The People’s Emergency Briefing – A missed opportunity!

Across the UK, the People’s Emergency Briefing is currently being screened to large audiences. It is intended as a wake-up call just in time to turn things around before the full climate catastrophe becomes irreversible. This summer’s drought if anything demonstrates the urgency. The goggle box style presentation format may not be to the taste of everyone, but the warning of current and future disasters hits home well. These developments have been known for some time, but the film achieves its goal of ensuring that wider sections of society are confronted with the looming reality. In the end, however, the documentary is a complete let-down when it comes to potential solutions and ways forward. In this post, I want to highlight four key shortcomings.

 

The economic message is clear. Not confronting climate change will be extremely costly. ‘The cost of inaction will massively outweigh the costs of action.’ Nevertheless, when it comes to solutions the focus is almost exclusively on better regulation. We should set new (market) rules to ensure that polluters pay, while ‘green companies’ are rewarded. As if all that were necessary would be simply to adjust the rules of the ‘free market’, and the rest would sort itself out. So-called ‘green new deals’ focusing on a stronger state involvement were not mentioned, the already existing community-based alternatives such as local energy grids based on renewables or different forms of housing and heating were overlooked. (For existing community-based alternatives, see the Avoiding the apocalypse lecture series by Alan Simpson.) And this, although we know for well that it is exactly the capitalist ‘free market’ with its exclusive focus on profit-maximisation, which fuels relentless ecological destruction.

The discussion of transport is equally disappointing. Rather than emphasising the importance of an expanded public transport system, the main recommendation is a shift towards electric vehicles. The fact that we simply do not have the necessary resources for expanding individual transport along this line is missed.

 

The military-security analysis too is highly problematic. Declaring climate change an issue of national security, a ‘threat multiplier’ is one thing. What is not mentioned, however, is the fact that the military and defence related manufacturing are one of the biggest global polluters, ‘producing 5.5.% of total global emissions’ (CEDARE 2025). Unsurprisingly, the US military is earth’s greatest polluter. See the documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner. Not to forget either that increasing arms manufacturing draws on finances desperately needed to confront the ecological crisis in the first place. The People’s Emergency Briefing is silent on these issues.

Finally, the whole documentary is a very Western-centric, even UK centric analysis. A shift to electric vehicles as the more general shift to renewable energy as a whole requires batteries based on lithium. The mining of lithium in countries of the Global South results in massive sacrifice zones (BBC, 25 July 2025). Other essential raw materials including cobalt come from conflict regions such as the Republic of Congo, fuelling further wars (ABC, 22 February 2022). Our potential transition in the Global North is paid for by the non-transition and higher pollution levels of others in the Global South. The People’s Emergency Briefing lacks a global vision.

 

Viewers leave the film with the understanding that if we change the rules of the market, vote for the right political parties and buy an electric vehicle, we will be fine. No more drastic changes to production and consumption patterns are needed. We in the UK can carry on living exactly as we are.

 

The widespread screening indicates that people are willing to listen and eager to learn. Ultimately, however, the documentary falls short of providing any realistic way forward. A missed opportunity!

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

16 September 2026