It’s Time For The Climate Movement To Also Transition.
From Anger to Optimism.
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The Climate Movement was born out of the deep dark silence of what industrialisation was doing to our planet.
We were making Mother Earth sick and it seemed no one wanted to talk about it. Especially not the people holding the microphones. Not the CEO’s of the companies digging her wounds, not the Prime Ministers or Presidents pocketing her pounds of flesh and not those who were indoctrinated with the falsehoods that there was no other way to drive fast cars, build businesses, to have, to own, to be.
In its infancy of the 1990’s, the Climate Movement needed to be loud, deafening and demanding. There was much ground work to be done. There were many in denial. Worse still, there were many in denial with skin in the game. The dangerous ones.
There were (and still are) many bullies with much power to bury information, buy solutions and block progress. (Hello Exxon, how are you these days?) Shining a light where there was darkness, felt like the keys to the climate-safe kingdom.
Meanwhile along the way, the many many many more who were ready to hear, heard and gathered.
By 2009, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the climate movement began to really show its teeth and mobilisation power on a global scale. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people attended a march calling for a global agreement on climate. The goal was still then, to legitimise the crisis. To basically get the world leaders to admit it.
Seven years later, after many stories of tragedy, predictions of complete demise, black skies and flattened skylines, after cyclone and typhoon, after flood and drought, after freeze and fire, something amazing happened.
In 2016, the (then) goal of the Climate Movement was realised.
After years of good work by both those in the diplomatic engine rooms and those outside making the noise, we finally got the world leaders to agree we had a problem. Under the careful custody of UNFCCC Executive Secretary…
