 Warm welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining this depadaptation Q&A. And I am joined today by Kevin Freya. Kevin is a eco-socialist deputy leader of Lancaster City Council and he's founder of Climate Emergency UK, which we will hear a little bit more about today. Kevin, you are a grandparent and you live in Lancaster co-housing. You are a community energy pioneer. You've got your master's degree in human ecology and you're also trained with Joanna Macy to lead the work that reconnects. Is there anything else that you would like people to know about you? I'm sure you'll find out as we talk. It's really, really, I'm really personally really glad that you've joined us. I've been, I've known you now for a couple of years, I think, and I am, yeah, I have been constantly inspired by your integrity, your ability to continue to inspire and to work really hard and bring your passion and your whole self to the work that you do while also holding this challenge of, yeah, hopelessness, I guess, and holding these two things with huge dignity. I wonder whether you could start by sharing a little bit about when and how you became fully awake to the severity of the unfolding crisis and what impact that has for you? Yeah, so it's been gradual, it's been sporadic, you know, there's been times I've been more aware than others, but it started, you know, I grew up in one of five children in a council house in Bairie and South Wales, absolutely nothing in my environment from my parents that would set me on this journey, apart from a youth leader, a Catholic youth leader, who introduced me to the New Internationalist magazine, which I'm sure will have had some impact on me. I did, I went to teach training college, I did physics and environmental studies, so that will have helped. I then, so I became, I tried to become vegan in 1974, which was just unsustainable at the time. It was one brand of soy milk, Plarmill, which was disgusting. But I went vegetarian then and gradually became vegan about 30, getting on 30 years ago. So I've been aware of the industrial farming system and the crazy idea that you grow all this wonderful protein, soy and stuff and feed it to animals and get about 10% return, right from the mid-70s. So it's been gradual, but I certainly, probably 20 years ago, I probably had really kind of understood the situation. I didn't read Limits to Growth, for example. I did read Rachel Carson's Sun Spring in my teens, but I didn't come across Limits to Growth probably until I did the human ecology masters. And I chose that because being aware of how bad things are, I wanted to understand how on earth we got to where we were. So I spent a year studying wonderful things like eco-psychology, spiritual activism, really, and that's where, I mean, the course was very much inspired by Joanna Macy. So while I was on the course, I went and did 10 days with her in Fintall. So I was really, by that point, trying to dive deep, I guess, into what was going on and how on earth we got to where we were. And I guess, looking for some clues as to what could be done about it, George Marshall was another big inspiration behind, who's just really good at understanding the psychology and how we can, George Marshall has spent time with the climate outreach, talking to two parties in the States, sort of spending time with people who are, in a sense, the opposition, trying to understand the psychology and so on. So I've been interested in the psychology, the sociology, all of that, which really, the human ecology course with Alsther McIntosh, who some of you might know about, who wrote books like Solacell and Society and other books about climate change. Yeah, and then I got asked to get involved in community energy very early on, so founded Dostachy Community Energy Co-op and got, I guess, I went from the course and disappointed probably having spent so much time on the kind of psychology and sociology. I dived into practical solutions and almost, in a way, kind of forgetting what I learned, really. So I really got into community energy. We built a community-owned hydro here that I raised 1.3 million in community shares for. Moved to Lancaster Co-housing 10 years ago, which is described as eco-homes in the village. Built passive house standard and fed directly by a hydro on the river. And so trying to live practically as sustainably as possible. And in a way, kind of focusing on practical solutions whilst knowing that that wasn't enough, really. Yeah, so I'm hearing already this pattern of holding uncomfortably the knowledge that the actions you're taking are not enough, but that not being something that has got in the way of you really putting your shoulder against making a change. When did you get into local politics? And was that with the Labour Party when you first got involved? I want to say about your journey with the Labour Party. Yeah, so I first joined the Labour Party in my 20s. I was in North Kensington, Moneeha Children's Home. And it was a very vibrant local, very left-wing party that in a marginal seat, so there was a chance of getting somebody elected. A couple of Tony Ben's children were involved. So I got really fired up by local politics then. And then I moved to back to South Wales where I come from as a teacher and was really inspired by the likes of Rodry Morgan who, you know, Wales has got a history of some really good, quite radical left-wing leaders now with Mark, but it was Rodry. And again, so I kept, I kept inspired even though the average traditional Welsh Labour