In her book "Nu is het aan ons", Eva Rovers makes a passionate case for why regular citizens need to step up and take action, especially when it comes to climate change. She argues that our current political systems are often bogged down by bureaucracy and slow to act on urgent issues.

She introduces the concept of citizens' assemblies' and shares examples of various countries that have started to implement these assemblies to create real change.

A lot of what she proposes reminds my of the synodal process in the Catholic Church: more listening, taking into account the opinions and proposals of representative groups of 'regular people', a collaborative decision process instead of top-down action by a few leaders that may suffer from tunnel vision or may even put their short-term political interests before long-term benefits for all.

Rovers also lists a lot of recommendations for this process that have yet to be fully implemented in the synodal process (at least from what I can see). Interesting read!