Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
~Arundhati Roy

From Crisis to Possibility
Inviting a Civilizational Shift
by Displaying Our Green Badges

Dear Subscriber First Name,

In the midst of news cycles that often emphasize urgency and breakdown, I’ve been drawn to voices that invite us to see differently—to recognize not only what is collapsing but also what is quietly emerging. This week, I’ve been sitting with the words of Brian Eno, Otto Scharmer, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Each, in their own way, invites us to consider that what we call a “crisis” might also be a civilizational opportunity.

I’ve stopped using the word “Climate Crisis”
and I call it the civilizational opportunity.
~Brian Eno

When Brian Eno speaks about climate change, he does not call it a “crisis.” Instead, he calls it a civilizational opportunity. It’s a reframe that softens panic into possibility—an invitation to imagine not only how to avoid catastrophe but how to reorient our societies toward care, creativity, and connection.

Eno is best known as a musician and producer, but his recent work in founding the EarthPercent foundation and the Hard Art collective shows another kind of artistry: weaving climate action into the flow of culture itself. By inviting artists and the music industry in particular to dedicate a small portion of their income to fund projects in decarbonization, biodiversity, and climate justice, he suggests that change begins not only in policies and technologies but in the everyday rhythms of our shared lives. In an issue of the Economist (The World Ahead 2023), he writes:

A quiet but determined global movement is emerging to save the planet. It’s in the nature of emergent systems that they don’t always announce themselves. They cannot, because they do not know what they are going to become. Right now we are living through the emergence of a movement of unprecedented scale and scope…..The next stage is for the movement to start to grasp its ubiquity and gather new strength. These are people who love life - not just their own lives, but life itself…
We should wear little green badges saying “We are on the same side”.

This view resonates with Otto Scharmer, a global thought leader in systems transformation and societal change, author of Theory U- Leading from the Future as it Emerges and more recently of Presencing- 7 Practices for Transforming Self, Society, and Business.

In a recent Mind & Life podcast, Scharmer said:

There is no shortage in good intention on this planet right now. What's not there is moving from that individual intentionality to shared intentionality, and from shared intentionality to individual and collective action. So we potentially are the biggest movement this planet has ever seen, but it's a planetary movement that is not aware of itself. And a movement that is not aware of itself is not a historical force, and that's exactly what we need right now because the challenges we face are just unprecedented.

He posits that our attention needs to go to creating a fertile social soil and explains that around the world, people are already experimenting with new ways of being—simpler, more sustainable, more compassionate. But, often these gestures go unnoticed, scattered like stars across a night sky. Yet when we begin to recognize them, a constellation appears.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, Gathering Moss and The Serviceberry, speaks in a similar register. She reminds us that healing our relationship with the Earth begins with feeling the world as a gift and with offering gratitude and care for all that sustains us. Like Eno and Scharmer, she points to culture and imagination as the deeper soil of transformation.

We are dreaming of a time when the land might give thanks for the people.

If we can remember ourselves as part of a larger web of life—and act from that remembering—we discover that we are already participants in what Joanna Macy, the eco-spiritual leader and activist who just passed in July, has called The Great Turning.

Perhaps this is the deeper invitation: to see ourselves not only as individuals responding to a crisis but as members of a wider unfolding. To notice that we are part of something vast and often unnamed, a movement that is cultural as much as political, spiritual as much as practical. To recognize that in the stories we tell, the songs we sing, the choices we make, the seeds of a new civilization are already being sown.

Take a few quiet breaths, and let these questions move gently through you:

• Recognition: Where do you already sense yourself as part of this wider movement, even in small or ordinary ways?

• Contribution: What gentle act—of creativity, gratitude, or care—might you offer this week that leans toward the world you long for?

• Connection: Who around you is also tending these seeds of change, perhaps quietly? How might you acknowledge their presence?

• Imagination: If you were to hold today’s challenges as an opportunity, what horizon of possibility begins to appear?

As you move through these reflections, you might consider accompanying them with a piece of music that evokes the same openness and attentiveness. Brian Eno’s “Another Green World” is a perfect companion. It’s spacious and playfully invites you to imagine new possibilities.

Let it be a reminder that culture, like nature, has the power to shape how we perceive and participate in the unfolding of our collective future.

May these reflections offer you not only perspective but also companionship, the sense that you are not alone in this work of re-imagining. As Eno, Scharmer, Kimmerer, and Macy each remind us in their own way, we are already part of something larger, even if we do not always recognize it or yet wear our green badges prominently.

Warmly,

Anne-Marie
Sept 4, 2025 (425.65 ppm of atmospheric CO2, 422.78 ppm a year ago, 350 ppm safe level)
(It’s unclear how long I will be able to report these numbers as the Mauna Loa observatory measurements may soon cease to operate under Trump administration).

PS: As I finish this newsletter, I open the latest book by Bill McKibben titled Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization. And there the same message is repeated as McKibben writes in his Introduction:

Right now, really for the first time, I can see a path forward. A path lit by the Sun. And it’s a path not just out of the climate crisis - it’s a path that opens into a very new world.

Song