People’s Emergency Briefing
Directed by Marcus Jones
★★★★★

ON November 27 last year 10 of the UK’s leading experts gave a National Emergency Briefing in Westminster to an invited audience of more than 1,200 people, including politicians and prominent members of the business, cultural, media and faith communities. The aim? “To ensure that both the public and Parliament are clearly and honestly briefed on the climate and nature crisis.”

Led by the broadcaster and environmentalist Chris Packham, the 50-minute People’s Emergency Briefing is a campaigning documentary that presents footage from this hugely important event alongside informal discussions with members of the public and some celebrities, such as a sweary Jennifer Saunders.

The expert’s mini-lectures provide accessible, bite-sized chapters – on weather extremes, climate, tipping points, food security, health, national security, nature, economics and the energy transition.

Hayley Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle University, notes the weather and climate we have today will be “the least extreme climate we will experience in our lifetimes.” By 2050 one in four properties in England – eight million – will be at risk of flooding, she warns.

The briefing from Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester, is arguably the most frightening when you consider the United Nations secretary-general stated in late 2024 the world was on course for a 3.1°C temperature rise by 2100. “The prospects of three or four degrees warming are absolutely dire,” Anderson notes. “It’s an extreme and unstable climate, far beyond any safe zone that has nurtured our civilisation. And we are going to be seeing unprecedented societal and ecological collapse at these sorts of levels… there will be no real economy to talk about… we will be looking at systemic collapse.”

Though it’s not included in the documentary, his PowerPoint presentation at the briefing explains that keeping the global temperature increase to less than two degrees requires the UK to make emissions reductions of 8 per cent every year. He put this in (terrifying) context during a recent interview: during the peak of the pandemic there was only a 5 per cent annual reduction in emissions.

But it’s far from being all doom and gloom. The film is ultimately very hopeful, highlighting lots of ideas, policies and already existing technologies that can help us significantly to reduce emissions and address the climate crisis. Moreover, many of the changes that are necessary will arguably be positive for the majority of the population – the prioritisation of active travel, plant-based diets, home insulation and protecting nature, to name a few.

In his closing address Professor Tim Berners-Lee emphasises that inaction and delay by governments mean that a World War Two-scale mobilisation is now required — a reality that no member of Parliament, including Green Party MPs, has been honest with the public about.

“It is too late for non-radical futures,” Anderson argues in his briefing. Revolutionary transformation is inevitable – the choice is between an organised “deep, rapid and fair decarbonisation of society” or unplanned “violent and chaotic” change.

Packham ends with a call for people to get active in their communities and to urge their MP to back the call for the government to carry out a Covid-style, prime-time televised emergency briefing on the worsening climate and ecological crisis.

The team behind the film have done a mammoth job organising thousands of screenings in village halls, churches and community centres in every parliamentary constituency across the UK. With the climate crisis posing an existential threat to organised society, these grassroots events, which foreground discussion and action, have the potential to make the People’s Emergency Briefing one of the most important and timely documentaries ever made.

To find a local screening, and for details and guidance how to organise one yourself go to: nebriefing.org