In February this year, I decided it was time to re-engage with the local Green Party. There were several objectives: 1. Help with a series of elections, the first of which took place in March, followed by a second in May. 2. Contribute to building the community within the Green Party and support the massive growth we obtained thanks to our new leader Zak Polanski. 3. Learn about the complexities of building a community in a country hell-bent on destroying any sense of community. 4. Put my database skills to use within the party. 5. Act on the lessons learnt from the National Emergency Briefing that had recently been published and which made it clear that the climate crisis was no longer a distant problem, but here with us now. 6. One of this group's key aims was to turn theory into practice. To find actions that could impact what happened next. So it was time to do something in the real world. It has been a learning curve for sure. I have had successes, but I have also failed in several areas. We managed to get one town councillor elected at the first election but failed to make much traction in the second in what was a safe seat for one of the other parties. There were things I did not know, and in that ignorance, I made mistakes, some of which helped break the local party. We are now teetering on the edge of collapse. It occurred to me that this was to be expected. There were signs this might be the outcome, and I didn't know what to look for, so I missed many of the clues given to me. Any group of people coming together to drive a mission is bound to have to deal with complex relationships and conflict. It must be happening everywhere and indeed was predicted. Predicting complexity is one thing - finding out what that meant was new. So how best to pass the lessons learnt on to others? There is little point in going through the gory detail of what happened, but there may be some value in writing about the lessons learnt. Why? Because we still need to move fast to avert as much damage from climate change as we can. To do this, we need to form groups of like-minded people to take useful actions that change the outcome.

Article 9 of our Water Stress series is now up, and this one asks a question that becomes increasingly difficult the longer you think about it. What happens when there simply isn't enough water for everyone? Homes need water for drinking, washing and sanitation. Farmers need it to grow our food and water livestock. Rivers, ponds and wildlife need enough left in the environment to survive. Firefighters may need enormous quantities during exactly the hot, dry conditions causing the shortage. Industry and energy production need water, while new housing and data centres are adding new demands. So who gets priority? While writing the article, I realised there may be another question we should ask first: Who actually needs drinking-quality water? Do we really need to spend energy and money treating water until it is safe enough to drink, only to flush our toilets with it? Could rainwater water our gardens? Could greywater flush toilets? Could recycled water supply some industrial processes and cooling systems? Could farms store more winter rainfall for irrigation? Every alternative source potentially reduces the number of people and activities competing for the same drinking-water supply. But eventually, during a severe enough drought, difficult choices may still have to be made. And I don't think the answer is simply to produce a league table of homes, farms, wildlife, industry and technology. We need to understand what happens elsewhere in the system when we withhold water from each of them. If we stop irrigating a farm, what happens to food production? If we take more from a river, what happens to its ecosystem? If we restrict a factory, what does it produce? If a data centre needs water, what services depend upon it? And perhaps every major new development should have to answer another very simple question before it is built: Where will your water come from — particularly during a drought? 🔗 Read Article 9 — Who Gets the Water?