Welcome to
Boiling Frogs Blog
Local Solutions to Global Problems
Welcome to
Boiling Frogs Blog
Local Solutions to Global Problems
In a nutshell we are a family living in Essex who are extremely concerned about the climate and ecological emergency, our children’s future and the alarming lack of preparedness shown by our communities to deal effectively with the consequences of a rapidly changing climate.
So we came up with a plan to do more than just stand outside Parliament waving our homemade placards. Instead, we will attempt to act as a catalyst to raise more public awareness of the problems and stimulate community action to prepare for what’s ahead.
Our website and social media activity will act as a showcase of solutions to raise awareness and stimulate debate within the general community. While our #EssexInTransition project will attempt to bring key stakeholders from the Essex third sector together under one roof so to speak to realise their vital role and collaborate in building a foundation of solution based initiatives for wider community participation.
We will endeavour to work together with common sense and a common purpose towards a Transition of Essex communities:
A Transition away from fossil fuels and industrial profit before planet mindset.
A Transition towards a greener brighter future and a reverence for nature.
A Transition towards strong local economies with Renewable Citizen Solar Community Ownership Projects and Local Cooperative Food Production and Distribution Networks.
And more…
We see Boiling Frogs Blog as a time capsule for our children and theirs. We hope it will act as a chronicle of the action taken by the people mobilising to cocreate a bottom up response to our climate and ecological challenges. Citizens coming together making the impossible possible.
Please join us!
#EssexInTransition
Bringing networks together because #TogetherWeCan
A Community project from BoilingFrogsBlog.org
#EssexInTransition is BFBs public awareness campaign and a call-To-Action.
The United Nations have called for a wartime-style mobilisation and a paradigm shift in thinking to combat Climate Change. Well, we are very sorry but we don’t see that happening here in Essex.
However, we believe that the citizens of Essex have all the expertise, experience and resources we need to start preparing our community and its citizens for the climate challenges ahead.
Local people taking action in their communities across the world is proving time and time again to be the only way to realise true and lasting social change. As a family we have decided to move our focus and energies away from protests and confrontation and move towards more peaceful community collaboration in cocreating the solutions. If you’re protesting or procrastinating you’re not preparing and repairing.
“If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, and it might just be in time.“
– Transition Towns
Of course, we aren’t going to do all that needs to be done alone, now, are we? There are already many in the county that are working hard on aspects of climate and social justice. Our strategy is a simple one: get key elements of the third sector in Essex and local concerned citizens under the same roof, so to speak. Then encourage debate and collaboration leading to action appropriate to the situation and challenges facing our communities.
With the tools and support available from the Transition Network we intend to help cocreate a shared vision of communities in Essex coming together to reimagine and reorganise the local level. That’s because as communities we need to be more responsive, resilient and realistic to the challenges and changes of a global climate and ecological emergency. No one is coming to rescue us.
To get things going we are inviting members of six different networks already operating in Essex to come together and help realise the power and the potential of starting to talk with each other.
We think Professor Stephen Hawking summed it up perfectly when he said:
“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk. We learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
So let’s start talking! #TogetherWeCan
The six networks we are inviting to the table are: Transition Towns Network, Eco Church A Rocha Network, Essex University Network, Pesticide Free Towns PAN-UK Network, Essex wider 3rd Sector Network and The Greens.
- Transition Towns Network
Transitioners and those already getting on with what needs to be done. They have lots of resources and expertise and are ready willing and able to help others to do the same.
- Eco Church A Rocha Network
Dozens of local Christian churches going for gold while going for green. We will, of course, follow a multifaith approach to this network and welcome input from all of our community faiths.
- Essex University Network
Sustainable academia and expertise with 20 thousand plus students with a very large stake in a brighter future.
- Pesticide Free Towns PAN-UK Network
The science and sensibility of the continued use of toxic cocktails of chemicals in our streets, schools and places we play. Even though they have been proven time and again to be deadly to people, pets and planet. A diverse network from organic gardeners, bee keepers, childminders and landscapers to scientists and dog walkers.
- Essex wider 3rd Sector Network – 13 Essex Voluntary Associations and their members
Charities of all types forward-thinking enough to declare a climate and ecological emergency and realising the vital role they must play in supporting community sustainability initiatives with their own expertise, influence, leadership and investment.
- The Greens
Organisations and individuals from across the Essex Green spectrum from conservation to confrontation.
Creating a community think tank.
One of the more positive outcomes of the Covid crisis was that lots more people started to use the internet and associated technologies to come together, communicate and take action. We have an unmissable opportunity to use this technology to our advantage.
So working in partnership with the Transition Towns Network we will be inviting people from the above six networks to join us to talk about the climate and ecological elephants in the room on the Transition Together platform VIVE.
“Vive is an online space just for Transitioners and others working for community-led change. It’s a place where you can ask questions, share ideas and inspiration, and where we can learn, grow and support each other.”
