Citizens Climate Lobby invite you to a screening of 2040 in Marlborough Town Hall

The local branch of Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK (see details below) is delighted to launch their election-year climate campaign with a screening of the astonishing film, 2040, which illuminates the brilliant possibilities of a post-carbon future.

The film will be shown on Thursday 23 May at Marlborough Town Hall, 18 years – almost to the day – since Marlborough hosted the first big public meeting on the climate crisis, with a presentation by the much-admired and passionately committed MP, the late Michael Meacher.

The big Town Hall was packed, and Meacher was thrilled by the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, saying, “It was the most amazing meeting I have attended for 10 to 20 years!” He shared his hope that what we were doing – collecting and following-up pledges of climate action – would be a model for the nation.

Since then, Marlborough has become a hub of activism on the climate and environmental crisis, with numbers of thoughtful and imaginative enterprises springing up, creating much of the communal spirit we were hoping for.

We were tremendously encouraged by the passage of the 2008 Climate Act, committing the UK to Net Zero by 2050 – having had great fun with our ‘Hundred Letters Campaign’ supporting it.

But, as we soon discovered, it will take more than individual or even communal action.

As you know, the commitments of the Climate Act are being flaunted, and on a larger scale, the climate crisis has only continued to escalate. The latest news was terrifyingly headlined in last week’s Guardian, “Scientists despair amid forecast of at least 2.5C temperature rise.”

Yet the good news is: It doesn’t need to happen – as this film shows.

2040 is a wonderfully heartening, fact-based vision of the astonishing and under-appreciated possibilities for human well-being, climate safety and environmental regeneration in a post-carbon world – with the right policies.

The film will be introduced by Professor Dave Waltham, a geophysicist at Royal Holloway, who spent the first part of his career guiding oil companies to new deposits (he knows that business). Now a dedicated campaigner against fossil fuels, Prof. Waltham’s main message is that we already have the solutions to climate change – we just need to implement the right policies.

This is the crucial, unheard story.

This message will be elaborated by an in-depth discussion of the necessary policy change (Can We Afford Net Zero?) led by Prof. Waltham in early October (date TBA). The film itself shows in brilliant detail only the beginning of the regeneration we can hope for. What is most needed is for people like us to spread the word!

Please join us on Thursday 23 May, 7pm for 7:30pm. Tickets cost £6 and include tea and some great cakes. Tickets are available from Marlborough’s zero waste shop Packaging Not Included in Hughenden Yard and the White Horse Bookshop on the High Street. Or email me at judy@citizensclimatelobby.uk.

Please do join us!

Judy Hindley
Citizens Climate Lobby UK

Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK is a member of Citizens’ Climate International (CCI), a worldwide organisation which campaigns for a carbon pricing system known as Climate Income (or Carbon fee and dividend) which has already been introduced in Canada, Austria and Switzerland.

Climate Income places a price on the carbon content of fossil fuels ‘upstream’ – as they are extracted or imported rather than at the point of use as in emissions trading schemes (ETS). The price is progressively raised at a steady rate so that energy suppliers, manufacturers and consumers are not only incentivised to decarbonise but are able to plan with certainty.

The carbon fee is returned to citizens as an equal dividend which mitigates the rising cost of fossil fuels while the economy transitions to progressively more cost effective renewable energy sources. Fossil fuels are priced out of the economy and consumers are protected during the transition.

For more details listen to Penny’s interview with Gina Cooke from Citizen’s Climate Lobby here (from 17 mins 35 sec).