Best Quotes from All We Can Save by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson with Page Numbers

You don’t have to know the details of the science to be part of the solution. And if you wait until you know everything, it will be too late for you to do anything.

We want enough youth to see the power of collaborating across sectors and generations so that we change the conversation toward solutions.

It can’t be a hobby; it has to be a shift in culture and mindset.

We need to have a whole cultural shift, where it becomes our culture to take care of the Earth.

It’s so different from what we’ve been taught—to be individualistic and to strive for personal success.

People in developed countries and big cities are too comfortable, and nothing changes when we stay in a state of unbotheredness.

Our generation holds a kind of consciousness that is not based on monetary gain or on new ways of profiting from lands, forests, rivers, seas, and people.

We have helped propel the narrative transition from a call for climate action to the necessity of climate justice.

Always convey that individual and structural change are both indisputably necessary.

A vibrant, fair, and regenerative future is possible—not when thousands of people do climate justice activism perfectly but when millions of people do the best they can.

The old forest is not nearly as open or regimented as this, but it looks healthier.

Everywhere Clements looked, he saw communities so tightly interwoven, he called them organismic.

Though culture seeps into science and sometimes holds its finger on the scale, it cannot stop the restless search for measurable truth.

The more stressful the environment, the more likely you are to see plants working together to ensure mutual survival.

Facilitation allows plants to expand their niches, to thrive where they would normally wither.

Now we know that it’s not just one plant helping another; mutualisms—complex exchanges of goodness—are playing out.

This 'wood-wide web' is an underground Internet through which water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and even defense compounds are exchanged.

If we’re to encourage wild and working landscapes to recoup the 50 to 70 percent of soil carbon that has been lost to the atmosphere, we’ll want to pause before plowing a field.

This mutualistic role, this practice of reciprocity, will require a more nuanced understanding of how ecosystems actually work.

By recognizing, at last, the ubiquity of sharing and chaperoning, we can return to our role as nurturers, each a helper among helpers.

Everything is transitory.

I can’t shake my longing for the last six hundred Iberian lynx with their tufted ears.

Today on the bus, a woman in a sweater the exact shade of cardinals makes me ache for those bright flashes in the snow.

When I get home, my son has a headache and, though he’s almost grown, asks me to sing him a song.

There never was anything else. Only these excruciatingly insignificant creatures we love.

The sun, ardent tongue licking us like a mother besotted with her new cub, will wear itself out.

And perhaps we’re slated to ascend to some kind of intelligence that doesn’t need bodies, or clean water, or even air.

Think of the meteor that annihilated the dinosaurs.

So many species of frogs breathing through their damp permeable membranes.

The cream and amber of their fur, the long, hollow hairs through which sun slips, swallowed into their dark skin.

The greatest contribution that Indigenous peoples may be able to make at this time is to continue providing the world with living models of sustainability that are rooted in ancient wisdom.

We realize that we cannot separate ourselves from those who have come before us or those who will follow, because we all exist together in this one moment.

Our ancestors spoke of a time seven generations after first contact... when Mother Earth would become sick as a result of human activity.

Whenever I hear this portion of the seven fires prophecy, it reminds me that the light-skinned people must decide which path they will choose: take the path of unity and peace, or stay on the current path and destroy themselves.

Indigenous kinship systems, with their inclusion of beings from the natural world, have been viewed as little more than magical thinking by mainstream science.

The healing of our societies and our world relies upon the purposeful and systematic inclusion of diverse voices, including the voices of the natural world.

Every plant, tree, and animal carries its own unique wisdom and can teach us how to live harmoniously with one another and in relationship with Mother Earth.

The Indigenous way of life is a pathway that can lead humankind back toward life.

Kinship defines how we relate to one another. It determines whom and what we include in the structuring of our societies.

Soul and soil are not separate. Neither are wind and spirit, nor water and tears.

The trees are co-conspiring with the sky to attract an earlier monsoon.

Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.

Everything is connected, and everything is complicated.

The existence of past climate change does not mean we are not responsible for it this time.

There is no death without life. There are no deserts without the tropics.

The living Earth is a sum of delicate balances, the culmination of a more-than-four-billion-year history of improbable coincidences and opportunistic alliances.

If managing the sun is a terrible mistake, if that act leads to starvation or war or collapse, it is an irreversible one.

