Climate Risk and Real-World Decision Making

This fall was a blur. First New York for Climate Week: 

We joined our friends from Causeway to host a celebration of climate activism. See here for a recording of the evening. It wasn’t really planned that way, but both panels featured courageous women who are implementing real solutions around the world. Our COPx partner Sara Roversi, for example, described her work this summer helping a thousand young people become Climate Shapers.

Then to Shanghai, China, to keynote a conference on China’s aspiration to become the Ecological Civilization. Then home for a few days, then south to Belem Brazil for the UN’s annual exercise in frustration: the Conference of Parties (COP) ostensibly negotiating solutions to the growing climate crisis.

 

Those of you who have seen me know that on my hat I wear the pin from the 1997 COP in Kyoto. COP 30 in Brazil will mark 30 years of "negotiations.” But nature does not negotiate. And, given that the COP process is wholly bought and paid for by the fossil interests, the official agreements disappoint, year after year, and the crisis worsens. And this year was no exception. COP30 failed. See my Dispatches from COP for what it felt like to be there, and 

This is why we created COPx: Conferences of People, independently organized (www.copx.global). As my paper in Climate and Capital Media described, togetherwe can create a climate safe future at a profit. 

Building a global movement to empower people everywhere to implement the known solutions is hard work. We have been giving webinars, podcasts and live talks from Germany to London to New York to Denver. You can catch a few of these at:

We are building out our action/ communication/ engagement plan. If any of you want to see it, or contribute to it, please write us. We’ll be happy to share it.

In a recent speech, I said reality is a stern change agent. The crises facing us are not going away. I quoted Günther Thallinger, Board member of Allianz SE, who pointed out that a rapidly warming world will become uninsurable. This, he said, is a systemic risk threatening the very foundations of the financial sector…a climate induced credit crunch. Markets, he said, will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate driven market failure looks like. "The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.” Thallinger’s piece is really worth reading, not to scare yourself, tho it will do that, but because we need to realize that as the wheels start to come off the system, powerful interests will become interested in solutions. And we have those.

 

No one of us can do this alone. A key part of the COPx strategy is to partner with the many organizations that offer a wealth of things you can do. In New York I met with Anna Robertson, creator of The Cool Down. We’ve mentioned them before, but if you find yourself especially hungry these days for what you can do to make a difference? Subscribe to The Cool Down and start implementing.

 

Also check out Sustain Chain. This is another repository of solutions. 

In an American context, anyone looking for guidance/structure on HOW to get the word out (what to say, who to tell about climate solutions), check out Climate Changemakers. They offer an Action Plan to ‘Use it or lose it.’ There are playbooks for how to talk to homeowners in your community — and to other eligible entities, like schools, local businesses, and nonprofits.

 

 

Earth Guardians (EG) brings three decades of catalytic youth leadership. Together, they align their communities and bottom-up approaches. They turn concern into action and build political will, community by community.

Since 1992, EG has trained more than 10,000 young climate justice leaders. Since 2021, they have awarded $185,000 in honoraria, registered 25,000 young voters, planted over 200,000 trees, and supported 900 youth-led projects, including reforestation, agroecology, restorative storytelling, policy advocacy, and many more climate justice solutions. The EG approach integrates community justice, strategic organizing, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and science so solutions are culturally grounded and built to last.

Earth Guardian keynote programs—Speakers Bureau, Indigenous Youth Initiative (IYI), and Crews—fuel their mission worldwide to train young people to be influential leaders. People under 30 launch EG Crews, self-sustaining local chapters across the globe, and are unified through their climate justice trainings, mentorship, campaigns, and more to build community, shift local policy, and improve living and institutional systems, creating a ripple effect of impact. The EG IYI program is training a cohort of young North American Indigenous leaders in TEK, strategic campaign organizing, and media storytelling. The Speakers Bureau advocates for change and educates audiences from COP to the UN to inner city schools, inspiring youth to start Crews to address local climate and environmental justice issues. One Crew leader said, "I came in thinking climate activism wasn’t for people like me. Now I’m organizing my whole community.”

The ripple is regenerative as Crew leaders return as mentors and staff. Slam Dunkley, a former IYI participant and now EG’s Board Chair, shares, "EG didn’t just give me tools; they made me believe my voice belonged in the rooms where decisions are made.” Former Crew leader and Executive Director Emmy Scott adds, "EG shaped me into a leader capable of overseeing 1,000+ students, impacting millions of lives.”

Emmy recently wrote to me: "By partnering with COPx, we affirm a simple truth: people everywhere can implement proven solutions now and send a clear signal for change.”