Climate change is perhaps the greatest political, social, and cultural challenge of our time. There will be increasingly dire consequences -- for Albertans and the rest of the world -- if we don’t act collectively, wisely, and quickly to both mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects. Yet our practices of governing, communicating, and consuming are proving less than nimble in addressing the crisis we face.

We are a cross-partisan group, convinced that just and effective responses to climate change must draw upon the collective wisdom and energy of citizens, expressed through well-designed and inclusive public deliberations. Only by involving citizens directly in problem-solving and policy-making can governments craft responses that are sufficiently bold to address the crisis, and sufficiently legitimate to secure solid public backing.

Our project, then, is to design new mechanisms of citizen deliberation on climate change in Alberta, and to work together to make these real. This will not only help to shape our province's response to climate change, but will help to invigorate our democracy, and to put us at the cutting edge of both climate change responses and democratic deliberation.

This initiative is a collaboration between a broadly-based group of Albertan stakeholders and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, a global organization of researchers and practitioners expert in convening and assessing public dialogues and deliberations that increase mutual understanding, solve problems, and shape policy.

From September 26-28, carefully selected stakeholders from across Albertan society will work together to begin designing a program of public engagement on climate change in the province. Participants include elected officials, people from NGOs and industry, and many others; they also include theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US.

The Public Roundtable and Community Conversation outlined above will feed into this invitation-only workshop, and the Monday event below will give you a chance to come hear what we come up with, and how you can join in with whatever comes next. We also will post videos and reports on this website, and use this website to continue the conversation.

We will be uploading summaries of the weekend's events, and later there'll be some podcasts and a final report. For now, here's a first summary (in downloadable Word documents) of what happened Friday morning, Friday afternoon, and at the Friday evening World Cafe.

Read the Briefing Document on Climate Change. (This briefing document offers background information on key facts and arguments related to climate change with a focus on Alberta’s role within that context. It is intended to help prepare participants in the Deliberative Democracy and Climate Change Workshop, as well as participants in our World Café event, for an informed discussion of citizen engagement on climate change.)

Read the Briefing Document: What is Deliberative Democracy?(Over the last two decades, public confidence in elected representatives and voter turnout in Canadian elections have declined steadily, along with other key democratic indicators. It is not hard to see why. Disenchantment with how politics is practiced, excessive control by the executive branch of government, and high-profile public and private sector mismanagement controversies have added to the public’s growing cynicism about democratic politics and have prompted public demands for greater accountability on the part of government officials and for increased input by citizens into the policy-making process. As a consequence, democratic renewal and public involvement have moved to the forefront of the public agenda. Policy-makers, scholars, and community groups are now exploring ways to involve the public in democratic decision-making. Indeed, new structures and processes and have been implemented at the local, regional, provincial, and national level to allow citizens a greater say in decisions that affect their lives.)

Members of the press and interested organizations are invited to attend Albertans Deliberating About Climate Change: Steps Toward Engaging the Public.

The event will begin with presentations by participants in the Collaborative Workshop on Deliberative Democracy and Climate Change, held from September 26-28, who will outline the program of public engagement designed in that multi-stakeholder workshop.

There then will be a facilitated discussion where those in attendance can raise questions about the public engagement plan, offer advice, and decide how they would like to be involved in moving things forward.

The event will be held at the Telus Center of the University of Alberta, corner of 87th Avenue and 111th Street in Edmonton. (We would appreciate it if those planning to come could RSVP to climateroundtable@gmail.com so that we can get a sense of how many people are attending, and select a room of suitable size.)

Everyone is welcome to attend a public roundtable on Public Deliberation on Climate Change: Getting beyond sound-bite politics and shallow consultations.

The roundtable will feature Alice Casey (Involve UK), Janette Hartz-Karp (Curtin University, Australia), Matt Leighninger (Deliberative Democracy Consortium, USA), Mary Pat MacKinnon (Ascentum and University of Ottawa), and Peter Muhlberger (Texas Tech University).

It will take place at the Law Center of the University of Alberta (corner of 111 St. and 89 Ave.), Room 231/237. For more information contact climateroundtable@gmail.com. And here's a poster.

This event will gather together Albertans to talk about how our province is dealing with climate change, and how we should be dealing with it. The event will be structured as a World Café, where people move between conversations in small groups. Refreshments will be served.

Here's a poster. And if you want to know more about the world cafe methods, here's a 7-page pdf that describes how to do it.