Step 1: Forge systemic change

It felt like change, didn’t it? 

Out in the streets, marching for climate justice, seeing the worldwide response of a global movement rise up, you felt the time for serious, sustainable, history-making change has arrived. 

But let’s be clear: Yesterday’s Global Climate Strikes were the start. It’s a long road ahead. That’s why climate marches will continue all week. Keep stepping. Keep posting. Keep sharing. Keep demanding our political leaders take action. Keep taking action! 

In the simplest terms, we march for our survival. We’re marching to build a movement of change. 

Seven Steps to Change

Over the next week of marching for climate justice, we will offer seven steps for decisive, collaborative and impactful action. Seven clear answers to what we want, what we need and what will bring effective lasting change. 

The threat of a warming planet has been documented for years. In 2015, 198 countries agreed at the COP 21 in Paris to work toward the reduction of carbon emissions. 

Yet every meaningful statistic since shows we’re not doing enough, fast enough, to ensure the survival of humanity on planet Earth, and we can restore a healthy climate and flourish for generations to come. 

Listen to Katie Eder as she calls for bold action to #RestoreTheClimate.

We can be bold. We can make do this.

How? In seven bold steps we can take together: 

STEP 1: We must forge a coalition for systemic change. 

I’ve worked on social and political movements in the past. I’ve seen historical shifts because of this work. As a physician working to curb the global AIDS epidemics decades ago, I learned a lot about how to create lasting change against a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. 

So much of our efforts early on in the AIDS epidemic was failing. We were too scattered. There were too many small efforts all recognizing the threat of AIDS and its global impact on millions. It took a collaborative effort–a movement. When we created the Global AIDS Alliance it coalesced a large number of stakeholder groups to align behind a common strategy. The result was a historic shift in forever altering the course of the AIDS epidemic, as I wrote about in my book, Waging Justice: A Doctor’s Journey to Speak Truth and Be Bold. 

The intensities of climate impact in recent years (and even more urgently in recent weeks) have helped us elevate the reality of climate threat in a way that hasn’t occurred before, despite many years of growing environmental consciousness. The full weight of this impact is dramatically changing. The tipping point for change has arrived.

Changing a march into a movement

For decades our scattershot approach to climate change has helped raise consciousness, but it hasn’t yet altered the course of our warming planet sufficient to remove the perilous threat to humanity. 

Together… united… undeterred and undivided, we can create a movement that will bring the radical change necessary at this point in history. My work for the last 30 years has been to hold governments accountable. I’ve been waging justice and I want you to join me. I launched Build A Movement 2020 (#BAM2020) to spark a movement for justice. Click here and join the movement today.