Party were dire, you know, absolutely anti-politics really, but there was enough to keep me going. I think I left as I remember when, you know, so many of us did with Blair and the Iraq War and so on, totally disillusioned. But somewhere in between I joined the, because I lived in Birmingham for the 20 years after South Wales, I joined the Ecology Party. So that tells you how long ago that was because that's what the Green Party was called originally. So I've been dabbling with green socialist politics ever since, not finding a home really, not being satisfied with either until Jeremy Corbyn came along. And suddenly there was this little just kind of ray of hope. Oh, there's a possibility that politics will actually, you know, the politics I believe in actually has a chance to take some power. We do have some people here who aren't in the UK. I don't want to assume that they know what you're talking about. I wonder if you could say a little bit about what Jeremy Corbyn coming to power represented to you. Yeah, so Jeremy Corbyn is very left, well, he's not very left wing actually, by international standards. He's often described as, you know, equivalent to about a Swedish social democrat, but he is somebody who's been a Labour MP for a very long time, always on the fringes of the Labour Party, always standing up for what seems unpopular causes, like standing up for Palestinians, standing up for the poor basically. Never had a sniff of any official position or anything. And then there was enough of MPs in Parliament when it came to a leadership election to you have to get 40 MPs to nominate you. Some of them said they did it just so there was a competition, never thinking that he would get elected. But the rules of Labour Party at the time were that anybody could join and support him. And literally hundreds of thousands of people like me joined the Labour Party to support Jeremy Corbyn and he actually got elected as the leader. And for a while, you know, he was very... He very much got climate change. He stood up for the poor and disenfranchised. And it was an exciting time. And that was a time too when I rejoined the Labour Party and then I live in a rural area just outside Lancaster and the current councillor got ill. He was an independent, had never been anything other than Tory or independent here. And I thought, well, why not? You know, I'll stand for the local council, never thinking I would get elected. And I had a good relationship with the Greens because I've been in the Green Party again before joining Labour. I had a good relationship with them but they stood a candidate, one of my neighbours, against me. So we thought we would split the anti-Tauri vote and let the Tory in. And in the end, I beat her by two votes. The Tory was like 10 votes behind. So I became what I think is a pretty accidental politician or councillor. And immediately, my whole focus was climate change. Immediately, we had a very, very right-wing Labour administration that just had half the seat. So they only just had control. And I was number 31 out of 60. And I caused trouble. I formed alliances with disaffected Labour people with Tauris and proposed motions against the wishes of the Labour leadership. And there's very tight whipping that goes on. So you're not really allowed to do that. And ended up getting the council to declare a climate emergency, which, although it was initially opposed by the Labour leadership, we packed the meeting. There's 400 local authorities in the country, similar to most places in the world. And the vast majority of those have now declared a climate emergency. We were one of the first. And packed the council chamber. It was a time when Gretzeth Thunberg was inspiring lots of young people. Extinction Rebellion had started. So the council had never seen anything like it. 200 people didn't know what to do with them. There wasn't room for everybody. But they kind of stood in the aisles. And everybody in the end voted for the climate emergency motion. And that was in January. And then in May, we have every four years, the whole council gets re-elected. It varies from council to council. And Labour lost a lot of seats. So had to form an administration with the Greens and the Lib Dems. And again, I have a habit of doing these things last minute. I was in a Labour group meeting. And suddenly, the election for deputy leader of the Labour group came up. And I put my hand up and said, a wild stand. And got elected. So I became the deputy leader of the council. And then Jeremy Corbyn got totally undermined by his own party. Labour is not a socialist party. It's not a party. It's whatever its history, most of it is actually quite right-wing, quite conservative with a small C and so on. So they eventually chewed Jeremy Corbyn up and spat him out, undermining, deliberately lost the election in 2019. Although he blames it on Jeremy Corbyn, they actually conspired. There's lots of evidence of how they conspired to do everything to stop him and Labour winning. So that meant that we were on the way out, really. But I'd been to a, whilst he was still leader, Labour Party Conference in 2019, where Labour committed to a radical Green New Deal on the 2030 deadline. And it's the 2030 deadline that for me distinguishes people who are really serious about the climate crisis, even though it's still far too late, and 2050 deadlines and so on. So that for me was absolutely critical. If Labour had stuck to that, then I would have stayed even under new leadership. But they didn't. So a group