NATALIE ISAACS

founder of 1 Million Women, an Australian-based, global-reaching movement of women and girls acting on climate change

I used to be a cosmetics manufacturer – my life was all about over-packaging. I wasn’t engaged in climate change at all. Sure, I’d talk about the issues around the dinner table, and then carry on with business as usual. But then I had this epiphany. I realised climate change was actually all about me and my family and my friends, so I decided to do something about it. The first thing I did was get our home electricity bills down by 20 per cent. That was the defining moment for me. I sold my cosmetics company and started 1 Million Women in 2009 because I knew there must be a million women like me out there who are disengaged, for whatever reason.

Women have extraordinary power to transform society in the way they live. In Australia, we make 85 per cent of the consumer decisions that affect the household’s carbon footprint – we can influence through every dollar we spend and every choice we make. We’ve been focused on this from day one and the organisation numbers half a million women now. We’re about engaging women and girls who live privileged lives by global standards to act on climate change.

The world needs a lifestyle revolution. It’s easy to sign a petition or march on the streets, which we have to do, but we can’t do that on the one hand, then live our lives with overconsumption on the other. It’s about bite-sized changes: check household energy, buy quality not quantity, cut your meat consumption by half. If a million of us did it, imagine the result. Wherever you are on your journey, whether you just want to get started or you’re way down the track, what’s important is that you act.

“It’s about bite-sized changes”