Mother's Day is May 14 in the US, and I am inspired this week by a new book from author Mallory McDuff, Love Your Mother: 50 States, 50 Stories and 50 Women United for Climate Justice, which connects the priorities of women leading as a collective force for climate justice.
It’s especially timely to write about this today as I have just led, with my colleagues from Connected Women Leaders, a convening to shape a global campaign we’re calling Project Dandelion. We aim to amplify the climate justice work that women everywhere are leading and enlist millions more women to prioritize the urgency to solve the climate crisis in ways that are fair and just for all.
This new book highlights women who are working toward climate justice in their communities all over the US. In future newsletters, I will be sharing stories of women who are leading the way forward towards a more equitable and habitable future in their communities, companies, and governments across the globe.
As a mother and a professor of environmental education at Warren Wilson College in the Swannanoa Valley near Asheville, North Carolina, author Mallory McDuff says she "wanted to give her two daughters and her students a roadmap to engage in climate justice in their communities." So she set out to talk to women climate activists across the United States “as inspiration for a new kind of leadership focused on the heart of the climate crisis.”
Mallory profiles women who are using the superpowers they possess — their unique talents, skills and connections — to create a healthier future for the planet, and for their children and grandchildren. “Love Your Mother lifts up the stories of women who are poets, physicians, climate scientists, students, farmers, writers, documentary filmmakers, and more,” writes Mallory. “Their work lights the way for conversation and collective action in our homes and in the world. It's time we follow their lead.”
The 50 stories in Love Your Mother include several women who’ve given TED Talks at TEDWomen, such as Indigenous lawyer Tara Houska, frontline activist Colette Pichon Battle, and writer and activist Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, among many other women shaping the ideas and actions to address the unfair and disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on women and vulnerable communities.
Dr. Katharine Wilkinson presenting at TEDWomen in 2019. Watch her TED Talk.
In this excerpt of the Georgia chapter from Love Your Mother, Katharine makes the connection between women leaders and the climate crisis, and why we need more women leaders to solve it.
Georgia: Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
Reprinted with permission from Love Your Mother: 50 States, 50 Stories, and 50 Women United for Climate Justice by Mallory McDuff copyright © 2023 Broadleaf Books.
It was a mild spring night in the mountains, and the 500-seat theater was packed, except for the back two rows. I’d come to hear Dr. Katharine Wilkinson in person, after listening to her TED Talk that went viral about empowering women and girls in order to help stop global warming. A group of teenagers tromped into the auditorium with their flannel shirts, Carhartts, and water bottles at the ready. They settled into the back rows, limbs draped across each other, comfortable after three months together at The Outdoor Academy. The students were here because Katharine spent a semester in high school in the same program in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, a time that influenced her path toward building feminist leadership for the climate.
“There are two powerful phenomena unfolding on Earth. The rise of global warming and the rise of women and girls. The link between them is often overlooked, but gender equality is a key answer to our planetary challenge.”
Commanding the stage, Katharine shared climate solutions cataloged by the organization Project Drawdown — including drawing down heat-trapping, climate-changing emissions. Among the strategies, she explained, are three areas where securing equal rights and opportunities for women and girls would build resilience and avert emissions: farming, education, and healthcare. The bestseller Drawdown was focused on these three areas, and she renewed the vision in the follow-up book, The Drawdown Review.
“Women are vital voices and agents for change,” she continued. “We’re too often ignored or silenced when we speak.” As she spoke, I peered toward the back of the theater to see the students sitting up straight in their chairs as she described how women and girls face greater risk of displacement and death from natural disasters.
It’s been over two decades since she had her “knife-in-the-heart moment” while hiking with The Outdoor Academy in Pisgah National Forest. There the group came upon an area that had been clear-cut, a dramatic scene that fostered her sense of responsibility in making a difference for the earth. That moment was what led her into student activism and then a doctorate at the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Each experience deepened her focus to conserve and connect with the planet.
Katharine reminds us the patriarchal leadership that got us into the climate mess won’t get us out of it. “The climate crisis is a leadership crisis,” she said. “To transform society, we need transformational leadership …girls, women, and nonbinary leaders are showing up as the catalytic change-makers the movement desperately needs.”
During an episode of the podcast No Place Like Home, she described a feminist leadership approach comfortable with both science and stories, art and activism, policy and philosophy, with justice as a through line. “The climate movement has been fractured by battling male egos,” she said. “There’s a need for more collaborative leadership.” In the bestselling anthology of women writers, poets, and artists, All We Can Save, Katharine collaborated with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson as coeditors. Rolling Stone called the book “a feast of ideas and perspectives, setting a big table for the climate movement, declaring all are welcome.” And that’s exactly what Katharine aims to do.
She left her role with Project Drawdown in order to build the All We Can Save Project — an organization inspired by the book and focused on nurturing a welcoming, connected climate community, rooted in the work and wisdom of women, with a dose of joy as well.
“For my entire life, every educational institution I’ve attended and organization I’ve worked for — they’ve all been run by white men,” she wrote. “I’ve done liberated work in fits and starts, but never like this. I’ve never given my days to the work I think the world needs most.”
Now in this role, Katharine shepherds a growing set of programs, including All We Can Save Circles, small groups seeding climate dialogue, community, and action. She also co-hosts her own podcast, A Matter of Degrees, with policy expert Dr. Leah Stokes, exploring diverse topics such as embedding equal opportunity in a clean-energy economy.
But she always brings a levity to the heavy lifting: once after dinner at a conference with Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland and climate advocate surprised her with a request for some dance music.
“What do you play? Does she foxtrot? Love 80s power ballads?”
“I panicked,” she later said, “then went with Motown ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’”
With the mountains, poetry, and a commitment to possibility, she believes “it is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much.”
We are on the cusp of a more just, clean energy future. Considering what’s at stake in getting this right — ensuring that our children and grandchildren live in a world that can be healthier and more in harmony with our natural environment — everyone has a role to play.
Mothers are focused on future generations in a special way and are increasingly taking the lead in securing that future for all. Give yourself the gift of reading about many of them in Mallory’s well-timed book and wherever you live, give gratitude to all mothers for the gifts of life and a mother’s love.
Onward!
- Pat