of five of us left, became eco-socialist independence, formed alliances with the Greens. And the Greens have always been strong in Lancaster City Council. And in May last year, overthrew the Labour leader. And I became deputy leader again, because I've lost that left-lead party, to a Green leader. So Lancaster is one of the only councils in the country. The only other ones are Brighton and Lewis, that has ever had a Green leader at the council. And we're still here, despite, you know, Labour undermining, we have seven parties, or independent groups. So we have an alliance of five running the council, but Labour do everything they can to actually undermine us, even though they're part of the administration. Yeah, what I would like to do, I'm going to come to this in a bit, is hear you talk about climate emergency UK, and what motivated you to establish that. But first, I have been fascinated hearing you talking in the past about the day-to-day lived experience that you have of in public contexts, in meetings and speaking with the public. There's one narrative, but how often, in a one-to-one context, people speak to you very, very different about their view of the future. And yeah, this is part of the, I feel the energy coming down to the tender part of what I guess everybody here, who shares a particular outlook, probably feels quite often. Yeah, so a recent example was, I went to COP26 for the whole time, not in any official capacity, but there were lots of my friends from different organisations there. And they're people who, their public face is, you know, Friends of the Earth and a technical sense of technology and things like that, working on very solutions focused and political focus. And I just sat down in the pub with one of them and immediately the conversation shifted. And this has happened lots of times to people saying, well, actually, I don't really have any hope that anything that we do is going to change things. And that is quite, you know, I'm living somewhere where it's, you know, these are people who are very conscious and very aware, but also very engaged in solutions. So, but every time, it's almost like there's this kind of shared unspoken knowledge of just how the reality of just how hopeless things are, but it isn't easy to speak about in public. If you're like, you know, so it's like, yeah, the public face is one thing. And then the kind of one-to-one conversation you really get to have people are really feeling. And I get, you know, I just think at some level most of us, most people know just what's really going on. But, you know, that just to exist day to day, to carry on day to day, we just need to forget that as well. Yeah. And is that true for you? Do you feel the same challenges to speak openly and honestly? I find it really hard. I don't do it very often. And when I do, I was in Bolden, for example, we had a public meeting just before COP26. And the Environment Agency had just published a report that said that literally is entitled, adapt or die. You can't be much more explicit than that. And the Environment Agency is a quasi-governmental body. You know, it's the establishment. It's, you know, they don't often kind of say things like that. So, and Andy Brown, well, yeah, Andy, who is their local flood officer, we've had two serious floods here in the last five, six years. You know, totally related to climate change, intense rainfall. And, you know, he is the flood risk manager. He knows the, you know, just the impact of climate change. So when I've, yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that when I feel like I've got some support in the room, it's easier. When I speak out, I've been accused of being incredibly negative. And it's almost like you mustn't say these things because you'll depress people and you'll demotivate people. And, you know, we're trying to officially get people more engaged and inspired and involved in addressing climate change. And if you tell people how hopeless your feeling things are, then they're not going to want to do anything. You're going to demotivate them. So that's the difficulty I've had. Another opportunity I had was, I was asked by one of the two local government magazines, Missile Journal, again, before the, before COP, asked Extinction Rebellion for their perspective on councils declaring a climate emergency. And that filter down to me. I have a good relationship with a lot of people in XR. And I wrote an article basically, you know, looking at what councils are doing from an XR perspective. So I was able then with that kind of framing to, to be quite kind of outspoken and critical. So it's, it's difficult because my colleagues in, in the eco-socialist defense, I'm more or less disengaging and feeling like everything's hopeless. And I'm kind of still engaged in my role. And I have these conversations with my, with my fellow councillors where they're totally despairing. And it's like, well, there's no point. There's no point in doing what you're doing really, you know. So yeah, I live with it day to day, but find it really hard in a public arena to speak in a way that is truthful, but, but honest. Yeah, yeah, I, that was a really, really clear response. Thank you, Kevin. And I'd love to hear from you about what are the ways, yeah, what you've just described to me is, is a definition of radical hope. It's you are not cutting off feeling the feelings and also, yeah, not, not looking away and still continuing with your passion and your integrity. And yeah. And so I wonder if you could share with the