Activist and author Natalie Isaacs believes this is the defining decade for climate action, and the movement needs more women.
"It needs our creativity and our ingenuity and it needs us to gather our networks," the founder of Australian nonprofit organisation One Million Women says.
On Tuesday, Isaacs visits Newcastle for a talk with expert and principal global ambassador of SingularityU, Christina Gerakiteys. The two will discuss Isaacs' second book Right Here Right Now, How women can lead the way in the climate emergency. Isaacs launched it in August, and she knew the timing mattered.
"The book talks about how we, as women, step into our agency and use our voice and how we connect without local community and why that's important and how we have to use optimism as a strategy when speaking truth to power," she says.
It's a personal journey for Isaacs, who, for 24 years was a cosmetic manufacturer before seeing the error of her ways.
"I had a very different life," Isaacs says.
"In fact, this time of year was busy for me, fast fashion cosmetics.
"I was part of the problem. I used to sell you the dream, you could only be happy if you bought my products, part of the machine, thinking happiness is about the stuff you buy."
Isaacs thought climate change was someone else's problem, until in 2007 when she attended the Climate Reality Project, an international educational advocacy organisation founded by American politician and environmentalist Al Gore. Then, she went home and saw the light after she worked to get her electricity bill down.
"When I saw I saved this much pollution and this much money, I thought 'oh my goodness I'm actually really powerful'," she says.
Isaacs started looking at other ways to reduce her impact. She thought "what if one million other women did what I did?" and formed One Million Women, an intersection between women's empowerment and climate action.
She researched how women in households make the majority of consumer decisions and how women and children are the most vulnerable to climate change. She felt women's voices were not being heard; there were not enough women around the negotiating table.
Over the last decade she's reached her goal of one million women members, all fighting climate change through their everyday lives and climate action campaigns. Now they're gearing up for a new campaign next year, "I Am Ready" which asks what's the biggest impact one million women can make in the next two years?
It will focus on home gatherings and town hall meetings, bringing bipartisan support to climate action and moving forward from gas as a fuel source.
"When I started One Million Women, I sold my cosmetics company and One Million Women is all I've lived and breathed ever since," she says.
"It is just part of every space and place in my body, and I think that's why I wrote this second book, for humanity.
"We have until 2030 to turn this world around . . . It's a big challenge.
"CO2 is going up, not coming down. I see some amazing opportunities to see the world differently coming from that consumeristic place of my entire working career.
"I see that we can not be defined as consumers anymore, we can be citizens of this planet".
Gerakiteys has been a fan of Isaacs since she moderated a session with her at the Newcastle Writers Festival a few years ago.
Gerakiteys loves Isaacs' practical actions and recommendations from her first book Every Woman's Guide to Saving the Planet.
She says that every human can have a ripple effect of change.
"The ocean is a huge powerful force that is made up of tiny droplets of water that work together," Gerakiteys says.
"So too are we a collection of individuals who collectively can make the difference we need.
"Natalie brings the individuals together to form the whole."
