As I look out the window at the haze from Canada’s worst wildfire season in decades, despite our location in upstate NY being about 500 miles away from the nearest flames, I think “surely there are lots of women fighting this mess”. “This mess” meaning the climate crisis responsible for fires and other disasters.
And finding some of these female climate change leaders was easy:
Christiana Figueres has had multiple positions fighting climate change for decades. She currently is cofounder of Global Optimism, recently published the book The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, is on several boards, and is chair of the Earthshot Prize Foundation. Whew! Just typing that wore me out. ;-) If you’re feeling pessimistic, read the above links.
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Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is the coordinator and founding member of the Association of Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad — AFPAT in French.
Hindou is a founding member of the Marrakech Platform for Climate Actions, she is a member of the technical and scientific committee of BIOPALT – UNESCO and also a member of the Executive Committee of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordination Committee (IPACC), where she is the focal point of climate change.
That is just what she’s doing lately. She has given multiple talks, written multiple papers, led multiple projects, and won multiple awards.
Sunita Narain is the DIrector General of the Centre for Science and Environment. She has worked on water management, tiger conservation, air pollution, and now climate change. She writes and edits, has worked with the Indian government, and received multiple awards including the “Water Nobel Prize”. She co-wrote Global Warming in an Unequal World: A case of environmental colonialism, which can be downloaded here.
A detailed look at the data presented by WRI itself leads to the conclusion that India and China cannot be held responsible even for a single kg of carbon dioxide or methane that is accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the most important gases contributing to global warming. The accumulation in the earth’s atmosphere of these gases is mainly the result of the gargantuan consumption of the developed countries, particularly the United States.
NOTE: Much has been made of Greta Thunbergholding her final school strike as she graduated high school this year. However, she founded the Fridays for Future movement in 2018, and the global and US movements are going strong. She is not quitting and the kids are all right. She just won’t be striking from school, since she is no longer a high school student.
If these women can do this much, surely the least you can do is stop wasting food! Or find another partial solution that fits your lifestyle. But we throw out about 1/3 of the food supply in the US! That equates to an extra 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which does not even count methane from food rotting in landfills, clearing of land for agriculture, nor inputs of fertilizer and energy on the farm. So at least do a good thing and save yourself some money. Win-win!
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