We are inevitably sending our children to live on an unfamiliar planet.

If we mask the hangover but continue the bender, we will have to be resigned to losing even more of the world we know.

We’ll have spectacular sunsets. But during the day, the light will seem weak and white and hazy.

If I can’t save us then let me feel you happy and safe under my chin.

If we are dying then let me rip open and bleed Love, spill it, spend it.

see how much there is the reward for misers is what, again?

If this life is ending then let me begin a new one.

Let us drink starlight nap under trees.

the morning rush to sit indoors is for what, again?

If this will drown or burn then let us.

If I can’t save us then let me feel you.

let me begina new one.

Let me bleed Love.

"Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions."

"Existence is fractal—the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet."

"There is an art to flocking: staying separate enough not to crowd each other, aligned enough to maintain a shared direction, and cohesive enough to always move toward each other."

"A group of caterpillars or nymphs might not see flight in their future, but it’s inevitable. It’s destiny."

"Under the earth, always, they reach for each other, they grow such that their roots are intertwined and create a system of strength that is as resilient on a sunny day as it is in a hurricane."

"We are invited to be that prolific. And to return fertility to the soil around us."

"Nothing is wasted, or a failure. Emergence is a system that makes use of everything in the interactive process."

"All that you touch you change / all that you change, changes you."

"Species survive only if they learn to be in community."

"The quality of connection between the nodes in the patterns. Dare I say love."

"The power of the youth climate movement... they are fighting for the fundamental right to live full lives—lives in which they are not, as fourteen-year-old climate striker Alexandria Villaseñor puts it, 'running from disasters.'"

"Greta Thunberg may have been the spark, but we’re the wildfire."

"What is needed... is 'rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.'"

"If the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change."

"In the process of transforming the infrastructure of our societies at the speed and scale that scientists have called for, humanity has a once-in-a-century chance to fix an economic model that is failing the majority of people on multiple fronts."

"We must stop competing with each other. We need to start cooperating and sharing the remaining resources of this planet in a fair way."

"There was finally a big and bold 'yes' to pair with the climate movement’s many 'no's, a story of what the world could look like after we embraced deep transformation, and a plan for how to get there."

"Our current moment is markedly different, and the reason for that is twofold: one part having to do with a mounting sense of peril, the other with a new and unfamiliar sense of promise."

"It's too late to save all our stuff, but we can still save one another and a great many other species too. Let’s put out the flames and build something different in its place."

"This message coming from the school strikes is that a great many young people are ready for this kind of deep change."

"As our climate deadlines loom and I feel compelled to do more, I think of my mom, with her practical handle on justice and her tireless knack for building community."

"We underestimate the power of contribution—of acting within our own sphere of influence to tackle the piece of the problem that is right in front of us."

"If we make investments on the scale that is required in the 2020s, we can not only avoid the worst of climate change but also make our lives so much better."

"There is no institution in our society that is more expressly designed to privilege truth over power."

"I believe it was important that we were part of the same community as the regulators we were suing and the members of the review board that was hearing the case."

"In every successful effort to make change, there is some lucky convergence of circumstances. But in my experience, there is always one essential ingredient: scrappy people who are willing to work backward from goals that seem impossibly ambitious at the start."

"I write this with real people in mind... behind every fight that disrupts business-as-usual is an amazingly determined, often small group of people who make their luck with smart organizing and media strategies and, indispensably, the power of law."

"The weight of history is on our shoulders, but this moment is alive with possibility."

"I don’t dismiss any of these concerns, especially the last. But I reject the lazy fatalism."

"The future is likely to demand more of us than we know how to give, and we will walk through many different doors to come together in collective action that forces an adequate response from our elected leaders."

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart.

They strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward.

I want to be with people who submerge in the task.

who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm.

The work of the world is common as mud.

But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies.

The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience.

who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row.

As I write this, we’re at 315 plants down, 215 to go.

In a world where most so-called win-wins are actually trade-offs, this one is as real as it gets.

I say all this not to brag but to rejoice that hard work—of individuals, advocates, and coalitions—does sometimes pay off in ways that really matter.

We have a choice between electricity that’s dirty and expensive and electricity that’s clean and cheap.

But if we bring everyone along, we’re building a better future—one that the coal, oil, and gas industries won’t be able to unravel.

