2025-05-17
Citizens' assemblies are simply assemblies of citizens. Of course they are assemblies for a purpose, as are all assemblies.
And they have to be funded ... advertising, room hire, presentation equipment and materials all cost money, although not necessarily vast amounts - nevertheless the overall cost of assemblies in every town is not insignificant.
I have attended one such myself, on how best to encourage net zero measures in our locality, and where would be best to site them. I went along (a) for the experience and (b) to see how must sense I would be able to contribute. Yes, it was an instructive experience and no, not much sense was permitted, on the grounds that it was a Net Zero meeting and it's purpose was not to argue the case for or against, since that outcome was already established.
I was therefore in the wrong meeting. Not that there was any right meeting arranged where I might have fitted in. Of course I could have called my own "right meeting" but that wasn't on my personal priority list. I doubt that this meeting was high on anyone's priority list either (aside from the organisers), but it was there, and offered an evening's agreeable social activity to quite a number.
In fact it was actually a bit like a class of rather sedate school children, as we were divided into groups, given coloured stickers to place on large pieces of paper to indicate specific preferences, and allotted some group discussion time. After which each group presented their results. It was all very chummy and interactive, but hardly a basis for devising local implementation policy. It was however a fairly good opportunity to reinforce the notion of the need for net zero involvement, if not the logic behind it. I decided that my involvement should indeed be net zero, made my apologies and left early.
TCW Daily delves into the institutions behind such initiatives.
