‘Talking about the climate crisis can feel intimidating. But our voices are so powerful when we use them’
Jessie Brinton, 50, is a magazine journalist and editor turned organiser. In recent years, she’s turned her talents to founding Mothership, a climate and nature movement platform harnessing the collective power and joy of mums to campaign for a better, greener, healthier world for the next generation.
Before having her daughter, she was worried about what people would think if she spoke loudly about the climate crisis. But this summer, she found her voice and made a speech to a crowd at Glastonbury.
Here, she shares how she overcame her fear – and how you can, too.
As a journalist, working over various glossy magazines and newspapers, and covering all aspects of how we live in the modern world, I was fascinated by how pressure groups mobilise to drum up attention and push for change – especially when it came to the climate crisis.
I had been trained to be impartial though; an observer taking notes from the sidelines and translating that into words, and behind which I would be invisible.
Things changed in 2018, when I gave birth to my daughter. I suddenly saw what the next 80 years on our increasingly warming planet could look like through a different lens, extending out into all the years after I’ve gone. It was the year of the ‘black summer’ in Australia, where images of extreme bushfires – out-of-control orange flames incinerating swathes of land amid a sweltering heatwave – were shared around the world.
The British summer I was pregnant had been the hottest I could recall and had given me an ambient unease throughout my pregnancy. I kept imagining the scenarios that could play out over the coming decades. Approaching her birth, I began to joke to myself about keeping her inside me, to protect her from whatever came next. I felt like I was bringing her into a world that was not at all safe.
I obviously couldn’t keep her inside me so I promised her that I would do everything I could to fight to protect the planet she’d live on. I knew that it would mean stepping out of that impartial, observer role. I got more involved with climate activism groups and, in the end, also gave birth to Mothership.
We – myself and the handful of women I’m working with – describe Mothership as an ‘unofficial government of mums.’ We already have an official government, a new one, and you can find that in a big building with flags on. And then there’s the mums’ government and we don’t have any big buildings with flags: we’re in our kitchens, offices, supermarkets, cafes, at the school gate.
Practically, we’re a movement platform: a network to support mums and others who care about kids, to use our influence to drive the change we need for a healthy and safe planet. Our focus is on the climate, but a lot of the problems that created the crisis – rampant greed, selfishness, disconnection from each other and nature – have created other crises, like the housing crisis, too.
We’re organisers but many of us are mums too, so we know how hard it is to find the time to do much more than a bit of recycling, however much we would like to. With so little time left to save the planet for our kids (two years at the last count) when you do see a scary headline, it’s natural to think, ‘but what can I actually do?’ and feel powerless. As people who spend time with kids, we know how short two years is.
Except that as mums and women, we also have enormous power that we don’t realise we have. We control 80% of purchasing power in the home; we’re swing voters; we’re often highly connected to one another, whether in real life or on social media.
That doesn’t make any of it easy. I’ve been in meetings about scary climate science with a tiny baby strapped to my chest, my brain ticking with worse-case scenarios. But that tiny baby also gave me a determination that’s far bigger than my fears. I’ve stopped caring what anyone else thinks or if I am being cringe by sharing my thoughts: all that matters is her and the other kids.
I think if we all realised how powerful our voices can be - and how great it feels to use them – we wouldn’t hold back nearly as much as we do.
I used to think I couldn’t talk about what’s happening to the planet because I don’t have a background in science. I was scared someone would be able to poke holes in my views and make me look stupid. But I’ve realised that saying nothing out of fear is the biggest gift I could give polluters and politicians who are responsible for this mess. Using my voice is my most powerful tool to make them be responsible.
I know that people often find the whole topic too huge and terrifying to talk about. They’ll say, ‘it’s scary and if I talk about it, I’ll get depressed.’
I was as surprised as anyone when I found out that talking about it with a friend actually makes you feel less scared. It’s feeling on your own with it that makes it most scary.
And it’s okay for those conversations to be emotional. It’s an emotional topic. Worrying about your kid’s future wellbeing is emotional.
The truth is that speaking candidly and emotionally about it is really valuable in terms of getting our friends and decision-makers engaged, because underneath, so many of us are feeling it anyway, we’re just not saying it. It’s normal to be this angry that fossil fuel executives knew about fossil fuels causing climate change in the 1970s.
It’s normal to be this devastated that people are dying from increasingly erratic temperatures. It’s okay to be exasperated that people protesting are being criminalised.
I was pregnant at 44 and wonder now if hormone changes from perimenopause are adding fire to those feelings. I hear that as changemakers, post-menopausal women are a force to be reckoned with.
When it comes to talking openly, or not, about the climate crisis, there’s one more thing that women always mention as a reason not to: feeling like a hypocrite. That if you, say, fly to take a holiday or eat a burger, then you can’t speak about the climate. But it’s just not true.
The people most responsible for the climate crisis have promoted the idea that individuals must carry responsibility – fossil fuel company BP developed the idea of a personal ‘carbon footprint’ in 2005 – when it’s big companies and governments who have the power to create massive change.
And we have the power to influence them, if we can find our voices. Like so many people, I’ve always been fearful of public speaking, but at this year's Glastonbury, I strode out, mic in hand, onto a stage in my favourite place in the world, to talk about how we can harness the power of joy and hope to pressure fossil fuel companies and MPs to take faster action, to accelerate the shift to green energy, stop drilling for oil, protect nature and start preparing for the changes that are coming.
I can’t believe that the same person who was scared to speak about it to her friends, did that. But she did.
Know that, if you want to, you can add your voice, too.
Follow Mothership on Instagram @heymothership and subscribe to the team’s newsletter here.
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