of us has thought of yet? It’s an adventure where there are challenges we can’t yet name. So why do this? The motives the same and yet different from what we’ve done so far. I promise you that one thing is the same – we’re not going to get famous. But unlike what we’ve done so far this will be about saving money. And as an added bonus – and this the only time I’ve used the dreaded words – do something about climate change. And in the same way nobody told us to get together to do what we’ve done, nobody can tell us to do this. We have the skills – the mix of hands and heads – that we need to do this. It’s a choice that we can make that can benefit ourselves as individuals, as a community both local and further afield. I want to be part of making that happen, and I hope you do too. So, I’m done. I want to finish with a quote from Gilead , a novel by Marilyn Robinson, who once wrote a very powerful book about the environment. In Gilead there’s a line – and although it’s about men, it kinda applies to everyone – “To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear.” Thank you. See also Climate Rally Speech I’ll Never Give Gay Marriage Rally and Movement Building
