Here at mySociety, we’ve built a number of tools around data and the climate: CAPE, the Climate Action Plans Explorer; the Council Climate Action Scorecards, and, most recently, Local Intelligence Hub, which allows you to look at climate-relevant data in your own area and compare it with the nation as a whole.
All these sites are designed to equip users with the information they need to hold their representatives accountable over action for the environment and nature. But what does that look like in practice?
We had the opportunity to see for ourselves this month, thanks to the Mass Lobby, organised by The Climate Coalition (TCC), in which more than 5,000 highly motivated constituents made the journey to Westminster to have in-person conversations with their MPs and stress the importance of action.
For those who were wondering what on earth they would say once they were face to face with their reps, our own Zarino and Julia were on hand, ready to tap each person’s postcode into Local Intelligence Hub and furnish them with some pertinent facts and figures to get the conversation rolling.
Thanks to Local Intelligence Hub’s broad coverage of factors such as MPs’ stances, public opinion, and local demographics, Julia and Zarino could even ask each person what they cared about most, or what was the big environmental issue on their own turf, and find the most relevant information around it.
In fact, many of the charities and campaigns that make up TCC had shared the link to the Hub beforehand, so a good quantity of constituents turned up with their homework already done. Either way, it was amazing to see the site — which we run in partnership with TCC, supported by Green Alliance — being used for the exact reason we’d built it.
With Hope for the Future at the next table, specialising in how to speak to MPs in a way that will actually change their minds, lobbyists went into the room extremely well prepared!
Over the day there were meetings with around 200 MPs, usually with around 5 -10 constituents in each. Unfortunately, an important set of votes took place in Parliament that day, meaning that some were unexpectedly called away, but it’s fair to say that a lot of MPs were given a lot of useful data from a lot of informed constituents that day. We hope it will motivate them to do the right thing when it comes to climate and nature.