The job of designing a fair transition is too big for philanthropy and civil society.

Winning on electricity is foundational and catalytic.

Our greatest choice is to move towards a cooperative, collaborative world that aligns with scientific consensus.

The climate crisis is real and it’s scary, and my desire to protect her from it is why I’m working to end our reliance on fossil fuels.

We can do this, and it’s not too late.

My relationship with the natural world, my people’s relationship, is a swirl of gratitude, trauma, and spiritual connection.

Our history has entwined us with the land in a profound way, and our connection to the land is as symbiotic as bees to flowers.

Environmental justice is a fundamental civil rights issue.

Faith apart from works is dead.

You can pray and believe all you want, but without action, 'ain’t nothing about to happen.'

Throughout my journey, my faith has made it more and more evident that it is my responsibility as a Christian to take care of what God has blessed me with, including my place on this Earth.

Caring about climate change is not a bougie Black thing.

Black women are everyday environmentalists; we are climate leaders.

We know we don’t have time to sit around and wait for someone else to make decisions.

We shall make them all proud.

First question: Can you first govern yourself?

What is the state of your own household?

Do you have a proven record of community service and compassionate acts?

Do you know the history and laws of your principalities?

Do you follow sound principles?

Look for fresh vision to lift all the inhabitants of the land, including animals, plants, elements, all who share this earth?

Are you owned by lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, lobbyists, or other politicians, anyone else who would unfairly profit by your decisions?

Do you have authority by the original keepers of the lands?

Those who obey natural law and are in the service of the lands on which you stand?

Governance begins with self-governance.

Listen to the communities most affected by environmental impacts when crafting policy, because nobody knows better the nuances of our struggles, or the solutions that will lead to a more equitable future, than those affected.

It will never be enough to include environmental justice as an afterthought.

Concrete policy proposals can and should evolve out of conversations with community leaders, starting with their concerns and priorities and including solutions that are formulated together with those who are most impacted.

We can’t allow climate policy to be about ego and credit; it must be about collaborating, building on one another’s work, and elevating the best ideas we have to solve the biggest problem humanity has ever faced.

If we dare to listen, we can embrace climate policy as a living document—an evolving, improving set of ideas.

Listening also fueled the creation of the Blue New Deal.

By listening to Theresa and many environmental justice leaders from around the country, we crafted... a plan to focus on how communities most affected by climate change can lead.

This kind of iteration is precisely what builds stronger, more effective, and more equitable policy.

Most important, this act of listening, of hearing, is an exercise in humility—something that politics could use a lot more of.

Inequality and climate change are the twin challenges of our time, and more democracy is the answer to both.

I have spent my life trying to rewrite systems of power, and policy is nothing if not a system for creating and distributing power.

The best policy proposals present a clear narrative about what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how the government plans to fix it.

Policy making is not a science. It is a political process, not just a set of solutions.

We are a nation of lack, and a world where resources are increasingly constrained by the climate crisis.

The vision of power at the heart of the GND is one of redistribution: from private to public, from employer to worker, from the historically advantaged to the historically disadvantaged.

If we are going to become an economy that serves people and the planet, then the people—all of the people—need power, and we need it now.

Every economic mobilization in American history has exploited marginalized people.

An economic mobilization without a clear focus on justice and equity is, in fact, a danger.

Economic mobilizations open the possibility to reexamine and renegotiate our social contract—to decide what kind of country we want to carry into the future.

We move together, or we risk not moving at all.

As challenging, stressful, and painful as it might be, addressing climate change begins by actually talking about it.

If we don’t talk about why it matters, why would we care about the problem itself?

It isn’t a matter of moving climate change further up our priority list. The reason we care about it is because it already affects everything that’s at the top of our priority list.

To care about a changing climate we don’t have to be a tree hugger or an environmentalist; as long as we are a human alive today, then who we already are, and what we already care about, gives us all the reasons we need.

Is climate change fair? Absolutely not. The poorest and most vulnerable among us, those who have done the least to contribute to the problem, are most affected.

The more the climate changes, the more serious and ultimately dangerous its impacts become.

The sooner we cut our carbon emissions, the greater and more costly the impacts we’ll avoid.

Together with colleagues from Norway and Australia, I’ve even taken the few dozen studies that suggest this isn’t the case and recalculated their work from scratch.

