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View this email in your browser Hello, and welcome to the first regular update from Climate Citizens. From now on, we'll be putting together a quarterly update from the project, together with a blog by one of the team.  The Climate Citizens blog The Government's Energy Security Strategy has placed the prospect of new nuclear facilities back on the agenda. This raises questions over where these sites will be based and how to engage with communities in the site selection process. For the inaugural Climate Citizens blog, Pancho Lewis argues that to start answering these questions we should look at how existing nuclear sites are viewed by those living in their shadows. The blog looks at the complicated feelings in West Cumbria towards Sellafield, Europe's largest nuclear facility.  Pancho is researching how public deliberation can contribute towards delivering a just transition in West Cumbria. You can find his blog here. In the media Rebecca Willis joined Woman's Hour to talk about the results of our Net Zero Diaries research project - a collaboration with BritainThinks, Ovo, WWF and Citizens Advice.  In The Guardian, Rebecca Willis writes that democracy is an essential ingredient in tackling climate change. In the “Visions for the Future of Democracy” series, put together by Involve for their 15th anniversary, Jake Ainscough and Rebecca Willis provide their vision for democracy 15 years from now. Rebecca Willis talks about the importance of involving ordinary people in the climate debate in an article in Bright Blue's Centre Write. In The Conversation, Jake Ainscough argues that the UK Government's levelling up strategy is a missed opportunity for action on climate change. Rachel Coxcoon talked about the significance of the local government in tackling the climate change issues to the podcast The Owl Hoot. Journal articles and reports A new paper by Rebecca Willis and fellow deliberative theorists Nicole Curato and Graham Smith discusses the recent upsurge in deliberative mini-publics on climate and energy related issues. It critically evaluates the role that mini-publics, and deliberative democracy more broadly, can play in helping democratic societies navigate the climate crisis. Rebecca Willis and Andy Yuille published a paper discussing the challenges and opportunities of taking deliberation online.  Jake Ainscough and Rebecca Willis’s short article "The fight for a social mandate for net zero" appears in IPPR's Progressive Review. They discuss the threat of the cost-of-living crisis to progress on climate change, and how to build a social mandate for net zero.  Coming up... Over the next three months, we will be running a Citizens' Panel on home energy decarbonisation, in partnership with the Climate Change Committee and Shared Future. The panel will focus on policies for people who own their own homes - a large number of UK households, for whom there is minimal support available. We will be reporting on this work ahead of the Climate Change Committee's 2022 Progress Report to Government.  In the next month we will be advertising for expressions of interest to join the Climate Citizens project for three months as a Visiting Fellow. These fellowships are open to anyone working on climate engagement and deliberation inside or outside academia.  We will be hosting a launch event (in person) and morning briefing (online) for the final report from the Net Zero Diaries project. Invites to these events will follow shortly.  We hope you've enjoyed reading this update; you can subscribe here if so. As ever, please do get in touch if you'd like to know more. All the best,  Rebecca Willis, Jacob Ainscough, Rachel Coxcoon, Pancho Lewis and Juliana Da Silveira The Climate Citizens team   Our mailing address is: j.ainscough@lancaster.ac.uk  You are receiving these emails because you signed up for updates on the Climate Citizens project.  You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.