Culture Club - April 07, 2025


Gen Z Climate Activism With Anjali Sharma

Topics
climate anxiety
Do You Need A Nemesis？ Extra Terrestrial

Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

180.38

Word count

6,823

Sentence count

178

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 Taking on the Australian government to protect future generations, life as a 20-something
00:00:12.160 climate activist, and how to take action when the world is making you apathetic, with Anjali
00:00:17.640 Sharma.
00:00:18.360 I'm Jasmine.
00:00:19.500 And I'm Maggie, and you're listening to Culture Club.
00:00:22.220 This is our monthly interview with a person we find interesting and that we think you
00:00:26.700 will too.
00:00:28.120 Today, Maggie and I are on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nations,
00:00:33.880 and Anjali is on the lands of the Ngunnawal people.
00:00:36.960 First Nations people have taken care of our lands and waterways for over 60,000 years
00:00:41.740 and have been sharing knowledge and culture through oral history from time immemorial.
00:00:47.000 We would like to pay our respects to Elders past and present
00:00:50.480 and extend this to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander listeners today.
00:00:58.080 Anjali Sharma was just 15 years old when, in 2021, she launched a landmark federal court case against the Australian government.
00:01:07.100 As one of the lead plaintiffs, Anjali argued that the then Minister for the Environment, Suzanne Lay,
00:01:12.760 actually had a duty of care to protect young Australians from the impacts of climate change,
00:01:17.860 particularly when approving new fossil fuel projects.
00:01:20.620 While the court originally voted in favour of Anjali and her team, it was later, disappointingly, overturned on appeal.
00:01:28.780 Now, the 21-year-old climate activist is continuing to fight for the planet and for future generations.
00:01:35.420 We're so excited to have her on the podcast for a chat.
00:01:38.520 Welcome to Culture Club.
00:01:40.560 Thanks for having me, Maggie and Jazz. So excited to be here.
00:01:43.260 We're so excited to get stuck into all things climate and your work in the activism space.
00:01:49.200 But first, we kind of want to know, what does a typical week look like for you?
00:01:53.940 Oh, I feel like no week is ever typical.
00:01:58.540 There's always something random going on, but I would say there's a lot of uni in there.
00:02:02.500 Unfortunately, I'm currently studying law and arts, so that takes up a lot of my time.
00:02:07.000 I also have a part-time job alongside that, and I do the duty of care work.
00:02:11.900 So a lot of hours spent on my laptop, but when I'm not doing that, I love running.
00:02:17.940 I love playing sport. I play netball and baking. So a typical week will include all those activities,
00:02:24.180 hopefully. I love that. What have you been baking recently? I'm actually just about to bake after
00:02:29.920 this. I'm making white chocolate and raspberry cookies and cinnamon rolls. So that's to celebrate
00:02:34.500 the end of an exam that I just had. So very excited. There's a TikTok trend going around
00:02:39.840 at the moment where people are speaking about what radicalized them. So we'd love to ask,
00:02:44.880 what radicalized you that's a really good question um i think everyone asks like was there a big
00:02:52.220 moment where you realized you kind of had to do something about the world and it's never really
00:02:56.500 been one big moment for me i know for it is for a lot of people but for me it's kind of a more
00:03:00.580 gradual um experience of having grown up alongside the effects of climate change but from a really
00:03:07.480 far distance i moved to australia from india where i was born um when i was 10 months old
00:03:13.320 and all my extended family still live in India so it's kind of it's been my life experience to watch
00:03:20.500 climate change hit India from the other side of the world and I've seen subsequent floods and
00:03:26.260 heat waves hit my family with you know this is a community that has limited capacity to rebuild
00:03:32.120 after disaster and limited capacity to safeguard themselves before the next disaster so it's kind
00:03:37.240 of been the continual exposure to that, that I guess made me decide that I had to do something.
00:03:44.620 Was it around 14 or 15 years old when you started helping organize the school climate strikes in
00:03:50.260 Melbourne? Yeah, I was 14 years old when I went to my first school strike for climate meeting.
00:03:55.140 How did that come about? Because I think a lot of people will be feeling quite, I guess,
00:04:02.440 I'm struggling with words because I want to say impressed, but then I don't ever want to like
00:04:05.980 make someone feel patronized because of their age right but it's like that's a lot of courage to
00:04:11.840 to attend meetings like that so how did that conversation come about i i was the victim of
00:04:18.200 an instagram targeted ad actually um for an open meeting of school strike for climate where they
00:04:23.860 kind of invited anyone who was passionate and wanted to be part of it to come um i remember
00:04:28.600 it was it was in melbourne that the meeting was around 50 minutes away and the day that i was
00:04:33.920 meant to go was pouring with rain I'd just come back from school but I begged my parents to drop
00:04:38.540 me off because I wanted to go and I really wanted to see what it was all about and walking in to
00:04:45.620 that meeting I was really stressed because I had this feeling that I was going to be the least
00:04:52.640 knowledgeable person in the room the one who didn't know what they were talking about didn't
00:04:56.120 really know all the numbers or the facts or the statistics but as soon as I walked in I knew that
00:05:01.020 the only thing you really need to ever get involved in advocacy is passion and that everything else