I wasn’t too sure about this whole global warming thing, but it passed the Four-Way Test!

And it worked—because to care about climate change, all we really have to be is a human living on planet Earth.

She said it softly, without a need for conviction or romance.

I forget sometimes how trees look at me with the generosity of water.

Today I learned that trees can’t sleep with our lights on.

That they knita forest in their language, their feelings.

This is not a metaphor.

We are learning all the old things, newly shined and numbered.

I’m always looking for a place to lie down and cry.

Somewhere to hush and start over.

I walk through the dark gates of the trees.

Grief waters my footsteps, leaving a trail that glistens.

The climate crisis is, in part, a failure to respond to information.

The joy of our profession is discovery, not dissertation.

We must reverse this trend. We are running out of time.

It’s like watching from a crowded beach as a child drowns, everyone ignoring their screams for help.

If we don’t collectively hold media’s feet to the fire, our own toes will be the ones that burn.

Compassion without anger can become merely sentiment or pity.

Knowledge without anger can stagnate into mere cynicism and apathy.

Anger improves lucidity, persistence, audacity, and memory.

The most important impact HEATED is having... seems to be with readers.

Most people who are interested in climate change just don’t yet have the tools to talk about it confidently.

Culture is power.

We need our storytellers—a mighty force—to help us shift our mythology and imagine a future where together we thrive with nature.

Stories change and activate people, and people have the power to change norms, cultural practices, and systems.

Just as ecosystems need biodiversity to thrive, society needs cultural diversity to grow new possibilities.

Human stories are more powerful for inciting action than counting carbon or detailing melting glaciers.

We must challenge the idea that some life matters more than other life.

The urgency of the climate crisis demands that we develop strategies that embrace the enthusiasm of artists and nurture an abundance of cultural and narrative strategies to reimagine life on Earth.

Culture allows us to confront, acknowledge, and mourn what was lost, while offering a way to move forward.

The stories we tell will determine whether our society declines and self-destructs or whether we can heal and thrive.

I cannot heal my community or myself without healing the planet, and we cannot save the planet without healing injustice.

The concept of "climate citizenship" asserts that any chance of society gracefully navigating the climate crisis will take a renaissance of citizenship and civic life.

Democracy depends on people’s willingness to share their hopes and fears with one another in order to weave a better future, together.

At the root of it all, we are living in a time of transformation.

Citizenship, at its core, is a sacred trust between the individual and collective.

Only through the collective can an individual enjoy goods such as a healthy environment and certain kinds of support and security.

The work of our time is to reweave the fabric of our democracy even as the broken systems seem overwhelming.

The climate crisis brings new challenges to securing human dignity.

Living in a democracy is not a given; just the opposite, in fact. Democracy is quite rare over human history.

I believe that my actions as a citizen matter for shaping our climate future. And I believe yours do too.

Together, we are a climate citizenry.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.

We’ve come this far, survived this much.

What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.

No, to the rising tides.

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain for the safety of others, for earth.

If we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified.

If we made ourselves so big people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds.

I grew up with a belief that humans have an innate tendency to destroy their environment.

The stories that we tell about ourselves and our place in the world are the raw materials from which we build our existence.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be.

It’s a vision of a modern civilization that looks and feels drastically different from the United States.

Wakanda rejects the oft-repeated story that we humans and our environment are natural enemies.

They opted to live within their ecological limits, what would the resultant society look like?

Cities that have more green space are naturally cooler, requiring less air-conditioning, lowering energy use and making it easier to reduce fossil fuel use.

What if... climate change is an opportunity? One for humans to repair our relationship with the Earth.

We should start telling ourselves a different story.

Over time, people realized that was the wrong story and they constructed a new one, one that said they could live in harmony with their environment.

‘Heaven or high water,’ I thought as I stood there.

‘I love it,’ he said. ‘It is one of the most thriving cities in the country; it’s growing rapidly.’

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘just in the last three years….They’re not worried about sea level rise?’

‘I’m afraid of dying, sure, but so far, it hasn’t been an issue.’

It’s amazing that people in these situations tell you what they think.

‘Everybody has done this, like, research, and they have these, like, like…’

‘You do need to be able to get out of the building to get medicine and groceries.’

