After a few months of suppressing our terror of the climate crisis while we’ve focussed on the immediate crisis of the pandemic, I’ve noticed, in conversations in person and online, that the fires in the USA have brought the trauma of last summer back to the surface for many many people.

It’s patently obvious that the climate crisis is here. It’s not in the future. It’s here today. And, despite the extraordinary work of so many people, our politics is simply not facing up to it, with both major parties this week reaffirming their commitment to increasing fossil gas extraction.

As I argue in a major feature essay in this quarter’s Arena Magazine, “We don’t have time any more to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We don’t have time not to rewrite the rules. We don’t have time not to change everything.”

In the current context, “continuing a supplicant politics, where we beg or demand of governments that they act, is both destined to fail and underplaying our hand … While, of course, the urgency is such that we must keep constant pressure on all actors, our strategic goals should reach far beyond such pressure and into cultivating the new democratic systems and institutions we need in order to survive and thrive—grassroots-driven, multilayered, polycentric institutions based on ecological principles of interconnection, diversity, flexibility, and the recognition that we are all part of and entirely reliant on the natural world.”

This is a timely opportunity to suggest that, after (or before) you read it, you register for our next COVID Democracy webinar, tomorrow evening, and join us to discuss how building democracy from the grassroots up is, in fact, the best way to face down fossil fuel developments.

Both of our speakers, Dr Amanda Cahill and Julie Lyford, have been on the ground doing the kinds of things I’m talking about in this essay – bringing people together in communities to discuss and start to construct their shared future. They have amazing experiences and ideas to share in what promises to be a super inspiring conversation, on Thursday evening at 8pm AEST.

Don’t forget to register for your place here!