It’s Not Easy Being Green: Living Well in a Climate Crisis

An educational assembly, connecting us to the most pressing issue of today’s world and our emotions around it. Read on to find out more…

Our guest speaker: Gale Burns

The UN target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C looks likely to be broken soon. Despite great advances in renewables, fossil fuel use continues to increase, and the impact of climate change is being increasingly witnessed worldwide.

In a world that seems committed to business as usual, how do we continue to live well, overcome eco-anxiety and be optimistic for the future? How do we step outside any denial or numbness and better understand what meaningful action for us individually and as a society in the current period looks like?

With Earth Day coming up on 22 April, we were joined by Gale Burns: Greenpeace speaker and advisor, qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor and a founding member of the Climate Minds Coalition. He works with many organisations setting up listening structures so that new solutions can be found to challenging issues.

Gale condensed an overwhelming topic into a concise presentation: explaining the impact of climate change, the potential consequences of inaction, and what we can each do to live better and help the planet.

Stressing the importance of acting and learning in unison, Gale encouraged us to do a listening exercise. In pairs, we took turns to talk about the climate crisis, our personal perspective and the emotions we associate with it.

Our guest poet: Sue Johns

While we were sorry not to hear from Caroline Davies as advertised, we were grateful to Sue Johns for stepping in at short notice.

Sue’s poems reflected on aspects of the natural world and its disharmony with the manmade world, from a bag stuck in a sycamore tree to animals’ reclamation of the world during lockdown in 2020.

Our songs

Our Sunday Assembly band had us singing along to four songs with links to environmental threats: 

• Weather With You – Crowded House
• Ring Of Fire – Johnny Cash
• Big Yellow Taxi – Joni Mitchell
• Set Fire To The Rain – Adele

This Much I Know: Leon Baruah

This Much I Know is an opportunity for our Sunday Assembly London community members to shine a light on a specialism, talent or passion they have.

Leon gave us an insight into his work with Viridian Logic in ecohydrology: natural flood management to benefit ecosystems.

Notices

Topics of our notices included:

• Our Book Swap table (where swapping is not compulsory)
• A thank you to everyone who supported our first ever comedy fundraiser on 10th April. We raised over £,1000 for Sunday Assembly London! We’re already talking about the next comedy night
• Sunday Assembly’s annual conference, which this year is in Glasgow from 25th-28th September. Details about Sunday Assembly Glasgow Gathering here
• An invitation from Ann to help steward the Mile End Parkrun on Sunday 18 May – details here
• The Enrich Festival in Watford on the weekend of 26th-27th April. Enrich Festival is an inclusive arts festival showcasing the immense talent of disabled and neurodivergent artists and performers. The Sunday Assembly London band are performing on the Sunday

As always, we followed the assembly with tea, biscuits and chat at the Backyard Comedy Club, lunch locally, and drinks & games at The Three Colts pub.

Thanks to our host Matt, co-host Hanna, all our wonderful volunteers and everyone who filled the room with singing, laughter and appreciation – especially our first-timers!

→ Our next assembly: Bubble Club: Inclusive Nightlife Under Threat, 4 May
← Our previous assembly: The Mindful Photo Lab, 6 April