It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when faced with the facts about climate change. As individuals, we often commit to making change, then get caught in a cycle between hope and despair. But there are other options. We can shift our perspective to see how close we are to making a difference. We need to find a way to navigate climate crisis and cross the chasm from overwhelm to action.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
– Arthur Ashe

 

What does it mean to drive change from the inside out? Project Inside Out articulated the following approach, which I find helpful:

“To face our current realities and stay engaged, awake, and capable, we need to do more than scare, inform or push solutions at people. We need to become guides. When we start with ourselves—and our own messy and complicated feelings—we can begin conversations that transform.” – Project Inside Out

 

Our ability to drive change starts from the inside out.

Guiding is a new kind of climate and sustainability leadership. Guiding enables us to access our innate capacities to engage, respond, heal, create, innovate, activate, and repair.

It is about forming and strengthening relationships with allies to navigate the overwhelm, bridge divides, and heal the world.

It’s about creating spaces for our full selves—with all our anxieties, ambivalence, aspirations, grief, hope, despair, joy, and motivation.

Guiding is about welcoming it all.

 

The first step is recognising you are a leader in your life. 

There are many ways you can drive change inside your workplace, home and beyond. You don’t need a title, or an office, or have to get everything right all of the time. 

And as zero-waste activist Anne Marie Bonneau says, 

‘We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.’  – Anne Marie Bonneau

 

Identify recurring narratives

The climate crisis is a change management initiative beyond the scale of anything humanity has ever had to enact. Like any change initiative, we must tackle the recurring personal and public narratives that are barriers to change. 

Some of the most common personal narratives we hear are:

  •   We have to do it perfectly
  •   The problem is beyond help so why bother
  •   It’s too big and too hard for me as one person to influence
  •   It’s something future generations will fix
  •   It’s something technology will fix
  •   It’s not that bad
  •   I don’t know how
  •   I don’t have time
  •   I’m exhausted

 Some of the most common public discourse on systems change include:

  •   It will cost jobs
  •   We’ve got time so change can wait
  •   It’s someone else’s problem to fix
  •   We don’t contribute significantly to the problem
  •   There are no viable, affordable alternatives
  •   It’s the government’s job to fix
  •   It’s industry’s job to fix

Change is difficult but we can’t afford to stay the same. The funding response to COVID showed we can change rapidly when we have the political will.

We are globally interdependent and reliant on each other for survival. We need both government (local, state and federal) and industry to fix it. 

 

As individuals, there’s a lot we can do.

It’s easy to get caught up in, “It’s all hopeless, it doesn’t really matter,” which eats away at our agency. Instead, think about what’s one thing you could do today. Refuse a plastic straw? Take your Keep Cup? Just one thing. 

 

Your call to courage 

The call is to ask how you can integrate climate leadership into your organisation’s daily, monthly, and yearly practices? How will you lead and act on climate?

Start with simple things and build momentum. Think about one action you can take today.

Moral actions you can take: 

  • Vote for candidates standing on an environmental platform. Voting is one of the most powerful things you can do. It doesn’t cost you anything. It doesn’t take much effort. It’s just half an hour on one day that can have a mighty effect. If we elect more climate-driven MPs, they can shift the political conversation.
  • Confront the facts of the contribution your organisation is making to the climate crisis
  • Stop producing products that contribute to climate change, environmental degradation and long-life waste
  • Start uncomfortable conversations about the future of the organisation, your community, your staff and your families if you continue business as usual
  • Stop consuming or advertising in climate-denial media

Financial actions you can take: 

  •  Donate to Climate 200, a fund for climate ambitious independents
  •  Bank with a financial institution that doesn’t invest in fossil fuels. Or write to your bank, letting them know you don’t support funding fossil projects and want greater investment in renewable energy development. Demand evidence and accountability.
  • Build carbon offsetting into your budgets and pricing. Become Climate Active Certified.
  • Shift your car or car fleet to electric vehicles.
  • Calculate the carbon footprint of your business, or hire a consultant to do it, or allocate staff time to do it.
  • Invest in ethical superannuation funds.
  • Become a climate-conscious investor activist.
  • Support the Torres Strait Islanders taking legal action against the Federal government to protect their communities from climate change. Help prevent them from becoming climate refugees.

Physical actions you can take: 

  • Work towards making your building a green one. If you can’t change your building, source your power from green energy, and switch to LED lighting. Install energy-efficient windows, lighting, heating/cooling, water tanks and greywater reuse, and solar panels
  • Source your energy from green energy providers. And while you’re there, broker bulk energy deal for your staff at home
  • Refuse single use [anything] in your workplace.
  • Use recycled paper
  • Provide electric car charging at your workplace.
  • Ensure all your equipment is highly energy rated.
  • Turnoff (at the switch) and shutdown equipment and lighting when not in use
  • Use green packaging
  • Use a green courier service
  • Recycle paper, cardboard, soft plastics, hard plastics, metal
  • Recycle printer/toner cartridges
  • Issue reusable coffee cups
  • Compost organic kitchen waste
  • Avoid flying and carbon offset when you do
  • Book electric cars for transfers
  • Stay at green hotels

Cultural actions you can take:

  • Talk about climate change in your organisation. Imperfectly. You don’t need to have all the facts and all the answers. Show up with curiosity and a willingness to question the status quo.
  • Spend time understanding other people’s points of view. Talking about both sides of ambivalence is a gateway to behaviour change.  A guiding approach helps us tune into this ambivalence, address it and ultimately, feel less stuck. This frees up our capacities to make changes that matter.
  • Ask questions about sustainability in company town halls.
  • Invite a local Climate Reality Leader to give a presentation for your colleagues
  • Support sustainability in your workplace
  • Start a book club of climate reads
  • Subsidise public transport tickets
  • Subsidise staff buying electric bikes
  • Donate, invest in or volunteer for organisations regenerating the environment
  • Host a screening of 2040, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,
  • Source vegetarian/vegan catering for events
  • Make Ecosia the default browser for your machines.
  • Ask your staff what they are already doing, and/or what they’d like to be doing as an organisation
  • Stop gifting plastic, novelty promotional items and replace with experiences, locally produced food
  • Provide additional bonuses to Climate Leaders in your organisation
  • Recognise and provide mental health support for staff experiencing climate anxiety and grief (Solastalgia)
  • Join a local grassroots community group to support your local climate ambitious Independent.
  • Host a sign for Australian Parents for Climate Action

Other ways to educate, engage and act:

On your bookshelf:

  • The Future We Chose, Christiana Figueres & Tom Carnac
  • All We Can Save, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson 
  • 2040 Damon Gameau
  • On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal, Naomi Klein
  • Pre-order the Carbon Almanac

Podcast Listens:

  •  Outrage & Optimism, Christiana Figueres & Tom Carnac
  •  How To Save A Planet, Alex Blumberg & Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson 

Watch:

Lead:

 

We can lead with grace and strength, compassion and empathy. We can move from isolation to community, from anxiety to action. We can show up as our bold, brilliant selves.

We can enable and empower others to do the same.

That’s what change from the inside out is all about.

 

Daring leaders who live into their values are never quiet about hard things. – Dr Brené Brown