‘Yes, you do need to be able to get out of the building to get medicine and groceries.’

‘I think the takeaway is just that Miami is doing something about it.’

‘There’s not a solution. But nothing is going to happen.’

Go, he say. Pick up y’all black asses and run.

Leave your house with its splinters and pocked roof.

Uh-huh. Like our bodies got wheels and gas.

He act like we supposed to wrap ourselves in picture frames, shadow boxes, and bathroom rugs.

Get on out.

Can’t he see that our bodies are just our bodies, tied to what we know?

So we’ll go. Cause the man say it strong now, mad like God pointing the way outta Paradise.

Even he got to know our favorite ritual is root.

None of us done ever known a horizon, especially one that cools our dumb running.

Whispering urge and constant: This way. Over here.

We still have so much work to do to adapt to a changing climate and adjust to the new realities it presents.

Adaptation is a process, not an outcome.

Every neighborhood is different—the geography and topography, the available land, the density of infrastructure, the waterfront usage all vary.

The possibility of a community-driven adaptation project that provides multiple benefits can be achieved.

I want to live on a planet that can hold us.

If nothing else, why not try? Why not hope, and then act as if?

Our coastal cities were designed to meet the challenges of the past. Now climate change presents an unprecedented challenge, both present and future.

As cities prepare for climate change, we have the opportunity to build more vibrant communities.

New Orleans shows us that we cannot wait until the next disaster to begin planning.

The future of coastal cities is unknown—ours to write.

‘Having a thriving, positive, and hopeful relationship with the world we inhabit could be a path to addressing the climate crisis.’

‘Rooting the design of the built environment in a “love of life” is about much more than daylight, fresh air, and views; it is a strategy to reawaken hopeful and positive connections between people and nature.’

‘Biophilic design is starting to transform our workplaces from dingy beige cubicle farms into spaces full of sunlight, fresh air, and color.’

‘Just one hour in nature has been shown to improve our memory and attention by 20 percent.’

‘Those experiences clear our minds, leave us refreshed in spirit, and fill us with a renewed sense of possibility.’

‘It may be hard to picture now, but buildings of the future will eliminate heating and cooling systems for most of the year and rely on natural ventilation and daylight.’

‘Biophilic design is the underlying design solution for addressing the impact of the building sector on climate change.’

‘Implicit in the choice we make about the built environment is a choice about ourselves: Are people separate from nature, or are we part of nature?’

‘If we design new buildings and redesign existing buildings to celebrate that human-nature connection, we will have rooms filled with dappled light and shadows.’

‘We will develop a deeper connection to ourselves as earthly beings while inside, while lightening the impact that our human-made habitats have on the world.’

I broke from branches leaves to pin between my teeth and tongue until warmed enough for their fragrant oil to cleanse you from me.

Somewhere in a bank of fog beyond the visible end of open water, alleged hills were windfeathered.

In routes along the shore forever slipping under, I am reminded—in the city one finds it simple to conceive nothing but a system.

and nothing but a world of men.

Ledum, Labrador Tea, saayumik. A matted growth beneath the most shallow depth of snow on record in all our winters.

Pausing up bluff from the edge of ice.

Their fragrant oil to cleanse you from me.

I am reminded—in the city one finds it simple to conceive nothing but a system.

Alleged hills were windfeathered—drainages venous.

Forever slipping under.

The plain truth is that capitalism needs to evolve if humanity is going to survive.

The time has come to rethink the relationship among our economy, social progress, and ecological systems.

The challenge of climate change is perhaps best defined as our challenge to end destructive capitalism.

Economic and social inequality, as well as what has been dubbed 'carbon inequality,' must all be addressed in our work to stop climate change and, by extension, to end destructive capitalism.

If we are to address the climate crisis and destructive capitalism, we must question the underlying rules and tools that direct the behavior of capitalism.

We have seen only the tip of the iceberg of conventional investors waking up and joining the climate marketplace.

Building on the momentum of climate investing to date, we must go from billions of dollars invested in climate solutions to trillions this next decade.

Let’s adopt a transformation mindset and keep Luxemburg’s critique in mind.

We must bring our moral compass to capitalism and bring its destructive elements to an end.

The goal has to be what the planet needs: a climate fit for life. And we need optimism and courage to get there.

