“Power comes from below”
My commencement address to the 2025 Climatebase fellows, June 06 2025
Thank you for that introduction and thank you to the Climatebase team and all the Fellows for having me back. It’s an honor to be here again, and to again get to experience the energy and enthusiasm you’ve all brought in this community.
I want to begin with a poem by Ricardo Levins Morales, entitled “Volcano”:
Power comes from below,
from the hidden places where it gathers,
until discovering itself, it blazes into view,
lighting the sky and reshaping the landscape,
sweeping away barriers it seemed would stand forever.
I love this poem because it reminds us where real change comes from. It helps us when we look at the good we are trying to make in the world to replace the evil that seems so big, too big to change. Change comes not from the top, not from the people who claim to have all the answers, but from the depths — those hidden places inside ourselves, and inside our communities, where possibilities are quietly gathering, waiting for the right moment to erupt.
This morning, we’re celebrating the conclusion of your 12-week fellowship, but as you know, this is more of a beginning than an ending. It’s like the moment when the volcano begins to rumble, when the energy and relationships and community you’ve built together starts to shift the landscape. You’ve spent these weeks exploring energy, transportation, nature-based solutions, circular economies — all through the lens of solutions, not just problems. And I want to tell you. That is a radical act. You’ve imagined new projects, new companies, new connections. And you’ve deepened your skills, preparing yourselves to step more boldly into this work.
I’m going to say it again. That is a radical act. Right at the time when, I believe, radical change is closer than we think.
But the real secret — the “power from below” — isn’t only in the technologies or science insights you’ve studied, the new jobs you’ve landed or the startups you may have launched (and if that’s true for you congratulations by the way). It’s in the community you’ve built together. Community is at the center of change. Community is the keystone species in the ecosystem of resistance. It is the groundswell in the process of transformation.
In my opening keynote, I talked about unicorns. The possibilities people told me didn’t exist — win-win stories. Stories where people and nature thrive together. I said: We have to believe in unicorns if we want to change the world. And I meant it. Because the most dangerous thing we can do, in the face of climate change and the global oppression of diversity in all of its forms, is to give up on our imaginations by accepting when people tell us that the way things are is the way they must be. We must not believe it’s impossible for people to work together, or for communities to heal ecosystems, or for justice and abundance to coexist.
Imagining that things can be different. Daring to put the possibility of difference into the world, is as radical an act as there is.
It’s easy, especially now, to feel powerless. The problems are immense, and the people in power seem intent on standing in the way of real change — or worse, tearing down the institutions we need to face these challenges together. But as Ricardo with his mighty poem reminds us, power gathers in the hidden places. It builds in the soil of community. It erupts not because someone gives us permission, but because we refuse to accept that a different world is impossible.
I want to take a moment to talk about what happens between the gathering and the eruption — about what anthropologists call liminality. Liminality is a word for the in-between, for the space between what you were and what you are becoming. It’s the caterpillar in the cocoon, the volcano before it erupts, the seed just as it starts to germinate in the soil.
Liminality is uncomfortable. When you embark on a journey of change — whether it’s launching a climate project, shifting careers, or reimagining your place in the world — you leave behind the familiar, but you haven’t yet arrived at the new. You aren’t who you were, but you’re not quite who you will be. It’s a time of uncertainty, vulnerability, and ambiguity. Sometimes it feels like you’re standing in the dark, waiting for something to take shape.
But this in-between space is also a place of immense possibility. It’s where the old rules and assumptions loosen their grip. It’s where we’re most able to imagine something different, to ask ourselves: What if things could be another way? What if I could be another way? What if we — all of us together — could be different?
I imagine that for many of you, this fellowship has been a liminal experience. You’ve stepped away from what you knew, from old roles or jobs or even ways of thinking, and you’ve immersed yourselves in new ideas, new fields, and perhaps even new dreams. Some of you may already feel transformed — clear on your next step, emboldened by new connections. For others, the path ahead might still be foggy. And that’s not just okay — it’s necessary. The time in-between is where the real growth happens.
So if you find yourself looking around the zoom screen and thinking, “I haven’t achieved as much as others,” or “I’m still not sure what’s next,” I want to speak directly to you. Hang in there. What matters is not how fast or visible your transformation is, but that you are in motion.
The world tells us, over and over, that progress is linear — that it’s a race, that there’s a finish line. But living systems don’t work that way. A forest after a fire doesn’t immediately become something new; it spends time as bare soil, as sprouts and saplings, as a riot of wildflowers and tangled brush before it becomes a mature stand again. Sometimes, it becomes something wholly unexpected — a new ecosystem, richer and more diverse than before.
So, too, with your lives and your work. This fellowship is not the end, nor is it the beginning. It’s part of the messy, beautiful middle that you entered when you first applied to join this cohort — this is where you get to experiment, to fail, to learn, and to imagine boldly. Give yourself permission to be unfinished.
One thing I’ve learned from all the “unicorns” I’ve met is this: Living systems — ecosystems, communities, even careers — don’t thrive by scaling up and becoming more uniform. They thrive by diversifying, adapting, and evolving. The most important thing you can do, leaving this fellowship, is to keep listening for those stories and building those connections that help you and your community diversify. That help you adapt. That help you evolve.
We need to escape the failures of imagination that got us here — the myths that tell us we’re inherently greedy, or that only technological fixes will save us, or that real change is impossible unless it “scales.” The climate crisis is not just a technical problem. It is a crisis that is the results of decades of powerful people and systems seeking to constrain us from our imaginations and strip us of our relationships.
So as you step forward, keep finding each other. This community is your mycelium network — the underground web that holds the forest together, sharing resources, passing signals, helping each other survive and thrive. Support each other. Keep learning from each other. And keep inviting new voices in, especially those who have lived too long under the heel of other people’s limited imaginations.
I say it a lot. I think we’re near a tipping point. The volcano is rumbling. The power is gathering. You are the blaze that will reshape the landscape. Don’t be afraid to imagine the impossible. In fact, that’s your job now. Believe in unicorns. Push like it’s the last push we need not the first.
Congratulations, and thank you for letting me join this moment in your own personal transformation.
