[177] The power of your vote – with William Eccles from The Commitment

A Sustainable Life with Jen Gale

In this week's episode I'm chatting to William Eccles from The Commitment.
The Commitment is a campaign asking us to commit to voting for a healthy planet. You do this by heading to their website, hitting the "make the commitment" button, and ticking the box that says “ I commit to vote only for politicians who work for urgent action on the climate and nature.”.
We discuss in the episode just why that is so important, and the really clever ways that they’re using your commitment to engage with MPs and give them a mandate to be braver in their calls and support for action on climate and nature.
As you’ll hear in the episode, when I came across the Commitment earlier this year, I stopped what I was doing and did just that. And then I shared it on social media asking other people to do the same. And the team at the Commitment were able to track the fact that me sharing meant other people stopped what they were doing and made their own commitment. But they know that lots of people get distracted in between hearing about something and actually doing it, so that number could have been so much higher.
I would LOVE it if this episode resulted in another 'mini surge' of commitments. There’s a point in the podcast where William invites you to pause the podcast and go and do it.
Last time I shared they had 27 people sign up – let’s see if we can smash that!
Enjoy!

William Eccles

GOOD NEWS!
In the new Good News section after the main interview, I share some of the good climate news happening (because there is some, I promise!). Here's this weeks pick:

• EVs have outsold diesel cars in the EU for the first time (Positive News on Instagram)
• More UK universities cutting ties with fossil fuel industry (The Guardian)
• And much closer to home... Libby in The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse shared what she described as ‘not a big win', but I would beg to differ! Libby says: "Yesterday a local business offered out 3 bike racks on my Freecycle site and I quickly bagsied them (I assume they were replacing them with something better). A few messages and emails later and 2 local businesses will have these new (old) bike racks allowing their staff and customers cycle to them instead of driving." Absolutely loving this Libby!
  

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LISTEN...

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USEFUL LINKS:

• The Commitment
  - Website
  - Make your Commitment
  - Facebook
  - Instagram
  - Twitter/X
  - Linked In
  - TikTok
• William Eccles
  - Linked In
• An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore
• The Uninhabitable Earth - David Wallace-Wells
• UN Biodiversity COPs
• Hope for the Future
• Green Alliance
• Climate Change - a very short introduction - Mark Maslin
• Outrage + Optimism - Moments of truth
• Environmental Voter Project
• Vote Climate
• Greenpeace's Project Climate Vote
• [086] - All things politics with Sian Berry
• Outrage + Optimism - COP28: The outcome is a signal
• Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts podcast
• Carbon Literacy training
• The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse
• Crap-free Christmas course
  

The Commitment

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Have you done it, have you done it, have you done it?!!
Do let me know in the comments!

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