people here, what are the ways in which you maintain enough resilience to be able to continue what you're doing. And I'm guessing it's, it's an ongoing process. It's not a, oh, I've tipped that off now. Yeah, and it gets important for you. It gets harder and harder with every passing day really, because every day that the carbon emissions just go up and every day the governments around the world, you know, instead of keeping oil in the ground, want to dig more of it up, every day it gets kind of harder and what feels like more hopeless. And I have, I'm reaching a point where I'm, you know, I'm probably can't, I don't know how much I'm going to carry on doing what I'm doing, to be honest. Sorry, what was the question? What keeps you well? What are the importance of your life and no issue? A number of things keep you well. Where I live, I mean, it's extraordinarily rich in, rich natural environment. I was just talking about the, the San Martin's coming back and the swifts and swallows will be here shortly. I've been monitoring salmon and trout on the river as part of my work with the hydro and the environment agency. And just that connection with the natural world is one thing. Although at the same time, you know, I'm seeing decline in salmon populations and things like that. So it's, it's double-edged really. You know, it's, it's, it's both nurturing and, and scary. Having an incredible relationship. I've been with Alison for 14 years and it's just delightful. You know, she's so incredibly supportive, a partner in crime even more, you know, in that she, she's now getting more and more engaged in, in, in, in climate activities and so on. And, but on a more spiritual kind of level, I listen a lot to Eckhart-Tomay and Alan Watts and, you know, basically the message that, you know, not to take myself and, and humanity too seriously, but to live in the moment to, you know, nothing matters, that kind of thing. Plus, plus reading stuff that, that supports, well, you know, I'm reading J.B. Graber's, what was it called again, this, The Dawn of Everything. The Dawn of Everything and just the, the fact that there's, all my life, I've had this story fed to me about the way things should be and so on. And, and right from the early age, I've kind of questioned that. But I was learning every day that, you know, that, that actually my truth is, is shared by lots of people. That, so that helps me. I, I still don't see how that truth gets out into the kind of mainstream. It's squashed at every, you know, like, like with Jeremy Corbyn. It's, it's absolutely stamped out. But I guess knowing that I'm not alone, knowing that, that other people share the, you know, and I get inspired by other people, that helps me to, to keep going as well. Yeah, thank you. That's what I have heard from a lot of people in the deep adaptation forum, in other networks, that just having a, a space and a sense of solidarity and mutual understanding and connection. I heard you describe lots of different kinds of connection. Yeah, and I need, I don't get enough of it. I need more, more kind of allies and collaborators. And one of the ways I got that, I did the, the sustainable leadership course at Canberra University, but it was online a couple of years ago with you and, and Jen, that's how I met you. And we've kept, you know, a group of us have kept in touch. So it's great to kind of connect every month and talk like this, you know, talk about our shared reality. And I, I need more of that, I don't get enough of that. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Gem and I are hosting that course again in person in Lancaster in June. And Kevin is going as well. But I just need that, that, that kind of nourishment. I realized that there was a question I mentioned that I haven't, haven't yet asked. So after, this will be my last question. And then I'm going to invite Kimberly. So if you can get ready, Kimberly. Kevin, I would like you to talk about the, what inspired you to establish climate emergency UK? Yeah, so. What it's about and how you feel about it now. Yeah, thank you. So when we, I was inspired to, to propose the climate emergency motion by Bristol City Council, who were the first. They were inspired by a group in Australia who, Darwin, I think it was, Darabin Council, who were the first in the world to do that. So what was really kind of, I'm always been an advocate, if you like, of not trying to reinvent the wheel, but of, you know, show. So I set up a website because I have a history of doing that. ClimateEmergency.uk and started to collect declarations so that people could, and we tried to develop a kind of model declaration. So people who wanted to declare, councils who wanted to declare a climate emergency could come to the site, see what others were doing, be inspired by them and form their own. And then council started to develop policies. So we started to collect those. Then an organisation called My Society, who were about kind of digital public engagement, got in touch with all the technical skills to create a searchable database of those, of those declarations and so on. And it led to, you know, a majority, and we used to hold weekly meetings on different kind of things that councils doing and a conference, a couple of conferences. We've had three conferences we've been involved in now. I'm just kind of inspiring, trying to encourage, inspire, share best practice and things like that. But at the same time, the context really of local government is that we're constantly getting cut by the