Over the autumn, winter and spring of 2023/24 we hope that the people who except our invitation will get to know each other and ideas and collaborations will start to form and flourish.
Then by working in closer collaboration than ever before and with a shared vision, mobilise the community and initiate hundreds of new projects that will start to build the resilience that our communities and the most vulnerable members of them will need. Together supporting each other to adapt to the challenges ahead.
We hope together we can design and fund resilience building community-owned projects that will benefit the whole Essex community and the generations yet to come.
The Transition movement and its support network is perfectly situated to benefit greatly those of us in Essex willing to make a stand for people and planet. With support from the Transition Network our strategy can help instigate an Imagination Rebellion with dozens more new Transition initiatives. These initiatives can take many forms but we will be encouraging bold and ambitious projects like cooperative community-owned solar generation and storage, food growing and distribution networks, forest gardens with urban and rural rewilding. We want to see hundreds more community projects and thousands more people acting greener.
Of course, anyone interested in Transition issues should join in the conversation but please let’s keep it positive, polite, on point and productive.
Education to action conferences
We will also depending on available funding be cocreating online conferences for summer 2024 in three areas we believe to be of vital importance:
1. #TogetherWeCan
Growing transition in Essex and where do we go from here with the help of Transition Together.
2. #BeeTheChange #PesticideFreeEssex
In partnership with Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) and other experts we will debate the severe consequences of the continued use of cocktails of pesticides on people and planet while strengthening the coalition of organisations and individuals that are calling for action against them.
3. #CommunityEnergy #FuelingPositiveChange
Encouraging the 3rd sector to divest from fossil fuels and reinvest in community-led people power. Using their expertise, experience and investment capabilities to help kickstart new community ownership energy, food and rewilding initiatives.
What else is BFB doing to raise awareness?
BFB website will be a smorgasbord of stories about people just getting on with it.
Our News From The Front (NFTF) bulletins will give the inspiring community pioneers and their stories a platform to be heard and shared.
Excellent examples from communities across the UK and beyond of what could be reproduced if supported in any given community including our own.
We will call on citizens to Take Action by joining initiatives or even start their own.
Online we will use our social media platforms to raise awareness of the issues and ask people to act as eco cyber warriors by joining ours and others’ online campaigns.
We will show you who to follow and who to not, the best content to inform and share, real world action options, hashtag campaigns, community investment opportunities and crowdfunding campaigns including our own and many many more Local Solutions to Global Problems.
Our Problems/Solutions categories include:
#BeforeTheLastTreeIsCut
Stories from citizens campaigning to save green belt and other natural habitat from a rising tide of concrete and plastic lawns.
#TheLastRiverPolluted
Horror stories from across the UK on what’s in the rivers and the people taking action.
#TogeterWeCan
Transition stories and other groups coming together to take action.
#BeeTheChange
Averting an insect Armageddon. The vital importance of biodiversity and what we need to be doing and not doing to help heal the natural world.
#CommunityEnergy
One of the best examples of local solutions to global problems. Citizen solar projects bringing power to the people and funding for jobs and further investment in a stronger, fairer local economy.
#EcoChurch & #WildChristians
Stories from Christian communities taking the lead on climate action, biodiversity and rewilding.
#CitizenScience
Utilising the powers of observation and communication of volunteers from the general public.
#Rewilding
Reintroducing species both plant and animal to bring ecosystems back into balance.
#InternationalDays
Celebrating and spreading the word of our vision, our determination and our successes by supporting international days.
And if all that wasn’t enough we have more for those who like vintage campaigns:
If you still believe in homemade placard waving and Petition signing
The latest petitions and their success or failure plus calls to gather outside Parliament and wave, AKA protest.
More about me and BFB
Some stories from way back in the day of my walk on part in the environmental movement.
And there you have it.
HOW MUCH WILL ALL THIS COST?
So far we have funded BFB ourselves but it hasn’t been easy. Like most people we need to pay the rent, the bills and feed the kids but that won’t take much. As a not-for-profit company we can put all the rest to good use and the more we can raise the more we can achieve. We are just getting started and there is a tremendous amount of work to do. So if you like the sound of what we are doing then please feel free to help out if you can.
Ways to support our work with your hard earned cash:
- send us a tip on our Twitter account
- buy us a coffee on our ko-fi page
- support our GoFundMe campaign
To support us with some of your time while on social media:
- join us on Vive
- follow us on social media
- repost our posts
- follow our hashtag campaigns
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said:
“the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”
After decades of apathy over global warming we have all become like Boiling Frogs. Are you going to carry on just sitting there or are you going to join those us in leaping into to action?
BFB Categories so far....
We have prioritized Community Action into several categories below. Each one will give you some basic information on the topic. Our News From The Front section further below will give you regular updates on all these topics.
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
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