Civic Revolution: 3 Connection

Protecting climate and nature with community power.

Civic Revolution is a mini audiobook series on planetary boundaries, social tipping points and civic power. It is adapted from the original book, Civic Revolution.

In this final audiobook episode, we adopt a new perspective and go on to explore the common ground that connects people. We discover the power and appeal of working together locally to protect us from climate breakdown and defend nature. Communities are seen in another light, as both beneficiaries and guardians of common natural resources – from clean rivers to clean air. We open the door to over a thousand inspiring, real-world examples of collective local action and community power, from all four corners of the UK, and invite you to step in. Adapted from the original book, Civic Revolution, and narrated by its author.

Excerpt from this episode:

“Everyone contributes to climate change and so we all hold some responsibility, and some power. This realisation, that together we can do something about the climate crisis, can be very empowering.

Taking individual action to be more sustainable in our everyday lives is absolutely worth doing and, if everyone did it, the positive impact from the sum of all these individual changes would be massive. What follows does not change that; it’s just that personal lifestyle changes are not enough for real structural change.

The good news is that most of the solutions already exist. To quote William Gibson, ‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.’ It’s up to us, together where we live, to copy what’s working.

This collective effort goes further, because it unites communities as both the beneficiaries and the guardians of shared resources. Actions like the ones we have explored in this episode embed people both in their natural environment and in the lives of others, to the benefit of everyone involved.”

To find out how we ended up in this predicament in the first place, listen to Jeopardy.