We Need a Victory Story: Mobilising the Silent Majority with Liam Kavanagh of the Climate Majority Project
Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian PodcastShow Notes
If you listen to this podcast then you care about people and planet and how we make it through this potential crunch point when all our crises mash together. But what if you knew you were not alone? What if you knew that almost everyone in our culture cares about this, they just don't know what to do about it? They don't have what this week's guest, Dr Liam Kavanagh, calls the 'Victory Stories' to show how we made it through. Liam is a founding Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, an organisation that has worked since 2022 to extend climate action beyond the vocal minority of activists to the concerned but quiet majority. His social science background informs CMP’s theory of change and strategy. He began his career as an applied economist in New York and Tanzania. Motivated by questions about ideology and cognitive dissonance in political economy, he completed a PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. In 2016, he co-founded Life Itself, a European polycrisis-response network (we spoke to Sylvie Barbier from Life Itself a few weeks ago), and has authored two books and numerous reports. His latest reports: Mobilising Silent Majorities is one of the must-reads of this year. Please do download and read the pdf - at least the executive summary. This is a long, detailed, dynamic look at how many people really do care about the polycrisis. As he says, 'Across society, many people recognise serious risks—climate disruption, inequality, instability—but these concerns often stay private. The report identifies six “silent majorities” whose hidden views could shift what feels politically possible: The climate-concerned majority – Most people see climate change as a serious threat but rarely talk about it in daily life. The climate-concerned business majority – Business leaders see climate risks but hesitate to speak publicly. The reticent scientific majority – Scientists privately worry about worst-case scenarios but communicate cautiously. The decline- and collapse-concerned majority – Many fear overlapping crises, yet these concerns are rarely voiced. The depolarising majority – Citizens who favour cooperation over conflict are often drowned out by louder, polarising voices. The intrinsic-values majority – People prioritise family, community, and wellbeing, but economic pressures often prevent these values from guiding their lives. When concern remains unspoken, it appears weaker than it is. And when people feel alone in their worries, silence becomes the apparently safest choice. But it doesn't have to be like this. What if we were able to speak up in our communities of place, purpose and passion and let other people know they're not alone? That we are, in fact, a huge, huge majority? What if we were able to seed ideas out into the conversations that are happening on- and off-line so that we all acknowledge the system is not fit for purpose and all have good, workable ideas of how to fix it? What if we embodied the 'Victory Stories' of this time and transformed our future? It's all to play for now, and here's someone with the ideas at his fingertips. Enjoy! Liam on LinkedIn Climate Majority Project Silent Majorities Sub-stack Silent Majorities Report pdf —About Accidental Gods—
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From the Hostage Nation paper: " The first and most fundamental duty of a civilised state is the safety of its people. Not just safety from overseas adversaries, or crime in the street. Economic security. A bill you can pay without going overdrawn. A house you can afford before your children have children of their own. A job that lasts long enough to plan around. Britain guarantees none of these. Not for want of money, or land, or people who know how to build. Our nation has all of that. For forty years we have outsourced that security to the global marketplace. We locked ourselves in a room and posted the key to a trading desk in New York. British government policy subservient to global winds. They call it living within our means. We call it Hostage Nation." This is the second part of our conversation with Jamie Driscoll, former Mayor of Newcastle city region, founder of Majority and now Green Council for his old Monument ward. He's also one of the authors of the Hostage Nation paper quoted above that lays out how we can shift our current economy from one that's in hock to the Vigilante Bond Markets to one that supports people and planet.
What are the actual, practical shifts in our political economy that we could do tomorrow, that would not require extra legislation and could transform our society? This question applies to us all, wherever we are in the world and while there are many economists looking forward to an idealised system some way down the line, very few people - politicians or economists - are exploring what we could do now, today, within the guiderails of the existing system, with the politicians we have and the economy we have and the constraints of a world undergoing rapid geopolitical as well as geophysical change. Jamie Driscoll grew up in the north east of England, with a dad who drove a tank in the army and a mum who was a youth worker, trade unionist, and set up the first Women’s Refuge from Domestic Violence in Middlesbrough. He left school at 16, and returned to education as a mature student, gaining a degree in Engineering at Northumbria University. He went on to run his own business as a software developer and then, when kids came along, and he was married to a GP, he wound back his business and became the main carer for the children. He was 48 when he became a politician and he clearly brought the clear thought of an engineer, the empathy of a parent and the basic common sense of his upbringing to his various roles. He was elected Mayor of the Newcastle city region in May 2019, a position he served in until 2024, turning Newcastle into what the Guardian called “the capital of a new radical British politics”. In his five years in office he had to work around four different Prime Ministers, six different Chancellors, a global pandemic, Britain leaving the EU, energy price shocks, a cost of living crisis and the start of a ground war in Europe. He's one of a tiny handful of democratic socialists – as opposed to social democrats – who have experience running an arm of government in Britain. He smashed his job creation target by over 300 percent; built affordable homes to high-eco standards; ran child poverty prevention programmes; delivered skills training to thousands of people to enable them to increase earnings. For every £1 I invested, his team returned over £3 to the Treasury in increased payroll taxes from job creation. He even had a successful venture capital programme that generated profits for the team to spend on other programmes, rather than them being funnelled off into tax havens by private investors. So, of course, in 2024, the Labour party changed its own internal rules to block him from standing in what was a new Mayoral area: he was too good, too effective - too socialist for them to let him continue when their entire reason for existence was to crush the left in the party. He ran as an independent in that election and came second after the official Labour candidate, polling the second highest independent vote in British political history, and built an organizational infrastructure that has become the progressive movement called Majority. In amongst all this, he is one of the sharpest, most deeply thoughtful people I've come across in electoral politics - easily up there with Mamdani, AOC and El-Sayed in the US. And he's here today because he's brought out a new paper - 'Hostage Nation' which does something quite remarkable: it takes the existing system in the UK and with only a few well-placed tweaks - almost all of which require no new legislation - it creates a new system that works for people and planet. I cannot emphasise too highly how innovative and necessary this is. It's the beginning step to a future that works for everyone - whoever you are, if you're listening to this in the UK, it would make your life measurably better within a year, significantly better in four years and utterly transformed in a decade. If you're outside the UK, bringing the principles of this into your own nation would do the same. This is common sense politics - worked out in detail and I totally recommend that you read the website, s