Pat Mitchell is a Mighty Force
Her conversion to climate leader — and why we all need to join her
I am thrilled and honored to share my interview with an astonishingly mighty force, Pat Mitchell. Watch the video, read my 5 key takeaways, and learn more about Pat, below. A lightly edited text transcript of our conversation is at the end of this post.
5 key takeaways
Project Dandelion is a new global climate campaign that will spread stories about solutions that work while also calling out companies that aren’t taking action.
We all need to take the climate crisis personally, and start acting like our lives, and our children’s and grandchildren’s lives, depend upon it…because they do. It’s time to stop thinking, “Other people are leading, that’s not my issue.” It’s everyone’s issue. That thing you keep thinking, “I should do that someday”? It’s someday.
If we all do our part, our best times may be ahead of us.
How I came to know Pat
Pat Mitchell is a role model of mine, and I had the good fortune to meet her when she was CEO of PBS and I was but a lowly editor for PBS.org (this was approximately 1,000 years ago).When Pat left her subsequent role as CEO of the Paley Center for Media (“not retiring, just rewiring!", she reassured us), she hired me to help her craft her online presence, including developing a blog, newsletter, and social media presence to spread the word about all of the amazing causes she champions, convenings she attends, and activists and artists with whom she’s connected.
Pat fills the world with women’s stories
The word “trailblazer” gets overused, but Pat really is one, especially when it comes to amplifying women’s voices and stories. Back in the ‘80s she was the producer and host of the first national program for women, Woman to Woman.
Since then Pat has brought women’s voices stories to such little-known outlets as the Today Show, CNN, Sundance, TEDWomen (which she co-founded with TED), and beyond, while championing such nonprofit organizations as VDAY, Women’s Media Center, Acumen Fund, Barefoot College, and others.
Pat has won Emmys and been nominated for Oscars. She was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame in 2009, named one of the Most Powerful Women in Hollywood by Hollywood Reporter and featured in Fast Company’s special report, The League of Extraordinary Women: 60 Influencers Who Are Changing the World.
She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Women: Embracing Risk to Change the World and gave a TED talk called Dangerous Times Call for Dangerous Women (hell yeah, they do).
Zeroing in on climate justice as her #1 issue
These days, Pat is advocating for one issue above all others — even above women’s safety, which has been a huge focus of hers through her close work with VDAY over the years. She has gone from feeling like climate justice is an important issue for other people to solve, to realizing that it’s the most important issue, and that all of us must commit to being part of the solution. Together with a group she helped form, Connected Women Leaders, she is gearing up to launch a global climate campaign called Project Dandelion, on the scale of the ONE and (RED) campaigns.
Pat told me:
“Working for women, working for good education, working for good jobs, working for better salaries, working for promotions, and advancement, and representation — all of that is not going to be possible on a dead planet.”
As I shared in last Friday’s reflection, at nearly 80 years old, Pat exudes more energy and passion than almost anyone I know (my 10-year-old daughter may be the exception). “Getting engaged, really taking up the fight, getting into the struggle, is great for you,” Pat told me. “It is, as my friend Jane Fonda says, the antidote to aging.”
The fight Pat wants us to take up most, no matter who we are or what our background: Climate justice. I dare you to watch or read this interview and not feel galvanized to do just that. And I encourage you to do as Pat requests and take the Project Dandelion climate justice pledge:
Transcript
Amanda Hirsch: Hello, Pat Mitchell, role model of mine for a long time! I'm so appreciative that you made the time to chat with me today. I thought we could start by talking about Connected Women Leaders. For the women who are reading or watching this, what is it that they should know about this group and the work that it's doing?
Pat Mitchell: What's important is an idea that you have known your whole life and I have too, and that is that women are problem solvers. When we come together and we share our stories, our experiences, our learnings, and when we connect on a challenge or an intersectional issue, we come up with solutions. During my work with women in many different countries, I kept witnessing women leaders on the front lines doing exactly that — problem solving — and yet, they were working in siloed situations, often not benefiting from what the women in another country had already learned and were already doing.
