If you’ve ever been in New York City during UNGA Week, the United Nations General Assembly meetings, then you know how completely disruptive it is to the already accelerated pace of life there to have 196 world leaders in the city at the same time. Streets get blocked off at a moment’s notice, with all the security details adding to already traffic jammed streets and well, the whole week is a funhouse mirror image reflecting back at us the irony of convening forums on the climate crisis in one of this country’s most congested and crowded cities.

Many of us lost our voices and got various chest and lung irritations, and nearly everyone was challenged to make our way on foot or by car (best option was always the subway which proved my husband right many times) to the multiple forums, panels, and presentations hosted by the hundreds of climate and nature focused organizations.

Someone said it’s like a giant cocktail party drop-in for Mother Earth – (drop-in being the operative description as most of us are double and triple booked!), to celebrate the good news of innovations in battery storage, the rise in electric car adoption, and more renewable energy transitions, but also in every room, you’ll hear worrisome questions about the lack of time and funding to reverse the damage and restore the ecosystems that sustain life.

The latest science is indeed scary. Johan Rockström and the newly formed Planetary Guardians, a cohort of women and men who have committed their lives and work to the preservation and conservation of the earth’s resources, shared the latest data documenting the damage already done to the nine essential life sustaining planetary boundaries. You can watch their presentation here and read the report here.

Please take some time to review this research because it will motivate you to join any and all efforts to respond to the emergency. Each of us can respond and must. The science makes it clear that we have less than five years to halt and reverse the damage to the earth’s essential ecosystems. The good news is there’s still time, but only if we have the will and the commitment to take action now.

That’s the headline that matters. There is still time to get this right. We have the solutions. What is needed is public pressure to get the solutions implemented at scale. We can halt the progression of climate change and reverse some of the damage by accelerating the phase down and eventual phase out of fossil fuels, by investing in and adapting to renewable energy sources, and by turning away from the extractive policies and mindset that have depleted our natural resources. We must begin thinking, living and working regeneratively.

We met many regenerative champions during Climate Week, especially the Indigenous leaders from Brazil (pictured above) who blessed a Project Dandelion convening with their presence. Their knowledge and wisdom, as well as their vision, for what is possible when we listen, learn, and align our aspirations with giving back rather than continuing to consume and extract.

Throughout, I found myself emotionally careening between the fear that we will keep kicking the proverbial can down the road, and the hope that perhaps finally, the science is clear enough, the dangers are real enough, and the ever present weather catastrophes are motivating enough, that we will all take up the existential challenge and responsibility that is ours, and do whatever we can to ensure that our children have a future on a liveable planet.

Hope is a strategy, as I have said and written before, and Project Dandelion is seeding hope alongside a strategy to unite, amplify, and activate women leaders of the world who are, in our observations, the potential collective power that’s needed to bring about the public pressure necessary to propel urgent change.

Project Dandelion calls for more support for women-led climate action and more investments in the leadership of women because we believe (and data supports the fact) that when women lead, action follows. Solving for the global polycrisis will take all of us, not women alone, but it cannot move forward fast enough without women’s leadership.

Our priority during NYC Climate Week was to amplify this message and continue the momentum of the Dandelion pinnings of women leaders (and our male allies) — the badging that exemplifies the wearer’s pledge to align with nature; to mirror the dandelion’s qualities of climate resilience; and to be like the dandelion, to ‘seed’ others to join the movement towards the better future that is still possible.

Seeing Dandelion pins on speakers on nearly every stage and on attendees at every event during Climate Week was so inspiring — a visible sign of the momentum that’s building towards the unifying and activating that is needed to meet the targets set for 2030.

Among the many moments of hope that sustain my faith that this future is still possible was an intergenerational conversation led by my ocean warrior granddaughter, Vasser, who leads The Oxygen Project. She asked her mother, a lifelong passionate conservationist, environmental advocate and champion, Laura Turner Seydel, what a regenerative future would look like. Laura answered that it would be one that honored the earth, beginning with the soil that is foundational to the health of all other life systems, and the life lessons we can take from the complex myecelium networks  that connect everything in a powerful web that nurtures all life systems. (Watch Fantastic Funghi to see this in action.)

When Vasser turned to me for an answer, I encouraged all generations to think of every choice we make now — from life’s smallest decisions to our biggest interactions with people and the earth — and to approach each choice and decision as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

It’s a hard truth but like hard edged hope, this knowledge gives power and purpose to everything we say and do — to what we buy, wear, eat, and importantly, how we vote. Our lives and our future on Mother Earth do depend on each and every choice. Let’s make the ones that protect, preserve, restore, repair and regenerate.

Onward!
- Pat