Facing Our Climate Reality: Honest Briefings That Spark Community Action and Resilience
Nick Drew, from the Climate Psychology Alliance and a long-standing member of the Emergencies Partnership (EP) Mental Health Network, has written a powerful blog as a stark (but also hopeful) reminder that the UK is already living in a climate crisis, with record-breaking heat and rising risks becoming the new normal.
Nick highlights urgent warnings from national reports, the surge of community screenings of the People’s Emergency Briefing film and the growing need for collective resilience. Nick’s message is clear: we must turn awareness into community‑level action because investing in preparedness now saves lives later but, thankfully, there are passionate and capable people who are feeling more capable and motivated to act (and that can grow). Read the full blog below.
This May saw UK records being broken for heat by 2 degrees, rather than the more usual fractions of a degree. June also saw new record temperatures - smashing the previous record from June 1976. Events were cancelled in London Climate Action week in late June, due to the extreme temperatures and red heat warnings. The Met Office has offered an example of what our summer weather may look like in 2050 and following this May and June’s heatwaves, it’s scary. This heatwave has reminded me of a blog post I wrote around the time of our first 40 degree summer, in 2022. It is sobering to think that 2026 is ‘the best our climate will be for the rest of our lifetimes’ - sadly, things are only going to get worse.
Also in May 2026, the Climate Change Committee published their most recent report “A well-adapted UK”. It points out that we aren’t (yet) adapting to the reality of our present conditions, let alone the future we are headed towards. Those of us who work in and specialise in emergencies (preparedness, response, recovery and all things resilience) are painfully aware of how much more needs to be done to prepare our society for the risks that we face. So, raising awareness of risks with the wider public feels like a key task, if we are to prepare for what lies ahead. Yet while people may be worried at an individual level, a societal shift towards preparedness feels lacking. We aren’t acting as though this climate crisis is upon us - and now it very much is. We are increasingly feeling its impacts over more days of the year, and it’s becoming more severe year-on-year. Climate change is our boiling frog.
Something else happened this spring. In April, a film, the People’s Emergency Briefing (PEB), was made available, based on the National Emergency Briefing that happened in London on 27 November 2025. That film has gone on to be screened by communities across the UK with over 1,700 screenings having been planned, and more being added each day to the screenings map. It covers 9 areas: extreme weather, climate change, tipping points, national security, food security, health, nature, energy transition and economy. It is recommended that after the screening there is a facilitated discussion amongst the audience. The aims of the PEB is to increase awareness in society, and to petition for a national prime-time televised screening of the facts presented by experts. And to encourage local action by communities, to increase their resilience to the future we are facing.
Beyond the PEB film, a series of other informative reports have emerged over recent months, including a 10 minute ITVNews explainer about the partly withheld government intelligence report on risk of eco-system collapse - and the need to become more prepared as communities. But are we - as a society - ready to hear those messages? It can be easier to turn away and not face the threats. Which is perhaps why communicating risk to the public has become one of the key areas in the recent National Occupational Standards on Resilience and last year’s UK Government Resilience Action Plan and the Public Risk Perception Survey.
The Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) is a member-led and volunteer-based charitable organisation with over 800 members, mainly in the UK but with a global footprint. It helps people to face the difficult situation we are in, through a mix of training, events, research and publications, and a strong focus on supporting young people on climate change. CPA are also one of three partners behind the Inner Climate Response Alliance, a new lottery-funded project to help bring together a community of practice and support local efforts to build inner climate resilience in UK communities.
The CPA Board members who attended November’s National Emergency Briefing in London, felt the messages were pretty hard-hitting. It was clear to us that support would be needed to nationally roll-out a powerful film to community audiences. CPA member Linda Aspey has been partnering with the team behind the PEB film, to help train facilitators and provide facilitator guidance. The aim is to create the conditions for audiences to better take in the information in the film, process some of the difficult emotions arising, and not feel overwhelmed, but empowered and supported to take action.. CPA have been running facilitator training and support sessions since the start of the film screenings - and the feedback has been very positive.
So how does showing a film about risks translate into preparedness action on the ground? Not everyone who sees the film will want to take action locally – or be in a position to do so. There is also a wide range of actions that communities might choose to take. Existing grassroots networks and initiatives such as Communities Prepared, Transition Towns, Lifehouse Collapse Preparing Communities, and CMP’s SAFER campaign - as well as EP partner organisations - can provide approaches that might fit with a local community. Depending on who steps forward to take action and their particular focus, the local responses can look very different. The key thing is to move from individual action to group action at community scale. Not everyone will feel confident and be ready to take action before an emergency impacts on their life (in my area, only around 15% of those who watch the film have come to follow-up sessions). But when people are painted the same picture of the threats we are facing and all at the same time, there is more chance in agreeing on a local community-wide response.
Because ultimately, as the National Consortium for Societal Resilience (NCSR) have recently reported, putting the investment into building resilience before the crisis hits, can generate significant returns on that investment, £35.12 for every £1 invested. And most important of all, beyond the financial return, it can help save lives - in your own community.
Nick Drew has been a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance’s Board from 2023-2026, as well as past roles with Communities Prepared (2021-2024), Climate Majority Project (2025), and a range of roles in community resilience building, working at both central and local government scales. He has been a partner of the VCS EP since 2021. And is a long-standing member of the EP’s Mental Health Network.