Change Starts Where You Stand

It’s Earth Day, and this "should" be a post that ends with a hopeful message. But take a look around. The world is in dire straits, and it happened long before the ‘other’ strait came front and center in the news.

This is certainly true with climate change. Last month, the World Meteorological Organization released its State of the Global Climate report. It makes it clear the world is on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory.

Some key findings from the report include the following:

• 2015-2025 were the hottest 11 years on record;

• Each of the last 8 years has set a record for ocean heat levels;

• The long-term rate of sea level rise has more than doubled – even a few millimeters of rise can significantly increase the risk from storms, floods and salt-water intrusion;

• Climate disasters drove the highest number of new displaced people in 16 years, mainly due to exacerbating food shortages and economic instability.  

Yes, the findings are bleak. We need to be realistic and prepare for very challenging times and increasingly severe effects of climate change.

[Photo: NASA]

Yet no one knows what will happen in the future. The world could change on a dime. In the words of Wangari Mathaai, "The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it.”

One positive action about to take place is a gathering of civil society organizations, experts,  government representatives and indigenous peoples in Colombia for the Fossil Fuel Phase Out. It is a convening to move forwards on creating a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels by facilitating a planned, just, and sustainable phase-out. Per the organizers, “the conference … will be a solutions-focused forum operating outside the auspices of traditional international climate architecture.”

The goal is a Fossil Fuel Treaty that would set legally binding global commitments to halt fossil fuel expansion and establish the international financial mechanisms – such as debt relief and a Global Just Transition Fund – needed to implement national phase-out plans.

That’s just one event happening to foster change.  There are many, we just have to pay attention.

We know the most promising solutions are interconnected.  Here are some solutions to prioritize:

Women’s rights – support reproductive rights, access to family planning services and the right to own land;

Girls’ education – educate girls to overcome poverty, inequity, child marriage;

Youth rights – provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education to the nearly 1.2 billion young adults between the ages of 15-24;

Rights of Nature – reconceptualizes the relationship with nature, by recognizing the legal right of ecosystems to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles;

Ecological economics – implement alternative economic frameworks that end economic disparities and support well-being;

Rewilding – restore land to its natural uncultivated state;

Traditional ecological knowledge – acknowledge the importance of indigenous and local knowledge of living in balance with the Earth.

It’s easy to take the doomer view. But do we really want to give up on it all and accept doomscrolling as a fait accompli? 

What is clear for Earth Day 2026 is that business as usual, and dependence on a constant growth/consumerist/fossil fuel way of being, is in its final throes.

Lives will become more localized. We need to put every effort into changing course, into making communities work for us all. How do we build systems that work on a planet with limits? Altering our course doesn’t have to lead to collapse. This is our opportunity – and who knows, maybe our only opportunity – to reconfigure the best direction for all of us.

Here’s one final thought. Giving up isn’t an option. Are you going to tell a 12-year-old, a 25- year-old, and really, anyone of any age that you didn’t try, in some way, to change things?

Goldman Environmental Prize winners 2026

Need some inspiration?  The Goldman Environmental Prize winners were announced this week.  They are all women. 

Per the Prize, “Global movements begin in backyards and town halls, in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our communities—led by regular people. Change starts where you stand.”