So I went to the Rockefeller Foundation and said, "I want to convene a cohort of women leaders across geographies, across sectors of life and work, and across generations, and put them in a room together for four or five days and see if we can't come up with some new solutions. In particular, [we’d look at] the intersectional challenges of food security, the climate crisis, and access to quality good healthcare." ….They said, "Yes, let's do this."
So in 2017 we put this group together. Originally, it was 40 women from many different countries and areas of work, and expertise, and we listened to each other and we told each other our stories and our experiences, and then we connected in small, deep-dive groups to learn more about the issues.
And [former President of Ireland] Mary Robinson, who…was leading the climate work, said to all of us, “No matter what your issue is in this room, no matter what problem you're trying to solve, you have to solve climate first. Because if we don't have a habitable planet, we can't do the rest of the work.”
And I remember saying back to her, something I imagine some of your readers and viewers might be thinking, "Well, I'm not a climate expert." Even though I had done hundreds of hours of documentaries with Ted Turner on environment and conservation, I still didn't think of myself as someone who knew enough to know how to solve the problem. And Mary said to all of us, "It's our responsibility as women leaders, who are disproportionately impacted by the adverse impacts of climate change — we have to lead the solutions."
And that’s where Connected Women Leaders decided to focus our energies and our problem solving, was to find solutions and launch a global campaign to bring all women into the climate justice work.
Amanda: That's very powerful and persuasive. Tell me more about the campaign. What's the shape of it, what's happening with it?
Pat: …A small cohort of this larger group have been working on this global campaign with a marketing team that helped Bono launch the ONE and the (RED) campaigns. And if you remember, Amanda, the ONE Campaign was intended to elevate all groups that were working on poverty and debt relief in Africa, and the (RED) Campaign was a hugely successful campaign to elevate [awareness of] AIDS and the work in that epidemic.
So we are working with that same group, who all happened to be women by the way, and we've shaped the beginning — a working draft of what we think will be a way to unite all of the current climate justice organizations and initiatives, of which there are many, most of which are led by women.
…But then to reach beyond the climate circle, the people who are already in the work — to reach beyond that, to all women-led organizations, and say two things: We're on an urgent, emergency timeline less than seven years— less than seven years to ensure that we have a habitable planet to live on and to leave to our children. That is a message that has somehow gotten lost…But in fact, we have to reduce carbon emissions by 50%, restore biodiversity, and start to address adaptation, meaning loss and damage for those who have been most impacted, in order to achieve a just transition to renewable energy.
And then to say…we’ve done the impossible before. So as Mary likes to say, "Apply a moonshot mentality." We got a man on the moon in eight years, almost, and we did it when everyone said it was impossible, and we didn't have a single rocket scientist in the country, but NASA got created and we did it. And also, look at the COVID vaccine. No one thought that could be done so quickly as a response to an emergency. So we know we can do it.
So the second part of our campaign, then: Elevate the urgency and restore hope, a radical optimism that says, “This is not impossible, we have seven years to get it to a better place.” …So that's our case statement at this point, which will be turned into media messages, which will be turned into actions that every individual woman and man can take around the world.
Amanda: I love that. I'm curious, for my own edification, the seven year timeline — what happens in seven years, or where does that come from?
Pat: If we haven't reduced the carbon emissions — this is according to all science reports — by at least by 50% by 2030, then we can't possibly get to 0 by 2050.
And all of the science reports on climate have said that if we are not off fossil fuel and carbon emissions, and we haven't reversed that environmental damage by 2050, we won't have air to breathe, or water to drink — our natural resources. Same thing with our biodiversity: There'll be so many more extinct species that are essential to a healthy, sustainable ecosystem. So they are real targets and they were set by people who've been looking at this for a long time.
And in seven years, we certainly won't reverse the damage, we won't be able to mitigate all of the things that are causing the problems, but we will begin to have an impact that if we do it with those targets in mind by 2030, then we have another period of time to get the transition to renewables and off fossil fuels, and to restore the biodiversity.
