ClimateKeys is an initiative I founded in which most of its seventy concerts took place between late 2016 and 2020. The concerts were performed by volunteer musicians in sixteen countries. We collaborated with guest speakers and convened conversations with audiences. In those days most of us understood much less about climate change. There were fewer conversations; "climate" was like a dirty word most of us avoided. ClimateKeys sought to normalise speaking about climate change in real-life places outside of academic and activist spaces.

Now it's ten years on and the cat is well and truly out of the bag. We know we're in trouble wherever we are, some places much worse than others. That is, until the very worst impact that day or week or month takes place where one unfortunately just happens to be at the time.

In the last few hours the very worst climate impact this season took place on the Nepal-Tibet border. You won't need reminding about the details. Rest in peace to those nationals and visiting tourists who lost their lives, numbers currently unknown but at least in the hundreds.

In the wake of this terrifying climate impact, I expect that every relevant government department will convene national and global emergency action to end fossil fuel production.

What I expect will not happen.

Today is just another day in paradise for the fossil fuel companies. No one in elected government is able to control them. In our system of democracy, political decisions respond to economics, and modern economics does not concern itself with the health of all life on earth.

While the deathly rocks and ice and water fell in Nepal, the prime minister of a minority world (global north) country was most certainly still considering opening up new drilling. I am assuming this because he has so far still not made a statement to the contrary.

He is most probably sticking to his view that resources in national, untapped oil fields can't be ignored.

Who is the boss?

This tells me everything I need to know about political decisions. These are subordinate to the rules of an economic system based on a mathematical formula concerned only with growth, and one that lacks a beating heart.

Should that new oil field come into being, there will be new profit from the labour of workers, new profit from the infrastructure manufacture and new profit from the oil itself. If and when there is an associated environmental hazard, say a spill, any clean up operation will generate new profit through labour and new profit from clean-up infrastructure. Modern democracy's measurement of success, the growth of gross domestic product (GDP), will be boosted; no matter that it's come from a toxic industry causing the collapse of glacial ice. Today's version of democracy is subservient to a deathly economic system.

Trigger warning. You may already be aware of climate risks published by a national insurance body in 2025. There is a scenario in which half of us, four billion people, might be wiped out during this century, (Appendix 1 here).

How we become the boss

We must overhaul the situation we have arrived at where the system of governance is in service to a dangerous economic system. We can and must upgrade democracy to a system of governance powered by juries of informed citizens at its core.

It so happens that we are actually spoilt by the sheer number of today's visionaries evolving methods to bring in such a transition. The ideas have various labels including sortition, deliberative democracy, citizens' assemblies and peoples' juries.

But such ideas are far from simply being academic theories sitting in the silos of dusty university libraries and difficult to understand books and papers. On the contrary, not only have such concepts successfully operated previous democracies back in time, they have already been coming into practice today in some thrilling ways.

More on this in the next article.

Un-paralysing ourselves

Theatre director Nicholas Hytner recently voiced "the problems that we’re currently facing seem so intractable that we appear to be paralysed". Changing our operating system by generating governance through citizen decision-making will implicitly un-paralyse us. When I became a mother I developed a new form of responsibility overnight in order to care for my infant. When we have responsibility we act responsibly. Those with the freedom to use our responsibility and act responsibly must do so.

Lola Perrin, 18 August 2026

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