government. We're constantly getting constrained by what we're allowed to do. So an example is that in 2016, developers were not supposed to build houses that were going to need retrofitting, you know, that were not energy efficient. The government scrapped that because they said, oh, developers aren't ready. And the local councils, so we as a local council were trying to develop our own local legislation that mandates developers to do that. So, but we're very constrained by national legislation. And that's just true in so many ways. We do everything we can to encourage people to initiate their homes, but ultimately it comes down to money and the government in Britain do not care. Do not, aren't bothered. So in that context of not having the money, of not having the legislation, I've become, I'm coming up against the limits all the time of what local authorities can do to a point now. And I think I was particularly inspired by the majority of the councils that set the 2030 deadline. So it's like, my God, you know, the majority of councils who are not radical bodies at all are seeing the urgency that they're setting this kind of radical target. But what's happening now is that council after council who really genuinely tried, and it's officers, the officers in a way, or even more, the staff are in a way even more enthusiastic than the councillors are certainly true in Lancaster, in trying to kind of decarbonise their fleets, in trying to decarbonise their buildings, and so on, are coming up limits against limits that make it, that realising that that's just not possible. You know, I was talking to an architect recently who, because every house in Britain is not supposed to be connected, new houses, not supposed to be connected to the gas grid in two years' time, this architect I was talking to was trying to design a development of 90 homes, and wants to put air source heat pumps here. And he says, I can't get them. You know, the supply chains aren't there, the skills aren't there. So there are all these little limits that as I, and I think that's been a good thing about really deeply immersing myself in the practical stuff. I'm coming out of it now thinking, there's just so, such limits, however motivated people are to really take some radical action without that kind of infrastructure. Never mind getting into issues of, well, you know, of course, we can't just, I've always known, we can't just replace every fossil fuel power station with renewables. You know, there's not the raw materials. There's not the time or anything. And all that's happening is that it's becoming a top up to in, you know, using more energy, you know, sort of money we're just. So I'm reaching a point where I'm really hitting against the limits and thinking maybe it's time to do something else. I can't imagine how you've been really successful in getting funding. You know, we've got three full-time staff. And they are utterly brilliant. And we did a scorecard of what every council was doing. And that was quite welcomed by activists and councils that were doing well, but also, you know, reacted against by people who felt that they were being unfairly criticized. And it's great. And I'm really proud of that. But I'm getting ready now to kind of move on really. If we have time at the end, I'm going to come back to you with a question around if there were none of these limits, what are the radical actions that local councils can be saying? Because I have a sense that the limits aren't just resources. Part of the limits are to do with what we're unable to imagine. But I'm going to come back to that because I realize this isn't about a conversation between you and me. I'd like to open up to people who have joined us and have sent a question. And I'm going to ask you, Kimberly, first of all, if you'll unmute yourself and ask your question of Kevin. Thank you so much, Katie. And lovely to see you all. Thank you so much, Kevin. Well, my questions changed about 15 times since you've been talking. It was, I lead a community group in Hartfordshire. It's a Hartfordshire-wide community group focused on local community resilience and adaptation, including deep adaptation. And I spend a lot of time speaking with councils, counselors and officers and so on across the county. And it's, as you can imagine, quite depressing. And yeah, so my question initially was going to be, what do you have any advice about the best way of getting leverage, given that they, as you've said, are all tremendously short on resources and funding and mired in the kind of business as usual stuff. But if I may, if there's time, I'd love to come on and ask a supplementary question. But do you have any advice about that? I guess it's about finding who the Allies are. And they could be in any political party. Apart from the Greens, who are pretty obvious allies, if you have Greens on the council, the people who've got involved in climate, the councils got involved in climate emergency UK, include Conservatives, Lib Dems, Labour people, it really is not a political thing. So I guess one of the things it's finding allies, not just amongst the councillors, but amongst the officers as well, because the chances are there'll be even more potential allies. So there will be people there. There will be other organisations. It's not councils obviously are very limited. One of the things they have to do, if they are going to do anything, is work with other institutions. So again, there might be allies in the health service who really get that. One of the things