University ‘COP27’ Talks – the climate emergency

As global leaders prepared to head into the COP27 talks in November 2022, few had any idea how to tackle the twin crises of cascading ‘wild weather’ events and the larger existential threats of climate breakdown that could easily follow. This set of short videos summarizing a series of TED talks by Alan Simpson, delivered live at the University of Nottingham/UK in November and December 2022, outlines the new thinking needed to avert the worst outcomes and the re-founding of meaningful democracies that must come with it.

The talks, available HERE, covered the following six topics:

1. COP27 – Avoiding the Apocalypse

2. Food Security: let them eat what? Transformative approaches to localized supply.

3. Energy – Back to the Future: local democracy, public ownership and social inclusion.

4. The ’15 minute city’: connectivity and accountability as drivers of carbon reduction.

5. Greening everything – Circularity: putting back more than we take out.

6. From ‘me’ to ‘we’: a new paradigm for security.

Alan Simpson describes himself as ‘a recovering politician’. An MP for 18 years, he then worked as a consultant to Friends of the Earth and was Advisor on Sustainable Economics to the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell MP. He would still like to save humanity from itself.