So everything doesn't have to be done in seven years, but there are these three targets that the latest science report put forward — they said these three things must be done if we're going to reach a habitable place in the next 20 to 30 years…not “reach,” I should say, "To sustain a habitable environment."
Amanda: For people reading or watching, who are feeling galvanized, what's something that people can or should do immediately?
Pat: …What we are now developing, over the next six months, are very specific things that you and your family can do…individual actions, community actions, and government actions. Again, for this woman-led coalition to become a powerful force to mobilize around all these actions.
But right now, here's what we are all saying: Make it a priority. Climate justice — and not just the climate crisis, but climate justice, finding the just way to do this so that women and families in the most vulnerable communities don't continue to be the most adversely impacted….make that a priority.
And what I mean by that is, every time I have an opportunity now, Amanda — I used to talk about women and violence, and women and health…but now I talk about climate and climate justice, and how that is, of course, totally inseparable from women's equality and from a more equitable world…I use every platform now. I never make a speech or appear anywhere that I don't point to the intersectional nature of this and how inseparable solving climate is for all of us.
I used to talk about women and violence, and women and health…but now I talk about climate and climate justice, and how that is, of course, totally inseparable from women's equality and from a more equitable world.
- Pat Mitchell
Second thing is, make it personal. So I've stopped eating meat, I drive an electric car, I have solar panels in my house — they were expensive, but they're coming down. So I just started to do personal things that we talk about and we think about, but we don't take that next step.
And then the third thing, which is maybe the biggest shift that we at the Connected Women Leaders and everyone I talk to recognize has to happen, too…we have to envision, imagine, create in our heads, whatever it takes, to believe that we can do this, and that in doing whatever it takes, we'll have a better future.
Right now, we're hurtling toward the worst future we can imagine. We're hurtling toward a world that our children will not know how to live in. Everything that we have taken for granted will not be possible for them. But instead of that, suppose we imagine that if we get all this right, it's going to be a better world, it's going to be our best times.
As one of our indigenous young leaders challenged us to imagine, she said, "We think,” meaning the wisdom of Indigenous people, “we believe that we have better times ahead." So doing those three things — those are very personal, very individual, we can all do that. And in doing that, we are committing ourselves and our families, and hopefully our wider communities.
You have a very wide community here. I hope that they, in listening to us today, will also agree that this is a priority, that this is deeply personal. It is us and our children and grandchildren, and we have the power, collectively, to make a difference in the future that we are leading towards. We can have better times, a better future, and we need to move every single day, one step forward, towards that future.
Amanda: That's very beautifully put. I wonder, given our shared passion for storytelling and the depth of your experience as a storyteller, and as someone supporting and elevating other storytellers — that last part I'm really hooked on. What's the role of storytelling in creating that sense of possibility and hope?
Pat: Oh, it's so important, Amanda. It's probably more important than it's ever been, because when you read about the climate crisis, as we do every day, because it's unavoidable — I mean, with all of the weather catastrophes happening all around us, it's impossible to say that we are not in the middle of a climate crisis. Anyone who says that is just not opening their eyes. So we have it all around us, but the stories are always about the emergency, as they need to be, we need to recognize there is one, but we also need to know that, again, we can face this emergency we have as a people, as a global community.
We have done this. COVID gave us the best example…we changed our behavior in 24 hours. Who would've thought we'd be wearing masks every day and isolating in our houses, and doing all the other behavioral adaptations that happened with the global epidemic?
So we know we can do it, we just haven't applied that same will, and that same energy and commitment, to the climate crisis. And we believe, the Connected Women Leaders believe, that it will be women who do that, because it is women and families who are suffering the most. So…we have to mobilize and become the force that demands from those who aren't responding, that they respond.
And that's the other part of the storytelling… We want to showcase the solutions and the good stories that add to our optimism, that we can do this, yes, but we also want to get angry at those who aren't, call them out, stop buying their products...do something as a consumer that says, “I'm against this.”
