The climate cafe where misery is 'empowering'

A climate cafe in east London is offering people a space to talk about their fears for the environment.

The sessions, held at the Quaker Meeting House in Wanstead, are modelled on bereavement cafes, which bring people together to talk about grief.

Founder Liz Bodycote, a retired NHS psychotherapist, said "being able to be miserable together is strangely empowering".

"The key thing is that it's a listening space," she said. "Often quite personal and deep things come up, and it can be very moving."

The UK has been hit by a series of record-breaking heatwaves this summer and the Met Office says what used to be considered extreme weather is now the new normal.

Bodycote said the recent heatwaves had made the climate harder to ignore, and that some who attended felt the risks were still being played down.

"There can be frustration that there's still quite a lot of denial.

"That, even though this is happening, the urgency of the situation we're in is still being resisted in lots of ways."

She added she had been told by others "we always have hot weather, we've had heatwaves before".

"One of the things that is so, so, difficult about climate, is that we are all implicated," she said.

"We are in a system, in the way that we live, which has damaged the planet, and we are all a part of it.

"That, I think, is very hard, as a human being, to accept. We want to think we're doing good, but we're caught up in a system that one can feel they have a very limited power over."

Most of those attending so far have been older. Bodycote said she hoped to reach younger people and those with no existing involvement. Groups meet for an hour and a half, and everyone has the opportunity to speak without interruption.

Teresa, who travels from Walthamstow, said the meetings had left her feeling lighter.

"I wanted to meet people in real life who had the same willingness to talk about how miserable they felt," she said.

Teresa added the meetings had given her more courage to raise the subject elsewhere.

"It's surprisingly energising to be extremely miserable with other people," she said.

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