Can women lead on climate change solutions?
Looking at how our male dominated political system struggles to get any substantial action happening on climate change, I wonder if women will be able to get things moving faster? There are certainly some encouraging signs emerging.
I think one of the most exciting ones is the 1 million women campaign, led by suburban mum Natalie Isaacs. Listening to Natalie passionately speak about what got her involved reminds us just how important each and every individual is and what a profound difference we can each make.
Natalie, a mother of four from Sydney’s northern beaches, got very frustrated at the lack of action on climate and then realised her best response was to do something concrete and practical. So she founded the 1 Million Women campaign with a simple idea. Natalie realised that women were often in very influential positions both at home and in the work place to make things happen. They made 70% of consumer decisions in the household. Not one to think small, she thought: what if we could get one million women across Australia to each commit to reduce their emissions by at least one tonne by taking simple, easy steps? She then created the excellent website at www.1millionwomen.com.au to makes this task easy, with very accessible things anyone can do, many of which save money and all of which make you feel good.
Next she approached a range of companies and sought their support to take her message to women around Australia. One of these was Telstra which launched the campaign inside Telstra with senior executives and 40 ambassadors taking the message across the country. Natalie says Telstra have turned into one of the stars of the campaign with 10% of female staff now signed up members. Telstra also supported a major feature in Womens’ Weekly to take the message to a broader audience. This kind of engagement makes me feel proud to be Telstra’s Environmental Champion.
With this support from Telstra and others, 1 Million Women already has 22,000 members and the campaign has only just begun. This makes it one of the larger environmental groups in Australia and certainly one of the most active in terms of solid every day action to help make our planet a safer and cleaner one for our children.
I’m delighted to help Natalie by serving on the Board of the campaign and I would strongly encourage all readers to get involved and tell all the women in their lives about it.
Women can make a real difference in this area and are behind many of the interesting new entrepreneurial ventures springing up around the world. They are clearly good at running businesses as well, with recent data showing that women owned business in the United States grew twice as fast as other types of business between 1997 and 2008. So clearly Natalie is not alone in knowing how to make things happen.
So get out there and get involved. Do things at home, encourage action in the work place and show those blokes in Canberra how things should be done! Sign up today at www.1millionwomen.com.au
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Great blog Paul. This campaign has really taken off in Telstra. I hope we get more of our women joining up!