Extinction Rebellion Meeting - Hay Town Council and COP26

There was quite a good turnout, with several people who hadn't been before, considering that it was the first night of Storm Dennis.
The meeting started (after tea and cake and introductions) with a cut down film of a talk by Professor Rupert Reed, who was talking about regeneration, rewilding and repair - positive actions highlighting topics such as food security by planting a pop-up allotment outside the County Council offices or preparing a feast with food that has been thrown away by supermarkets (there are groups that do this - one of them came to Hay for the Festival a few years ago).
Now the XR movement has been noticed, by doing big actions like the ones in London last year, it's time for tactics to change, so the emphasis should be on local actions, but co-ordinated nationally. This means that people are not having to travel long distances to do the actions, and they can be relevant to local conditions. The aim is to be disruptive of the people in power, rather than ordinary people.

One of the people at the meeting was also a Co-ordinator for the Midlands, so he could listen to the ideas in the local group and pass that up to regional level.
One problem the group identified was that - last year there was a clear focus, on going to London and doing various things as part of the big actions there. This year, we've got to find our own focus.
Two aims that the meeting wanted to keep in mind were to campaign for Net Zero Carbon emissions by 2025, and to organise Citizens' Assemblies to decide priorities.
One person in the circle (all the chairs were arranged in a circle around the room so that everyone had an equal chance to see and be seen and speak if they wanted to) suggested that the movement needed to do something like the Flood Warning system - starting with a Flood Alert, and moving on to Flood Warning, with clear advice about what to do in each situation.

There was praise for Hay Town Council and their Low Carbon Group. They want to make Hay carbon-neutral by 2030, and have invited XR members to come along to advise on the town's carbon footprint. There will also be a Green Festival at Hay School on 18th April, where XR will have a stall.
Powys County Council, on the other hand, have not yet declared a Climate Emergency, and they are launching their new local development plan soon - it would be good if they paid attention to the Climate Emergency in that plan.

One of the reasons for the meeting was to get people who were interested to join the sub-groups of the movement. There are the Affinity Groups, who are trained in how to act during big protests, but not everyone is willing or able to do that. So there are other groups, such as the one for Regenerative Culture - this is fundamental to the way XR works, and involves self-care, and practicing the change they want to see. So the Regenerative Culture group members would be the ones making sure that other groups had hot soup or cold drinks or time out when they needed it. It also covers singing, counselling and meditation. There is training available.
A Climate Choir is going to start meeting at St. John's soon, on Monday evenings. There's another group for Art, making banners and costumes, and in an area like Mid-Wales, where groups tend to be small and spread out, this can be a good way of collaborating between groups - so Hay could do something with the Golden Valley group, for instance.
There's also a group meeting at the Globe on Thursday mornings from 11.30am, not just to talk about climate change, but to chat about general topics and be supportive.

Having said that there wasn't really a focus for action this year, in November COP26 will be happening in Glasgow. This is the 26th year that the nations of the world have met to discuss climate change, and there hasn't been a lot of action so far. So expectations are low that it will be any different this time - but it is something to focus on to encourage world leaders to concentrate their minds on the problems that the world faces. On this topic, there was a book recommendation - There is No Planet B by Mike Berners-Lee. A table at the side of the room had been set up as a library table, with various books and magazines for people in the group to borrow.
Suggestions of what to do before and during the COP26 meetings included a "Jarrow March" up the country, linking up with XR groups along the way, to deliver the message that this time real action was needed internationally, and ending the meeting with a vague statement of intent was not enough.
Slogans were considered (it's always useful to have a memorable slogan), such as "Good COP/Bad COP" or "Fair COP".
Another suggestion was that XR should organise its own COP meetings - though it's probably not possible to hire a hall in Glasgow at the same time as the official COP meeting. So maybe this could be organised regionally, and it would also be a good idea to get the School Climate Strikers involved - there wasn't anybody young at the meeting. Or an XR COP could take place after the official COP meetings, like the Paralympics after the main Olympic Games. This would have the advantage of the XR meeting knowing what had been decided by the world leaders, so they could respond to it. This is where the regional organisation of XR comes in, as the Midlands group can contact the Scotland group to see what they have in mind.
Someone asked what the carbon footprint of the COP meeting was, and would it be possible to find out, and make a visible representation of that?
Nobody at the meeting had any great hopes of the present UK government being remotely environmentally friendly, especially after seeing Boris Johnson sharing a platform with Sir David Attenborough at the Science Museum (and saying all the right things) and promptly going off and approving HS2.