Athletes are helping to promote a new film about the crisis, reaching people ‘in a way that scientific reports never will’
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t wasn’t so long ago that UK government briefings from Downing Street were essential viewing. Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were household names in Britain and there was a roaring trade in “next slide please” mugs. Four years after the final Covid lectern was put away comes an attempt to alert the public to another emergency – the climate and nature emergency. And sport could be the secret weapon in spreading the word.
The National Emergency Briefing was held in London last November, in front of over 1,000 guests including MPs. It brought together experts from the fields of nature, climate, tipping points, weather extremes, food security, health, national security, economics and energy transition to sum up the scale of the challenge ahead and what could be done about it. A condensed version of the day was made into a 45-minute film, The People’s Emergency Briefing, which was released earlier this month, with backers including the British Ecological Society and the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
Prof Paul Behrens, sustainability scientist and British Academy Global Professor at Oxford University, is the film’s food security spokesman. He is also a huge sports fan. “There’s a tighter link between sport and food than we think,” he says. “Our food system is responsible for around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the single biggest driver of nature loss. That means what we eat is one of the biggest levers any of us has on the climate and nature crisis.
