About:
Welcome to the GreensCAN - Climate Activist Network. Established in November 2020 in response to the governments inadequate action on the climate and ecological emergency. With a quickly diminishing carbon budget before the planet reaches the critical 1.5 degrees threshold, there isn't time to wait until the next election.
Environmental activist groups have succeeded in raising awareness and raising the issue on the political agenda but so far they have failed to force the required system changes to curb the emissions curve. The greatest issue ever to face humanity needs new voices to step up and be heard.
Engaging in intelligent, well thought through, targeted non-violent direct action (NVDA) that makes sense, will add strength to our words by showing by our deeds that we mean what we say. This could be very powerful.
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Join GreensCAN to gain access to a support network, key note fact sheets, scripts, presentations and to engage in actions.
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GreensCAN co-founders
Prof. Rupert Read
Former Green Party spokes person, an ecological philosopher and activist, author and academic.
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Dr Shahrar Ali
Former Green Party deputy leader. Author of two popular books on green politics and speaks regularly on the climate emergency.
Cllr Alison Teal
Green Cllr, mother, psychologist, family therapist, campaigner for social justice, women’s equality, the environment and democracy.
Laura Baldwin
Mother, Olympic sailor, community connector focused on building resilience and environmental restoration.
Introducing GreensCAN by Rupert Read:
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The dream that motivated the Green Party, the dream of achieving power by the electoral route in time to prevent eco-disasters... that dream is dying. We now have only 5 to 10 years left in which to transform our entire system, or face nemesis. Is there anyone who seriously believes that the Green Party can take power in that time-period and make the necessary changes? Essentially, that would mean the Green Party winning the 2024 general election. That is pure fantasy.
The Green Party needs a new dose of realism about the state of play in the 2020s; and needs to go back to its roots. We need to double down on the real issue, the one issue that our children will ask us about and judge us on: the ecological emergency in general, and the climate crisis in particular.
If we back up such new realism with a new, deepened willingness to engage in targeted non-violent direct action, then the message will have extra credibility. We will be showing by our deeds that we mean what we say. We should be proud of that fact that we are the one Party to have such civil disobedience in our Philosophical Basis. The systems-crisis we are living through needs combatting by passionate commitment to life on Earth. That gets shown by deeds meeting words.
The Green Party is not going to attain power in time through a conventional electoral route. This is the painful reality that life is calling upon us to acknowledge. Now for the good news: there is one very real power that the Green Party has. In politics, we are the trusted messengers when it comes to climate. We ‘own’ the green area of the agenda. The real power we have is to call it. To name the truth: that the dream of arresting dangerous human-caused climate change is dead. That conventional politics has failed. That we have to turn more to people-power, and have to aim at adaptation and not just ‘mitigation’.
Our doing this will be all the more powerful, will be deeply authentic, if it is accompanied by us being courageous enough to admit that there is not a Green Government-in-waiting for number 10 Downing Street. People will really listen to us, if they hear us breaking the ‘rules’ of politics by not just saying something that talks up our own electoral prospects.
And citizens are hungrier than ever for that kind of honesty in politics.