"We can’t love what we don’t see."

"Thriving landscapes are next-generation climate infrastructure: generous riverbanks, healthy reefs and mangroves, protective dunes, and living shorelines."

"It is now critical to rebuild the environmental context broadly, for the entirety of human habitation at a global scale."

"Our democratic trust is wearing thin—we need mechanisms for developing a generous dialogue among landscape architects and planners and communities, so change happens in a way that is equitable and just."

"The Earth is both a physical setting and a decision-making commons that must be cultivated."

"Mending our ecological infrastructure and pairing it with renewable energy should become the highest priority for the profession of landscape architecture."

"We need all of them to mend the Earth."

"Let’s embrace a fresh vision for an interconnected and publicly owned American National Shoreway, which could be made possible by encouraging retreat, funding equitable relocation, and rebuilding protective shorelines as linear parks that maximize public access at the water’s edge."

"Let’s actively love and mend our messy, swampy, dusty, busted-up landscapes—the tide pools for darting crabs, dark forests for scarlet tanagers, dead trees for owls and bats, thick grassy dunes for nesting plovers."

"We face a global landscape emergency. Let’s knit what we can back together."

For twice as long as I’ve been alive on this planet we have known about the climate crisis.

Our generation is living at the crossroads of life or death.

I felt like I wasn’t just a small person facing the climate crisis alone. I was powerful and I had people with me.

We needed a movement in America that could bring together millions of young people to build power and make climate action, rooted in racial and economic justice, a priority in our nation.

We have to make sure that our politicians win or lose based on where they stand on this issue.

We need to build the people’s alignment alongside progressively minded think tanks, social movements of all types, government officials, faith institutions, and more.

We’re working to make the necessary climate action politically possible, and then to turn the politically possible into the politically inevitable.

The GND is about the opposite—providing people with millions of good jobs, reinvigorating our economy, and putting money back in the hands of working people.

If Sunrise navigates this moment well, millions of people will be elevated out of poverty, and we can help protect human civilization as we know it.

Do your work, then step back. / The only path to serenity.

"None but ourselves can free our minds."

"The only path to liberation for Black folks and all oppressed people is through revolution—total systems change."

"Justice is not possible in a capitalist system predicated on there being winners and losers, a system rooted in racism, sexism, and xenophobia."

"We must have a radical transformation from extracting, polluting, and dominating policies and practices that negatively impact our communities to regenerative, cooperative systems that uplift all rights for all people."

"Communities are building microcosms of the systems and societies we need to reverse the tide of catastrophic climate change and become a world that respects all rights for all people, in harmony with Mother Earth."

"It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."

"We want to ensure that opportunities in the new energy economy are equitably shared and build healthier, wealthier, and more democratically governed communities."

"Resistance is rising and systems are changing."

"We must link arms across movements, across race, across class, across organizations."

"Together we can. Together we must."

We buried the problem. We planted a tree over the problem.

We elected an official who Finally Gets the problem.

We listened and communicated with the problem, only to find out that it had gone for the day.

I think we often allow ourselves to be ignorant.

We must accept responsibility for growing a culture of rampant consumerism.

The more I learned about my industry, the worse I felt. In fact, I stopped working for a while.

Once I began to accept the overwhelming truth of our systemic failures, I saw clearly that the invisible majority of fashion workers... are actually the people who make fashion culture and usher in change.

Thrilling alternatives exist everywhere.

Now is the time for us to throw our outsized weight behind brilliant alternatives, many emerging from smaller players and independent voices.

What we do now will help decide the fate of our species and most living things on Earth.

To step from that warm, clear room into spaces led by westernized values and institutionalized disconnection is jarring, saddening, and maddening all at once.

Connections become transactional or cliquish, hierarchy is entrenched, scarcity mentality is omnipresent.

Far too much of our collective energy is directed toward a pursuit that leaves us mirroring capitalism, individualism, and that which we fight.

We must be onto something—if not by the fact that Indigenous peoples hold 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity, then by the sheer scale of the opposition we face.

To be humbled by the lived knowledge that our bodies cannot survive without water is to move water from the conceptual into the actual.

The simplicity of traditional foods from a local ecosystem can feed a soul; the decision to build community and live a life of empathy, balance, and humility is a values shift badly needed.

The sacred is all around us, always.

