We cannot fight climate change, but we can fight patriarchy

Billions have been poured into this fight: conferences, summits, campaigns, climate tech, clean energy transitions, ESG frameworks, and pledges stacked on top of pledges. And yet, here we are. Fires, floods, droughts, mass extinction, poisoned rivers, extreme temperatures, seasonal disruptions, glaciers melting, barren soil, and millions displaced. The planet is gasping, and we keep throwing the same language at her like it will make a difference.

But here’s the truth: we cannot fight climate change.

It’s a nonsensical phrase. It assumes that climate change is the enemy, a malfunction of the Earth system that we must battle and defeat. But climate change is not the problem, it is the Earth’s response to the problem. It is not a war being waged against us. It is the Earth’s adaptation to the violence we continue to inflict—day after day, system after system after system. Rising temperatures, erratic weather, ocean acidification, these are not aggressions. They are symptoms. They are the inevitable consequences of centuries of extraction, exploitation, and disconnection. They are, in a tragic way, the body of Earth trying to rebalance after being systemically abused.

To say we are “fighting climate change” is to say we are fighting her, the Earth herself. It is to place Nature in the role of enemy, when she is the wounded mother still holding us even as we cut her open. We have made the feminine, the Earth, the body, the cycles, the waters, into something to dominate. And now we pretend we can save the world while preserving the same destructive worldview.

That is the real insanity.

Because what we need to fight is not the Earth’s reaction. What we need to fight is the system that caused the harm in the first place. And that system of utter, violent destruction is patriarchy.

Not just as a cultural norm. Not just as a set of gender roles. But as a totalizing worldview, a millennia-old code of domination that teaches us to extract, conquer, accumulate, and control. Patriarchy is not just about men. It is about the belief that anything soft, cyclical, intuitive, or connected must be overridden by force. It is about entrusting power to those inherently equipped to lead, rather than those who exploit it.To those who cannot possibly understand that leadership is about responsibility, not power and privilege—because they’re not wired for it. It is the foundation of colonialism, capitalism, and the industrial model, the systems that are devouring our planet in real time.

To regenerate the world, we must first have the courage to name the system that is killing it. And it is patriarchy—not climate change—that we are truly up against.

This system of ultimate extinction has taught us to fear and suppress the feminine, not just in women, but in nature, in community, in culture, in ourselves. It punishes vulnerability. It ridicules empathy. It undermines collective intelligence. It values competition over cooperation, dominance over dialogue, productivity over presence. And it has built entire economies, policies, and worldviews that replicate this mindset in every direction.

When we talk about “solving” climate change but refuse to speak about patriarchy, we are only dressing the wound without treating the infection. We are designing regeneration strategies within the logic of the very system that destroyed what we’re trying to save. We are trying to fight extinction without giving up the tools of extinction.

The biggest proof? The companies now hijacking the language of regeneration: Nestlé, Bayer, Cargill, PepsiCo, Unilever, companies that have devastated ecosystems, exploited labour, and built global supply chains on the backs of the vulnerable. These are not regenerative actors. They are the architects of extraction wearing the costume of care. Their use of “regenerative agriculture” or “net zero” is not transformation. It is narrative laundering. Their pale, male Boards cannot even imagine, in a million years,  that there are ways to make profit while being decent human beings. They lack the basic intellectual power and creativity to conceive such an elevated concept of life at service, of giving and sharing as policy to grow an economy of wellbeing rather than individual wealth.

And we let them do it—because we are still asking for permission. We still believe we can tweak the system, optimize it, reform it into something life-affirming. We cannot. The system was never designed to serve life. It was designed to control it. If patriarchy were natural, it wouldn’t need violence to uphold it.

What we need now is not another seat at the table. That table is rotten. It was built by empire, carved from forests it destroyed, polished by the hands of the enslaved. Women, Indigenous peoples, and communities of care are still being invited in, but only if we behave, dilute our truth, and don’t raise our voices too high.

That is over. We are not here to reform patriarchy. We are here to leave it behind. And we need fierce women for this—strength alone won’t do.

We don’t fight patriarchy with violence, that would be to adopt its tools. We dismantle it by refusing to play its game. We walk away and build systems that nourish life on every level: ecological, social, cultural, spiritual. We return to models of governance, economy, and culture where care is not an afterthought, but a foundation. We listen again to those who were silenced, to the women, the farmers, the elders, the stewards of land, and we let their wisdom guide us into something different.

We cannot speak of regeneration while men still walk into summits wearing suits and polished shoes, speaking in metrics and profits, as if the Earth were just another asset to be managed, because that’s their myopic and ignorant concept of life. This is not just about outdated models, it’s about cowardice. Men have ruled through fear, lust, and detachment, following their lowest desires while calling it strategy. They have diminished the feminine, ridiculed wisdom, kidnapped, abused and killed our children, raped our bodies, and turned the sacred into numbers on a screen. And now, with the same hollow smiles, they pretend to save what they spent centuries destroying. Enough. This era, of male and pale, of fragile egos and tailored suits, of dominance disguised as leadership, is over. Regeneration will not be led by men who cannot look at their own reflection with shame. It will be led by those willing to get their hands in the soil, to unlearn, to repair, and to return power where it belongs, to the fierce, life-bearing hands of the feminine. Not softly. Not slowly. Whatever the price.

This is not about going back in time. It is about going deeper into truth.

Our ancestors, especially the women, held knowledge that this system has tried to erase. They knew how to live in reciprocity, how to gather without taking too much, how to treat water as sacred, how to raise children in circles of care, how to heal not just the body but the relationships between bodies. Patriarchy called it primitive. But it was never primitive. It was powerful. And it still is.

Now is the time to remember. To speak plainly. To say what most rooms are too afraid to say.

If we want to survive, we must dismantle this rotten system of extinction, and build the systems of return.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.