So our storytelling is going to focus on those two things: who's not responding, and what we can do to alert them to —
Amanda: “Knock knock.”
Pat: Knock knock. And then the second thing, which is the part I'm really excited about, is to showcase the incredibly effective solutions that are going on in every community around the world.
And I'll just give you a brief preview of one of the things we want to do, and this is very much in the creative thought stages, but I'm very excited about it and I believe it will happen. We brought together another coalition of storytellers, award-winning filmmakers on every continent, China, India, Africa, Europe, US, Latin America, and the Indigenous nations. And those seven to nine producers right now…will survey their communities, find the solutions, and make short films — everything from music videos, to animation, to documentaries, however they want to tell the story in five to seven minutes.
And then we are going to curate the whole group from all these films from China, Latin America, Brazil, Mexico, everywhere, and put them into a hundred short film collection called “Love Songs for the Planet.” And they'll all be solutions to celebrate the solutions that are already in place all over the world. And we are going to talk to every possible platform of distribution that there is, and hope that you'll find a love song for the planet every day somewhere in your information consumption.
Amanda: Yes. Oh, I love that. I love that. And I mean, of course you've put tremendous creative thought and energy into the storytelling component of it. I would expect no less…
Pat: I love getting back into filmmaking, actually, because ultimately, we have to communicate this way and gratefully, we have all these new ways of communicating with each other as you and I are doing today. So I do think that is a very big part of what we have to do. And I didn't tell you what we're calling this campaign. Can I do that?
Amanda: Please do.
Pat: We thought of it as a code name, just so we could all talk about it in shorthand, and we didn't really think it would end up being the name of the campaign. But when we presented this case statement in New York, during UN Climate Week two weeks ago, everybody loved the name. So it looks like we got to end up with the code name being the name: Project Dandelion.
And the reason is, dandelions grow on every continent in the world and they grow wild, they're not cultivated. And how do they cultivate? Among themselves and other plants, the seeds. As a little girl, didn't you pick up a dandelion and go (mimics blowing on a dandelion).
Amanda: Yeah. And “make a wish,” right?
Pat: A wish….So that's our hope, is that Project Dandelion will be a seeding campaign. That we will seed good work and support the good work that's already being done.
Amanda: Well, it's so interesting to me, because of course, I'm imagining people all over the world blowing their dandelions, and it picks up on a thread — with the emphasis on solutions, too, I feel like there's a thread of individual agency that I'm hearing. And I'd love to link that: You talked about one of the very specific things you're doing is using your platform…I work with women all the time to encourage them to tap into their agency and share their voices, and there's understandably a lot of fear around that, and a lot of cynicism: “Why does my voice matter?” And so I wonder what you might say to someone who feels like, “Well, I don't have Pat Mitchell's platform, so what impact could I possibly have?”
Pat: Well, rather than point to me as the example of really effective change-making, I point to all these unbelievable youth activists, who don't have platforms, who don't have spheres of influence, who don't have the power and privilege that you and I have as white women living in the western world.
I think about Vanessa Nakate, young, 14-year-old in Uganda, who just looks around her community and sees the crops dying, and the farmer's are unable to cope with an entirely different cycle of planting and harvesting, and who begins to speak up — first at her school, then in community meetings — and finds that people are listening to her. And when they don't listen, she just talks louder. And then she starts to use her social media, and we have this force for good or evil, and we certainly know it has bad parts of it, negative parts of it, but the positive parts of it are the communication and connectedness.
And Vanessa's just one — there's Louise in Germany, there's Shea in Mexico, all these, and of course Greta.
Amanda: Yes.
Pat: There are all these young voices who have, I think, conclusively proved that you don't need to have platforms and power, or privilege. All you need to do is to have the courage to speak up, speak out, and just keep doing it until someone listens.