We are never far from the answer to the problem we have created—it is within each of us.

Local men arrive at our blockade, shouting obscenities and laughing.

We put our thoughts and prayers into action together—we will defend the land with our bodies, our freedom, our hearts.

We cannot be fooled into thinking there is a shortcut by which our system of democracy can easily fight climate change—that we’ll act just because we have seen the science and know the threat posed to our health, environment, economy, and national security.

It is time to stop focusing on what government can do and start recognizing the critical role we all play in making government do its job.

I’m going to communicate the stakes of this crisis and the opportunities that await us if we get it right.

Health provides a compelling reason to act and a clear way to measure and celebrate success.

Climate change is the most significant public health challenge in the world today.

We can reframe climate solutions as opportunities to invest in public health, which will make our world healthier and more just today while we forge a future we can be proud to hand to our children.

Courageous women have been at the forefront of the environmental movement.

The federal government has never acted without a strong push from strong women. You can be one of them.

Refuse to sit quietly on issues that impact your world, and be unafraid to lend your voice and share your knowledge.

Climate change is not a faraway problem that no one can fix. We have so many solutions already, and innovation can help get us where we need to go faster.

I couldn’t accept the privileges of humanity when I didn’t want any part of humanity.

Why does my grief have to be because something bad happened to me?

I wanted a world that would last through the century. I wanted a world where my existence didn’t mean the end for others.

To say, This is unbearable, and to have people to try to bear it with.

Research favors the optimists, I had to admit. But I wondered if, in the end, what is important isn’t choosing optimism or pessimism but honesty with oneself.

Maybe the word we need is not one for a sickness. Maybe we need a word for a difficult truth: that when the world is ending, our health depends on closing ourselves off to awareness of this fact.

If your heart is breaking, you’re on my team.

The more a person knows about environmental destruction, the more they will try to warn others, and the more others will, in fear and defensiveness, resist them.

Sometimes I just want to sit on my green lawn with my wife and feel love.

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

"Wearing climate goggles is a new version of this special fear, performing hope when you feel terror, preparing your kids for the worst without letting on too much."

"Mothers have always been key organizers and social-justice activists."

"This type of thinking sets up a hierarchy of feminisms… and fails to recognize motherhood as a symbol of power."

"Perhaps this is yet another lesson the climate movement could and should learn from the civil rights movement."

"Mothers are a wasted resource, and we can’t afford to waste anything anymore."

"Every day I have to choose between what’s best for my own kids… and what’s best for everyone’s kids."

"I don’t sweat the small stuff, appreciate every minute I spend with my kids… and see my work for the greater good not as a conflict with motherhood but as an integral part of it."

"Community mothers are the ones leading the charge to clean up the water, get transit working, hold police accountable, and protect and care for their neighbors."

"It’s a constant choice between me, my kids, and the greater good."

"Working on climate accountability has helped me crack the work-life-parenting balance."

In the beginning, the ending was beautiful.

We were built to say at least.

Loving this vanishing world feels like a kind of prayer sometimes.

The potential loss of so much life is clarifying, because there is only one medicine for any of it—for any of us—and that is the restoration of a thriving natural world.

Despair is an accurate reflection of the peril we face, but it isn’t a predictor of the future.

We have also been granted an astonishingly beautiful gift that has never before been given to humans: the chance to shepherd human and animal life into the coming centuries.

We can rejoin the web of life. We do not have to be its destroyer.

What does it mean to love this place? What does it mean to love anyone or anything in a world whose vanishing is accelerating?

We can let them kill this beautiful world—or we can get to the beautiful work of making space for a decent future.

In any moment, we can choose to show up.

You are not alone.

Doing something can give us hope and purpose.

Psychological self-care is not a luxury.

A balanced, resilient mind is a kinder and more compassionate, alert, productive, and effective mind.

Caring for our hearts and minds, rejuvenating our bodies, reconnecting with one another, and deepening into our deepest purpose is taking our psyches seriously.

This is an act of rebellion against the extinction of soul.

We can start supporting ourselves and one another right now.

Show up for the emotional onslaught of climate change.

Fostering the adaptive mind may be something we all need.

The well-being of our hearts and souls must be reestablished to their rightful place as relevant, essential.

We don’t have to be Pollyanna-ish or fatalistic. We can just be human. We can be messy, imperfect, contradictory, broken.

