Reflections after 90 weeks of climate striking

There are two types of conversations that I am having nowadays. One is from the people who are reading, understanding and connecting the recent climate change reports to their own lives and they feel despair that we cannot turn society around in time. There have been quite a few of these reports recently, the UN Secretary General’s State of the Planet speech, the BOM/CSIRO State of the Climate 2020 report, the letter from 258 climate academics warning about societal collapse and the FAO Soil report but I don't want to talk about any of these because evidence says facts don't change or minds, emotions do. 

The other group say “ the tide is turning”, with Biden winning the US election, and 80% of Australians saying climate change is important and we need strong climate action. This group are hopeful that change is finally happening. 

I wish I could feel as hopeful as the second group but from my own experience I know how big the gap is between understanding that climate change is important and wanting strong action and actually viscerally understanding climate changes and being prepared to radically change your own lifestyle and force the government to radically change society. I have intellectually understood climate change was important my entire life BUT I did not start radically changing my priorities and lifestyle until I understood it emotionally two years ago. Reading the 2018 IPCC report and realising that my granddaughter would only be 17 when we ran out of time.

Experiencing Black Summer this year demonstrated another couple of points that I had only understood intellectually:

1. Climate change is not some distant future event that will only affect my granddaughter. It is here now and we are only currently experiencing the effects of the carbon emitted when I was a teenager. Climate change will kill some of our parents, grandparents as well as shorten the lives of ourselves, our children and grandchildren.
2. There is nowhere to run. This year I evacuated, according to our family plan to Canberra. But we couldn’t outrun the smoke. Hazardous levels of smoke hung over Canberra for months. Each day of breathing it was equivalent to smoking a pack a day and even worse for seven year old. Living in that smoke while understanding just how dangerous it was, was awful. It wasn’t just unpleasant, we all lost months off our lives. But I couldn’t head further west because hundreds of Australian towns were running out of water and who can afford to live away from home for months on end anyway.
3. Being bombarded by threats, with no time to recover between each one, is psychologically exhausting. It saps your ability to think creatively, plan or about anything other than immediate needs.

So I think there is a huge gap between ticking a box on a survey saying climate change is important to you and being prepared to radically change your lifestyle and demand the government changes its priorities.

On the other hand when people finally realise there is NO OTHER OPTION than to change, then radical change can happen and it can happen quite quickly. 

We saw this with the pandemic. Things that we thought couldn’t be changed like not flying overseas, working and studying from home and above poverty level government assistance happened quite quickly. 

We saw this in Cuba. The US oil embargo devastated the food security of Cuba so that people were getting only 1000 kJ a day. Since 3000kJ is normal it is hard to imagine how hard that would have been. But they learned how to grow food in cities, bio organically, and use active transport like walking and bikes while still maintaining a world class health and education system.

I often think about that grandmother out camping in far North Queensland a few years ago that attacked a crocodile barehanded when she thought it was attacking her grandchild. In actual fact it was her son-in-law. She didn’t stop and think, "it’s dark I haven’t any weapons", "it’s a crocodile I can’t fight a crocodile!". It was attacking HER GRANDCHILD so she fought it!

Climate change is attacking my grandchild so I have to do everything I can to stop it, even if it is too big, even if it is scary, even if I don’t know all the solutions now.

When enough of us emotionally realise that our lives and those we love are endangered then I hope that we will prioritise demanding better from the government and reducing our own emissions as fast as possible.

It actually makes decisions easier:

New computer or some other gadget vs insulating the ceiling

Overseas trip vs solar panels

Time for leisure pursuits vs time for activism

All you have to do is say "Which one is saving my grandchild?(or other loved one)."