that I might talk about again, councils are trying, a lot of councils, to ban cars from their city centres. And they meet huge opposition. And an ally there is obviously the health service who recognised the problems the air pollution caused. So I guess it's about, partly depending on the issue, finding who your allies are. Yeah, and we have found them and that's been really useful. And thank you, that's useful. And I really wanted to kind of just back up what you were saying about people saying one thing publicly and another thing privately, in our conversations with councillors. We show them a little graphic, which is four columns. And column two is business as usual, but greener and column three is emergency and column four is collapse aware. And so many of them say, when we ask them which column they're in, because that's going to drive everything, their strategy, their actions, their priorities. When we ask them which column they're in, they say officially, column two. And then when we say, yeah, but really, where are you? They go, well, somewhere between three and four. So hardly anybody's telling the truth. That's a really interesting, I like that diagram. You must share it. Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah, I'll send it to you. If you could put your email address in the chat, I'd be happy to do that. It's a really nice graphic. And the other thing, we've got quite a lot of questions. I'll shut up. Come back to you. So much. So I'm going to go to Jonas next, please. If you can unmute yourself and share your question. Yeah, thank you so much. And thank you, Kevin. Inspiring work and amazing that you're still in there doing a lot of work. And that's really what gives my question because I'm also trying to do something in politics in Sweden, in a very labor intensive, industry intensive part of Sweden. And it's difficult. It's not easy, but I'm still doing stuff and it's still making. I think I'm still making a difference. So I want to just want to reach out to you. And so what do you do? How do you manage to stay in politics? How do you manage to support others to get involved and do it? Because it's a lot of work and it's hard. And especially being surrounded by that kind of negative negativity that you've been describing. How do you manage to put yourself in those spaces and stay there? I mean, that's inspiring in itself. I'm just wondering how do you do that? I think partly because and one of the reasons why I'm, you know, even though I'm, you know, I'm disillusioned at the moment that I stay is because I feel a solidarity with all of the people who are trying. You know, there are people who are really doing their best and particularly the, you know, I mean, our climate change team have been amazing. We decarbonise our leisure centre, taking it completely off gas, for example. They're doing amazing stuff. So part of it is just a sense of not wanting to let people down to kind of, you know, stay in solidarity with all of the people who are doing amazing things, really. I guess that's what, if I felt I was a completely lone voice, then I would have given up a long time ago and I know I'm not. Yeah. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for that question, Jonas. And I would like to go to Hannah next. Hannah, can you unmute and ask your question? Hi. Thanks, Kevin. A really interesting talk. I just came across this on Eventbrite and I'm in a local authority. I'm an officer. So I'm a landscape architect, but quite new to the public sector. And just wanted some advice, really, on how to be the most effective as an officer. Because it's obviously a bit tricky. I can't kind of be seen to be political or too pushy about things. And it's actually, it's Swindon borough council. So it's it's conservative. And I was just looking them up on your website. Actually, this is the first I've heard about that. That's really useful. And I'm not very senior. And I've sort of invited myself along to the net zero meetings. And as landscape architects, I think we've got a huge amount to offer. But obviously it's within the constraints of regularly being told, you know, told you might be made redundant or we've got these enormous cuts. And there is quite a lot of money for tree planting. But I think with Swindon, it's got this huge issue to do a transport, which is a lot more intractable. And the trees are almost becoming a bit of a greenwash. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just how as an officer, really, I'm just quite new to it. And I also run a run a group in my village. We're holding a retrofit fair this weekend. So I'm sort of involved in climate activism as well. But it's just how to do it sort of within the council. Yeah. I mean, there are. Oh, there's a forum called the Coalition for Climate Action, which yeah, if you email me, I can send you a link. And that is a collection of it's kind of national and local government officers, so civil servants, but also there's a couple of hundreds at least of local government officers. So I guess that might be a really good forum to kind of share that question. I mean, from a cancer's perspective, we always feel like the officers just run everything anyway. You know, we spend our time trying to kind of influence them. So, you know, we always feel like that's where the power really is. I guess you probably in the size of Swindon, you must have a climate change team as well. So I guess you get to know them. Yeah. Yeah. I've kind of invited myself onto it, despite not being very senior. Yeah. It's very hierarchical. I'm quite surprised at how hierarchical it is. And nobody really listens to you if you're below that level, which is a bit of a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you'll probably get a lot of good advice on the collective climate action. So that's probably about not having ever been an officer. And we've got brilliant officers who don't have that. You know, we're on the same page, so we don't have that same problem. Yeah. I'm not sure there are any councillors like you, unfortunately. They're all conservative. They're all in the authority. So there must be a green or two, surely, at least. No, there aren't any greens. I've heard a rumor that one of the Labour councillors is quite sympathetic. I'll have a think, because I know I might have come across swim and councillors. So I'll... Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Thank you, Hannah. And good luck. I'm going to ask Charles to ask you a question. It was the second question that you sent, Charles, please. Oh, sure. Very good. So, Katie Stewart, thank you for hosting this. And for all, I imagine the thousand or one things that it takes to put on something like this that we don't know about. And so thank you for your time and dedication. And Kevin, thank you so much for your time and willingness to be in solidarity with us today. Yeah. I'm coming from Chicago, Illinois, in the state. So I'll just caveat things with that perspective. And my question is, in regards to the idea of deep adaptation and collapse acceptance, do you find that... Are there ways that you found languaging the gifts of that into a sociopolitical sphere where you don't necessarily risk as much being the target of being called a doomer? And just a quick example would be, I find sometimes languaging this in the term of mutual aid is sometimes a way of framing it so that it sort of trojan horses ideas of deep adaptation without ruffling the feathers of people who may not have gone through any stages of awareness or grief on the road to collapse acceptance. So what are the ways of bringing the gifts of collapse acceptance into your work, into your life? Yeah. Thank you, Charles. I think that is probably where my next journey is. I'm not sure how much I've got to say now. I mean, I think building community, you know, I think our community here at Co-Housing, our, the various ways in which we're building kind of solidarity and community, not specifically around collapse, but I think society is collapsing in so many ways at the moment. You know, people are driven to food banks and reducing their energy use and so on. So I think, yeah, I guess that building that community solidarity anyway will, you know, that's something that we've really focused on. We've had citizens assemblies and we've really tried, you know, we claim that we're a council that really engaged with community, but that's, you know, that's a real work in progress. But I guess, yeah, building community resilience, I guess. But as I say, you know, that's my journey as well, I think. Thank you. And I would like to ask Tony, I love your question, Tony. It is quite long. Can you deliver us the essential oil version of your question, please? Thank you, Katie. The oil version. So parallel system, rather than fighting the realities, can we create a parallel way of being and living from the ground up to develop the capacity and the learning necessary to cope and adapt to climate change and rather work on a positive track, not on the negative track, rather work on that on problem-solving, but work on aspirational and experimental and learning how to do being human and being together in a conscious way. How does that go? Yeah, so when we created our co-housing a dozen years or so ago, that was exactly what we were trying to do, really, was trying to create an alternative where we share, you know, so we don't need so much stuff, where we live, where we build in low energy use and, you know, organic food is a kind of a given, if you like, and vegetarian and vegan eating is a given, so we were trying to build this still within, you know, a structure that kind of made sense to people outside. So we weren't, you know, kind of the criticism often is, isn't it, you know, that I've totally rejected. We were trying to create an alternative way of living within the existing civilization, if you like, and somebody commented to me recently that, you know, their problem with deep adaptation, if you like, is how on earth do you adapt to, you know, you can adapt, for example, my wife's out in Spain at the moment looking at how you farm in water scarcity. And, you know, in a way, if you know, if there's a, if you're going to have less water or you're going to do this or that, there's ways to adapt. The biggest problem we have at the moment, it seems like, is the utter unpredictability of the situation. So we're in our second drought in two years now around here, which will have a big impact on farmers, but we'll get heavy rain, we'll get, next year it might rain a lot this time. So I don't know that there are any ways to practically, you know, do things differently. So then you get back to, well, you know, things are collapsing. There's no, there's not an easy way forward. We just have to support each other in the best way we can. I don't know, you know, again, I'm just, I'm struggling with these things as everybody else is and be very pleased to, I'm not having enough conversations about, and I, in spite of doing that course with Gem and Katie this year, I have kind