If you can cast your mind back to 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic and the time of the last days of the government of Theresa May, you may remember that as well as Brexit being in the news, there was also a lot of talk in the media and society in general about the climate crisis. Greta Thunberg was on the way to becoming the most famous teenager in the world and all over the country councils were declaring climate emergencies.
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic and other priorities took over. The climate crisis started to fall from the top of the news hierarchy, while fossil fuel industries and other very wealthy and disingenuous characters put out ever more dangerous misinformation, trying to lull the public into a false sense of security.
So, it is then that the new National Emergency Briefing film can act as an antidote to the complacency and remind us all of the importance of dealing with the Climate Crisis.
To learn more about the National Emergency briefing film I asked Judy Seymour from Tyneside Extinction Rebellion about it.
What is the National Emergency Briefing film about?
“Tackling climate is …part of today’s security threat, not tomorrow’s” says Lt. General Richard Nugee. It’s November 2025 and the National Emergency Briefing on Climate and Nature is taking place in Westminster Hall, attended by over 1,500 politicians and cross sector leaders. Nine scientists and other experts set out the implications of climate and nature breakdown. The task is for a prime time, multi-channel televised national emergency briefing, launching a major public engagement plan to ‘cut through disinformation on the crisis we face and how we need to deal with it.’
Feedback is overwhelmingly positive: people speak of facts that are hard to hear, but are grateful we’re finally being told it as it is.
Why is it so important and why should people get along to see it?
In April 2026 the People’s Emergency Briefing film launches, bringing this proposal to communities across the UK and offering space for people to think about their local area. More than 2,000 screenings are currently being organised by local groups, and people are responding; two weeks from the launch many of them are sold out. The film has been carefully crafted: it makes no compromises when dealing with hard truths. It’s also meticulous in its message that together, we have the capacity to avert societal collapse and in doing so make lives that are more shared, communities more resilient and gain social and economic solidarity by taking “ a whole of society” approach.
What should individuals do in response to the film?
According to a recent report from the Climate Majority Project, ‘around 87% of people in the UK express concern about the planetary crisis, yet roughly 55 per cent rarely talk about it.’ The media doesn’t talk about it much either, for fear of depressing its readers. Politicians respond to constituent’s concerns with words to allay our fears. Because 55% rarely talk about it, people openly taking action appear unusual, ‘not like me’. And so concern is under-represented. Film screenings make space for people across the UK to hear the facts and with ‘clear-eyed awareness’ (as conceptualised by Joanna Macy, scholar of systems theory and deep ecology) go on to think together about what they’ve heard: the first step of a journey to connection, empowerment and action.
What should governments do about the growing climate crisis?
A January 2026 Joint Intelligence Committee report reframes environmental breakdown as an urgent systemic national security emergency.
The NEB calls for government to treat the climate and environment crisis as a threat equivalent to a world war, needing a comprehensive whole systems approach to policy planning and resource allocation. No departmental silos. Goal setting for 20 years ahead ( e.g. Net Zero by 2050) lacks the necessary ambition. Policies backed by public finance to grow an infrastructure for resilience – in food production and energy systems for example. Economic policy serving environmental restoration. Nature is not a nice-to-have; we won’t solve the climate crisis with a natural environment on a path to ever greater depletion.
Government supported place-based solutions arrived at through citizens assemblies giving us connection, empowerment and collective agency. Government and citizens working together.
How can governments across the world deal with the axis of obstruction of Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States?
Jennie King (Director for climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue) points to global action aimed at undermining democracy via disinformation about climate breakdown, a proven tactic particularly when framing the narrative as one about class and privilege.
From studying the tools of direct democracy, I think it’s clear that people are more likely to support what they’ve helped to create. And in an era characterised by exponential growth in inequality of income and wealth it doesn’t take imagination to anticipate most people’s answer to the question ‘which side are you on?’ Creating the mechanisms through which government and people work together would be a welcome alternative.
How can we work across party lines to build a just transition to a sustainable, successful, low carbon economy in the North East?
The Climate Majority Report proposes: change the imagination. Work for a heightened sense of collective power. Focus on mitigation so that people can engage in their local community and gain a sense of agency, action then becomes mainstream and not the purview of ‘woke activists’. Do things that change the culture, shift the Overton window. See action as a move away from polarisation.
Commitment to depolarising will help extend engagement beyond traditional non/pro/progressive divides. Increase options to materialise intrinsic values, often hard to choose because of the control commodification has over our culture.
And this is Greta Thunberg’s summary: “It isn’t climate change that’s the enemy. It’s the causes of climate change.”
To find a screening near you please see here.
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