The 10 Week Climate Challenge asks us to share our climate story. So here is my short version.
Prior to Oct 2018 I was like most Australians, concerned about climate change, trying to keep my personal footprint down but thinking that things were getting better.
The 2018 IPCC report was a rude awakening. We had 12 years to drop our global emissions 50% to have a 2/3 chance of staying under 1.5 degrees.
So despite having just moved to Bega and living in a rental house I knew that for the sake of my granddaughter who wouldn’t even be 18 when this deadline was up I knew I had to accelerate my climate action. Things that had been negatives like not having a job became positives because I had plenty of time. Inspired by Greta Thunberg and after several months angsting I started doing a Climate Strike every Friday outside my local MPs office for six hours. It was both easier and scarier than it sounds. My nausea inducing fears of being verbally assaulted didn’t eventuate and it put me in contact with other people who wanted climate action.
I joined the Greens, was one of the founding members of our local climate action group and we succeeded in getting a climate emergency declaration through council.
Then we were hit by the Black Summer bushfires. During those two months of uncontrollable bushfires and hazardous smoke I discovered the difference between intellectually understanding the effects of climate change and living it. The two months of living on high alert and not being able to protect my granddaughter from breathing smoke equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day because it seeped into the house were psychological hard.
I bought a house, retrofitted and dropped my personal footprint to a sustainable 2 tonnes a year. But it’s not enough to do just individual change. We need systemic change, the time for slow personal change was forty years ago now we have only rapid massive change options left. I ran for local council ( didn’t get in but kept climate change being discussed through the campaign) and now am doing the social media for the Greens Bega By-election campaign climate action candidate. When I tell the story this way it sounds as if I had a plan, as if I knew what I was doing. But I didn't, I just kept taking opportunities to do more.
Has the climate emergency pushed me way out of my white, middle class, middle aged, woman comfort zone ? Yes. But with only nine years to get massive change happening it is the most meaningful thing I can do with my life and I have to be able to look granddaughter in the eyes and say I did everything I could.
Nothing you are doing at the moment is more important than fighting for climate action. Just take the first steps and the next steps will come.
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