Contact Matt to get hold of a CD: mattgannicliffe@hotmail.com

It has always been the intention to develop Beyond the Tipping Point? into a format that can suit a wide variety of groups. I was particularly excited to be invited by Leeds SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) and Leeds City Council to run a day workshop for RE students between 14 – 15 years old to coincide with national ‘RE week’.

A key element of the day was its location: the prestigious Civic Hall Council Chamber, a grand debating hall where students would get an opportunity to take on the role of a city council: chairing debate, creating motions, voting and debating the issues that mattered to them. The workshop was attended by 45 students from 3 different schools around Leeds. The day was introduced by local councillor Geoff Driver and the Lord Mayor also made a vistit, spending lunch time with the students.

There were 2 objectives: First, to enable students to reflect on the different ways that the future is imagined in the context of climate change: which messages, stories, or narratives (both religious and secular) do we use? Second, to let the students practice their debating skills in communicating different approaches to climate change. The emphasis of the day was on how people have different views on the future depending on lifestyles, social backgrounds and religious views. Could the students put themselves in someone elses shoes? Could they understand what ‘taking action’ on the climate would mean from different viewpoints?

After watching Beyond the Tipping Point? students discussed the meaning of tipping points; whether or not such language encouraged taking action; and, using the ‘social barometer’ game (standing anywhere on the length of the hall between ‘strongly agree’ and ‘strongly disagree’) what they felt about what they as individuals, their schools, and their government were doing about climate change.

Forming small groups, the students then came up with a number of different practical motions for the general council to debate and vote upon in the afternoon. The motions overwhelmingly emphasised methods to reduce consumption: from electricity rationing cards to free public transport and solar panels. The winning motion was: “this house would apply government incentive programmes (such as free public transport) that benefits the environment”. It was felt that rewarding people financially was more effective than enforcing them through rationing.

In the afternoon each group then took on different roleplays based on 5 different backgrounds: a religious group, a direct action group, humanitarian aid campaigners from  small island nations, a group of geo-engineering entrepreneurs, and a local political party. Each group formulated their arguments and responses to the motion from the viewpoint of their appointed role. This meant that the students needed to consider what those group’s priorities, values and beliefs were and how they could get these across in a debate.

The motion debate, chaired by one of the students, was a fascinating and mature exchange of ideas. Teachers noted unamimously how respectfully the debate was conducted without any outside interference. Each group came up with a unique perspective, entering into the roleplay with passion!

My reflections on the students’ arguments and debates were a very keen and immediate sense of the ethical issues involved in climate change, without much prompting. They were aware, for example, of the different approaches to motivating environmental behaviour – rewarding on the one hand and punishing on the other. Several students also expressed a belief that acting on climate change on a global scale was very likely too little too late, and that the overwhleming problem was that it was always a minority of people taking real action on the climate. There was a prevalent view that ‘people are basically selfish’ and motivated by self-interest, but not overwhlemingly so: several students expressed the importance of acting not only for themselves but for the good of their children and others around them.

The most interesting exchange for me centrered around how the future was imagined, and whether taking action or spending money could be justified. Whilst some students believed that climate change was too late to change and was therefore probably a waste of resources, several responded that it was good to take action regardless of whether it would ‘stop’ climate change: the benefits to society would be positive and worth the effort anyway. So there was a keen sense of multiple reasons for taking action, despite the uncertainty of the future.

Verbal feedback from the students by the end of the day was also encouraging: students enjoyed the chance to have the views heard, and some felt encouraged to consider taking up ethics / philosophy / RE further down the line in their studies.

The views, notes, drawings and discussions from the day have all been collated and, as promised, will be presented in the form of some concrete proposals for action to Leeds City Council.

I was invited to speak at this event jointly organised by Shrinking the Footprint (The Church of England national environmental campaign) and the London School of Jewish Studies.

Present at the event were The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks and Lord Marland, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Energy & Climate Change. Participants included local religious leaders from a number of faiths; NGOs; local activists and members of the British Council.

The day focussed on practical suggestions for religious institutions to reduce their carbon footprint at the same time as providing ethical and theological inspiration for social change and environmental responsibility. Suggestions ranged from more interfaith dialogue and leadership, to greater use of religious buildings and increasing their energy

efficiency.

My presentation, using a short clip from Beyond the Tipping Point?, was on the subject of “the theological bases of environmental stewardship”. A short extract can be viewed here (coming soon…). I reflected on the language of apocalypse, time and eschatology in relation to climate change tipping points and what these meant for environmental steward

ship.

A short film and written report from the event are coming soon from Shrinking the Footprint.

The first Cardiff Philosophy Cafe film evening took place last Thursday (30 September) atMilkwood Gallery in Roath. Twenty or so people came along to watch Beyond the Tipping Point, a film directed by Stefan Skrimshire, which looks at the impact that images of the future can have on our capacity to think and act here in the present.

The film is divided into six chapters, and features contributions from academics, activists and others to help think through some of the issues that have arised to accompany the growing prevalence of the imagery of tipping points in discourse about climate change. The idea that a certain level of concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere might, by increasing average global temperatures, produce a sudden shift in the climate system has been taken by campaigners as the inspiration for a variety of “emergency” campaigns, such as 100 Months to Save the World. Others have seen the idea of tipping points as heralding a counsel of despair, given that the moment when a tipping point is passed, bringing an irreversible and potentially catastrophic change, is essentially unpredictable.

The film proposes that, rather than demanding instant decisive collective action, or justifying giving up, that the idea of a tipping point indicates the emergence of a new, and yet to be worked out, relationship between human beings and their own futures. The possibility that there is a “moment” in which action must happen, or the opportunity to act be lost forever, is discounted as a kind of political fantasy, replacing the reality of a world in which tens of thousands die every day from hunger and disease with a spectacle of citizens’ virtue versus politicians’ (and industry’s) vice.

Instead, the film offers questions about what it might mean for us to live in a world in which our confidence that we can control the future has gone for good. What would individual and collective action aim at, in such a world? Would we be aiming to influence the future, to prepare ourselves for what it might hold, or to express and shape a set of values or preferences that we take to be absolutely fundamental to who we are?

In discussion, participants debated these and other issues, particularly the problems that individuals face in attempting to act, as individuals, when any action towards either mitigating or adapting to climate change demands collective effort, with political and economic actors playing their part too. One particularly striking way of thinking about these problems was via an image of “links in the chain” – e.g. producers, distributors, and consumers of goods – with each “link” required to act, while at the same time presupposing that all other “links” are acting to change their ways of life simultaneously.

Another point raised – and perhaps a key one to consider in relation to the film’s treatment of tipping points – was that the image of the tipping point, when applied to how we think about social action (as opposed to natural processes over which we have no control), can be empowering and inspiring, and even get us beyond the to-and-fro between individuals on one hand, and the collective on the other. If we think of changes in consciousness, or patterns of action, as themselves subject to tipping points, then it may be that an intervention by a relatively small group of people, at the right time, in the right place, can make more of a difference than might initially be thought possible, producing an irreversible shift after which nothing appears the same. The fantasy of “the moment for action” might then be displaced by an appreciation of the potential for there to be many such moments, in many different places. Here, the future may open up before us again as something open to influence, though not in the way previously imagined.

Welcome to the website for the film Beyond the Tipping Point?

The film was launched on Thursday 15th July 2010 at Manchester Museum. Click here to view the trailer now.

“Thought-provoking”
Paul Vallely, The Independent

“Prophetic”
Alastair Mcintosh, author

“Should be seen by everyone involved in the struggle to prevent us reaching the point of no return.”
Leo Murray, Plane Stupid