And then the speaking out usually ends up to organizing, because you find other people feel the same way. And there can truly be no one in any community, who cares about the life that we have now on this beautiful planet, and certainly the life that we want to make possible for the next generations — how can you not care about that and do whatever you can do to be sure that we are leaving it this way?
We made the crisis, yes. Okay. Well, enough of the blame and the shame, except for those who aren't responding. But we can make it different. We can make it okay. Another great young climate activist said something recently, and I'm not going to get this exactly right, but I was so touched by it. She said, “Let's remember that every single one of us loves someone who will be alive 20 to 30 years from now.” What world will they be living in is our responsibility. How can we live with ourselves if we aren't doing everything we can to make sure we leave them a habitable, beautiful world, where nature and ecosystems are once again in balance?
Amanda: Yes. And I hear you, the examples of youth activists you give are so inspiring, and Greta Thunberg is tremendously inspiring, and the young people who have spoken out after school shootings — talk about transformational impact. And it's almost as if a greater challenge is to reach adults, who have decided that their voice doesn't matter, and to galvanize them not to outsource this work to the next generation. And that's such a big part of what I am trying to do, is reach adult women and make every woman believe that her voice matters, that there are opportunities to use whatever platform you have, whether that's an audience at church on Sunday, or colleagues at lunch, or Facebook…
Pat: A school board meeting…Absolutely. That's why your work is so important, Amanda, because those are the women that Project Dandelion is saying to them, “Pick up the dandelion, blow the seeds wherever you might be”…Because like you, I believe that women have this power and we have a particular power, which comes from our willingness to share with each other, to tell our stories to each other, and coming together around a problem. Look at how many times we do that in our families and in our communities. So what we're saying is, “Let's up the ante here.” Now let's put our energies and make saving the planet one of our priorities…
I am a complete believer that we can do that. And the first thing we have to do is overcome our own reticence to step forward and take leadership, thinking, “Okay, somebody else is doing that, I'm not a climate leader.” That's what I said to Mary Robinson: “I'm not a climate leader, I work for women over here.” But recognizing that working for women, working for good education, working for good jobs, working for better salaries, working for promotions, and advancement, and representation, all of that is not going to be possible on a dead planet. If we don't have a habitable place to live, well, the rest of the work is kind of immaterial.
Amanda: Yes.
Pat: So that's why I think, if women listen, hear this, and start to talk to each other about this, we will be the force that solves this existential biggest global threat of our generation.
Amanda: Well, and it strikes me too…the terrible irony, to use the shorthand of patriarchy being the primary reason that more women don't speak up for fear of abuse, for fear of reprisal, because they've been conditioned to be quiet and small. The terrible, tragic irony that in that way, it's like patriarchy is killing the planet, because if that keeps women from speaking up...
In other words, it's not like there's something in our chromosomal makeup or in our identity as female that makes us quiet. There are a million very legitimate historical and current reasons for our quiet or for our reticence, and yet it really comes down to, You can't let the bastards win. And there are some people for whom it's simply too dangerous, and I understand that, which, to me, makes it that much more important for the rest of us to say, “Yes, I see all the reasons that I don't feel comfortable speaking up. And yes, we need systemic change, we need legislators, and policy makers, and clergy, et cetera, activists to be driving change. And, I need to be part of the change.”
Pat: And I think, hearing the stories of women who are going against the patriarchy, going against the cultural traditions, having the courage and taking the risk, seeing the enormous changes that they can make. I mean, I think of Wanjira Mathai, who started planting trees in Kenya, and everyone's going…”What difference is that going to make?” Well, the Green Belt Movement has completely reversed the ecosystem damage in that country and now across the world…One woman standing up.
And now in Nigeria, all the women farmers coming together and going, “We don't have to farm this way. I know our husbands have done it this way for a long time, but it's not good. We're not getting…enough food out of this land, so let's change the way we do this.”