Because it’s worth it. Because we’re worth it.

I’d been in New York almost a year by this point, but I was still too young and too southern to know my way out of a mansplaining vortex.

We don’t know how this movie is going to end, because we’re in the writers’ room right now. We’re making the decisions right now.

This planet is the only home we’ll ever have. There’s no place like it. And home is always, always, always worth it.

Hope isn’t what leads to action? What if courage leads to action and hope is what comes next?

Even if I can save only a sliver of what is precious to me, that will be my sliver and I will cherish it.

I know that a world warmed by 2 degrees Celsius is far preferable to one warmed by 3 degrees, or 6.

Walking out is not an option. We don’t get to give up.

They’ve not only accepted that our fate is sealed, they’ve found comfort in it.

Everything is connected. Everyone lives downstream and downwind.

Nature knows. Mimic her. Sense her. Be her.

In the face of climate change, we have to act both fast and at scale.

Regenerative ocean farming can deliver on both.

The opportunity is immense.

Working in partnership with our oceans, we can build an equitable blue-green economy.

We can boldly act on climate change, with women at the helm.

Our collaborative, holistic, and inclusive approach is distinctly feminine.

It aims to solve many problems at once—to hold all of these problems in tension.

We are working to renew coastal communities, to ally with public, private, and farming partners.

I speak for the snail.

I move as the currents move, with the breezes.

To say it is mindless is missing the point.

She was never the criminal.

Our sacred relationship with soil far surpasses our 246 years of enslavement.

When he removed his shoes on the tour and let the mud reach his feet, the memory of her and of the land traveled from the earth, through his soles, and to his heart.

If they did not give up on us, their descendants, in those trying times, who are we to abandon faith?

Healthy soil is not only imperative for our food and climate security—it is also foundational for our cultural and emotional well-being.

We heal the climate, and we heal ourselves.

Connection with soil was the awakening of my sovereignty.

O dirt, help us find ways to serve your life, you who have brought us forth, and fed us.

We have plenty of opportunities to work with the water cycle instead of against or outside it.

Understanding how water works is essential to address our many water challenges.

Nature wants her carbon back.

The fact that all the major problems of our landscape have a common cause, a lack of vegetation, means that they also have a common solution.

We have tremendous agency with the water cycle.

Nature does this for us. Basically, what we need is life.

Improvements on every scale matter.

We can be the beavers on the landscape, the keystone species.

In all the bare spots on earth plant us and let us grow.

Now is the time to be a climate activist.

We youth know we need to make our voices heard now—because our generation will feel climate impacts the most.

Rather than having abundant clean water, we face a global water crisis made worse by drought.

But we are not going to sit by and watch as our ecosystems and climate system collapse.

I have been on strike every Friday since then.

It is a moral obligation to fight for this planet.

My fight for climate action is not going to end until our planet and all its people are safe.

The climate crisis is the largest challenge humans have ever faced.

The responsibility to save and protect our planet for ourselves and future generations is not a burden. I think it’s a blessing.

We need your help. Welcome to the uprising!

We have to live differently or we will die in the same old ways.

I call on all Grand Mothers everywhere on the planet to rise and take your place in the leadership of the world.

The life of our species depends on it.

I’ve lived my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.

If we could just stop digging up fossil fuels, I thought, we might stand a chance.

You can do the same.

Changing the system, not perfecting our own lives, is the point.

We cannot make enough headway on the climate problem by working at the individual level.

Each one of us can be that nail, chipping away at the fossil energy system.

Let’s dig in today to shift the system—and tomorrow and the day after.

What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be.

Like the monarch butterfly, human beings cross borders in order to survive.

We unravel as one or we regenerate as one.

The whole pod arrives at strategies together, turning to their culture and history for clues, and picks up the slack for one another.

When everything collapses, the life-saving infrastructure is our knowledge of one another’s skills, our trust of one another, our capacity to forgive our neighbor, work with our neighbor, and mobilize.

The times we will be facing are going to require us to recognize that the most important thing around us is community.

Communities are the most important force that allows humans to weather great storms, literally and metaphorically.

We owe it to the generations that will face disproportionate burden due to climate change.

The truth is that our communities in Puerto Rico are powerful beyond measure.

It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much.