This article first appeared in our Health Revolution issue of My Green Pod Magazine, distributed with The Guardian on 24 July 2020. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Ric Casale, author of Civic Revolution: A Citizen’s Guide, founded Carbon Copy in a bid to inspire a collaborative approach towards action on the climate emergency.
The non-political charity convenes (online, for now) local councils, community groups and companies that share the same zero-carbon goal.
It’s the result of lots of conversations with different people who are already doing great work in various places.
‘We found ourselves wanting to share their stories about collective, local action more widely’, Ric tells us, ‘so that people could learn faster from one another.’
Rapid innovation is required to address radical uncertainty, and innovative ideas and solutions are often found at a local scale.
The goal at Carbon Copy is to create momentum behind hundreds of localised climate action plans that already exist. By being more collaborative and inclusive in facing the climate emergency, we can mimic nature’s genius for encouraging diversity and multiplicity.
The power of proliferation is two-fold: where low-carbon solutions succeed, people copy and adapt them; where they don’t work, they fail on a manageable scale with backups already in place.
The idea is that the more we share, the faster we can move ahead.
The potential of community-led climate action is massive, and our zero-carbon future is already being invented by myriad communities in different places.
Over two-thirds of the UK’s primary councils, plus countless more community groups, have declared a climate emergency and taken action.
Carbon Copy showcases this leadership and helps people to discover and share low-carbon initiatives that are working in local communities.
The platform is for people who think big locally, so individual impacts can be scaled up on a community, county or regional level.
Carbon Copy is currently seeking low-carbon initiatives to publish – whether big or small, in pilot stage or fully implemented.
If you are working on a project, policy or toolkit that addresses the environment and climate emergency – in clean energy, our built environment, the circular economy, transport, nature or land use – now’s the time to share your work. If others could benefit you’ll help to accelerate the shift that’s already underway.
Click here to share your low-carbon project with Carbon Copy.
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