That, to me, is the same thing as my neighbor across the street going with her coffee with her friend next door and saying, “Let's organize something at the school around climate. Let's decide on one or two things that we can do this week, even if it's starting to put compost out on the street,” which we did in this neighborhood, by the way…we just all started putting our compost into one pile, put it out, and we hired a young man to come around and pick it up every week and take it to the farmers to use it for fertilizer. Now it's a big business. So he's now in business doing it all over the city, and you see that everywhere.
So the fact is, there are solutions. And it's not about sacrifice, it really isn't, it's just about seeing that this change will make it better for me, but also for my children and grandchildren.
So if I might just ask everyone to do one thing, go on connectedwomenleaders.com website, and there's a pledge there. It's a very simple declaration that says, “I'm in. I'm going to do this.” …The pledge doesn't ask you to know what actions you're going to take or to commit to taking any. All it says is, “I recognize my power and privilege, and I'm going to make climate justice a priority. I'm going to be a part of this global movement.”
…You'll see hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of names of some of women leaders and women who never thought of themselves as leaders, because this is a campaign that really is up to us, the women of the world, wherever we are, whatever we do, however we see ourselves in our own personal ecosystems: this is our fight, this is our opportunity.
Amanda: I'm tempted to leave it there and yet I can't resist one more question, which is not a question, I guess, but just to remark: You started talking about the model of Connected Women Leaders, and this idea that women are so brilliantly solving problems, and that the opportunity you saw was to bring them together so they could learn from each other.
And it occurs to me that, another action that readers or viewers could take would be —again, it's that fundamental difference between going, “Oh, that's so good that those other women leaders are connecting,” and owning a sense of possibility personally. So then, if you're a woman leader listening to this, watching this, reading this, how could you connect with other women leaders to amplify your impact? It doesn't have to be through a Rockefeller Foundation grant.
Pat: Yeah. In fact, Connected Women Leaders is not an organization, we're not a nonprofit, we're not an organization, we're just an initiative, a group of women, who got together and said, “Let's just share what we know.” And I learned enormous amounts and I'm in this because this group got together. But I have a daughter-in-law, who organized a group she calls Mothers and Others for Clean Air, and that's a group of mothers, who got together at schools when they started seeing what was happening to the air in their community. And they just meet and have lunch, and talk about, “Okay, what can we do?” So all over the world, these women are coming together.
By the way, there's nothing new about this. We were doing this since the beginning of time, when the men went out to hunt, women stayed behind and figured out how to keep the family and village together. We're still doing that, but now the stakes are higher. Well, they've always been high, because they've always been about survival and women have always been the ones who gave life, who sustained life, who survived, and who made sure that everyone else survived with them.
And we know all we have to do is look at the women in Iran, the women in the Ukraine, the women everywhere, who are rising up against patriarchy and tyranny…And the women in the US fighting for control over our own reproductive health choices. All this is absolutely critical and a priority for me, and every other woman, I would think, who's thinking about her own life and the future. But we have to have a habitable place to live and raise our families, in order for all of those other decisions...
I’m just suggesting that above all, Amanda, we get engaged. We don't sit on the sidelines and think somebody else is solving the problem. And here's the good news: Getting engaged, really taking up the fight, getting into the struggle, as I say, is great for you. It is, as my friend Jane Fonda says, the antidote to aging. I'll be 80 years old in January and I feel 40 most days, some days not quite that young…this morning I feel maybe closer to 60!
But the fact is, it is the engagement and knowing that what I am doing matters, and it doesn't matter in some big global scale, maybe I'm lucky enough now to be privileged enough, I should say, to have gotten engaged in the global campaign. But the fact is, I feel that way about everything I'm doing in my life, that it matters. And so it matters that you get your children ready for school and you take care of the family, and you handle all the other exterior forces that are constantly trying to suppress our voices, and our agency, and our power. But the power comes when we take it and we use it, and we share it.
Amanda: Mic drop. Thank you so much, Pat.
My interviews are usually only for paid subscribers, but given the urgency of Pat’s message, I’ve decided to share it with those who subscribe to my free newsletter, as well. To my paid subscribers, keep your eyes peeled for an interview just-for-you later this month!