of kept adaptation a bit at arm's length. I recognize now that I really, really, really need to have these conversations. I'm not talking to you as somebody who knows what they're talking about. I'm somebody who's kind of dived into the conventional solutions, if you like, realize that there's no answers there, you know, answers there, that our alternative community here, you know, has great value, hasn't, we always thought that, you know, 10 years on would be a model for everybody to follow. And we've had some local successes, but ultimately, you know, we are a bunch of privileged white people who can afford to do things a bit differently. And people who are, you know, I've been reading tweets today of people who are struggling with 40 plus degrees temperatures in, in Delhi at the moment, you know, I don't know what to say to them, to be honest, about what the solutions are or what the ways forward are. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. I'm going to come back now to the question I mentioned earlier. It seems I've heard you just say you don't know what the solutions are or the way forward, the ways forward are. But, and I wonder if you do have a magic wand, if there were no other obstacles, for example, humans suddenly became very good at collaboration peacefully. If there was political will, if public opinion was aligned, what radical actions could you envisage that local authorities or local communities could take that would really help prepare communities to be resilient, to reduce harm in the face of what's unfolding? Yeah, so one thing I constantly come back to and see in polls and things is that what makes people happy is not the kind of conventional lifestyle. So create, you know, when councils have really taken risks and created low traffic neighborhoods and so on and stood up to the, you know, the very vocal minority, it's been brilliant, you know, Waltham Forest to an example here where they said, we're going to do this anyway and created these wonderful, vibrant community spaces. I think every council could set up tool sharing and things, you know, so one of the big problems we have is we absolutely need to reduce consumption massively and that's not going to happen. Government aren't going to do anything about that, you know, corporations aren't going to do anything about that, but at a local level we could be sharing stuff a lot more, we could be eating together more, we could be playing together more festivals and, you know, councils do quite a lot in making the places that people, making the spaces that locally are so colorful and vibrant, music, art and things like that. People don't feel such a strong need to fly off to, you know, warmer climbs to, you know, if the place you live is a great place to be, you don't need to go somewhere else. A place that you don't need to take a holiday from. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we realize every time we're, you know, we think about going away, it's like this is the sort of place that a lot of people would come to, you know, why would we want to go from it? Yeah, but it's not just the place, it is the people and the, you know, people are utterly, you know, I think again what gives me hope is people actually are amazing, you know, that they're really not the idea of being selfish and, you know, they're incredible and that gives me hope, but it also has got to be something that councils can build up, you know, and encourage and they're not very good at that, I have to say, but they're starting to talk much more to people and understand what people want through communities, through cities and assemblies and things like that and that's one of the pieces of work as part of a climate emergency declarations that has been inspiring. Yeah, what I love about what your answer was then was this kind of circular logic when people talk about what kind of world really they would love to create given that the future we thought we were going to have is we're probably not going to have, they end up describing the kind of world we would want anyway, you know, I used to work in education and part of this thought experiment people would say, oh, we'd have intergenerational learning, we'd have older people learning, you know, sharing history or sharing skills with children, like, oh, hang on, that would be beautiful education anyway. Yes, yeah, yeah, no, we've been so, I don't know, brainwashed from a very early age to that there's only one way of doing things when actually everybody or most people deep down want, as you say, what would be a wonderful world. Yeah, and the kinds of things like loving fiercely, like mutual aid and taking care, they become radical political acts. So I would like to say a huge thanks, Kevin, for joining us and sharing so generously. Big thanks to all of you who have chosen to come here to use an hour of your precious time to join us. And especially those of you who have sent questions in, I'd like to really apologize to anyone who sent a question and that we didn't have time to ask it. I'm going to ask Kimberley if she's willing to share the framework that she mentioned and I'll send it on a follow-up email to all of you who came. Then you have it. And this, the recording of this Q&A will be shared on Jem's YouTube channel in a few days' time. I'll share that link for you. And that is all. I look forward to seeing you for the next deep adaptation question and answer. And Kevin, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. And yeah, it's been great. Thank you.