00:05:05.100 kind of falls into line um alongside along the way um and yeah I I loved it and I became part
00:05:14.180 of school strike for climate and helped organize the massive school strikes that took place in 2019
00:05:18.600 I also want to know what did your parents think about uh your interest in the climate and um
00:05:24.300 environmentalism at that time as well at that time it was kind of more it was a hobby and you know
00:05:29.940 they've always kind of facilitated my hobbies and let me do what I want to do um so yeah I think for
00:05:37.860 them it was kind of a oh let's see how long this one sticks at that point because I feel like um
00:05:43.860 speaking from my own experience with uh Chinese parents it's interesting because I think we never 0.75
00:05:49.240 really talk much about social issues and I think there's this immigrant mentality of like just get
00:05:55.560 like just kind of work hard have your head down yes yes yes for sure for sure at that point it
00:06:02.760 wasn't like I I never felt that attitude of put your head down and don't like speak up about
00:06:08.360 anything because like like I said they kind of just saw it as a hobby um and you know I'd always
00:06:14.560 been really really outspoken about social issues I remember when I was like 10 or 12 seeing the
00:06:18.760 first seeing the videos of the women's march and I remember Halsey speaking at the women's march
00:06:22.780 like going around to every member of my family and being like watch this yeah um they always knew
00:06:28.120 that I was um really really interested in that type of stuff and so I guess to them it wouldn't
00:06:34.120 have come as a massive surprise um that kind of issue of okay now you're speaking up a little bit
00:06:42.760 too much a little bit too publicly kind of when we began to start uh kind of really began to become
00:06:48.000 a conversation when the court case happened. How did you go from being a school student
00:06:54.920 getting involved in these initial school climate strikes to then organising with a group of
00:07:02.120 fellow students to take legal action against Environment Minister Suzanne Lay? Can you talk
00:07:07.600 us through that process and how you turned your anger and frustration into a class action lawsuit?
00:07:12.900 Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, I was part of the massive group that organized the big strikes
00:07:18.480 in 2019, where in Melbourne, we saw 200,000 people take the streets demanding climate action.
00:07:25.400 I think there were 350,000 nationally. And, you know, there were absolutely massive numbers. We
00:07:30.560 had people from all walks of life, grandparents to dogs, union members to teachers to electricians,
00:07:37.660 to miners even and it felt like such a powerful moment and we did that with three clear demands
00:07:45.300 to the government. Stronger emissions reductions targets, no public funding for fossil fuel
00:07:51.040 projects and also a just transition for fossil fuel workers. Despite the large numbers that we
00:07:57.960 got and despite the success that we achieved and the fact that we got so many media hits and started
00:08:03.120 so many conversations. The government didn't engage constructively with a single one of our
00:08:07.940 demands, and they didn't engage constructively with the strikes in general. So following that
00:08:14.920 amazing day where we saw such large numbers, the aftermath of that was kind of this feeling of,
00:08:23.120 well, what was the point if it was so easy for them to just look the other way and to tell us
00:08:27.620 to go back to school and to, you know, make those kinds of comments that patronised us that were
00:08:33.000 condescending what was the point of all the hours that we put in and so it was a really it was a
00:08:39.220 tough time for a lot of us who felt like we'd put in so much to the strikes. The court case then
00:08:44.820 came about as a way to continue to stick it to the government in a forum where they weren't able to
00:08:51.240 just push us aside and to look away. In a court of law obviously they had to make arguments and it
00:08:57.880 was in a very public forum where everything they said would be published and, you know, media would
00:09:03.260 be watching and it would be a really good way to hold them accountable. So that's how our minds
00:09:09.980 then turned to that avenue for change. We were really lucky that one of the graduates from the
00:09:18.500 School Strike for Climate Network had gone on to work as a paralegal at the firm that would
00:09:23.820 ultimately run our case. So that's how we made that connection after deciding that we wanted to
00:09:30.320 try a different route. And that's how the court case came about.
00:09:35.700 And then I guess your work right now as well is so centred on a duty of care. Can you actually
00:09:41.040 explain what that means and what you're fighting for?
00:09:44.360 Yeah, absolutely. So the principle of a duty of care, it comes from the fact that we know that
00:09:49.920 current and future generations will be worst affected by climate change. We know that climate
00:09:54.360 change carries with it a significant intergenerational burden. And because of that,
00:09:59.200 we believe that knowing this, this should be reflected in legislation and there should be
00:10:05.320 policies that seek to acknowledge this, that seek to rectify this, and that seek to make sure that
00:10:10.720 generations to come have the ability to thrive in a world like generations before them have.
00:10:16.680 So that's the essential principle of a duty of care.
00:10:19.920 It's so funny listening to that, right?
00:10:22.020 Because, of course, I've followed your work quite closely and it's like, isn't that a
00:10:25.840 no-brainer?
00:10:26.540 Isn't that what politicians and the government should be doing for us?
00:10:29.980 Like, what are they doing if they're not following a duty of care for their citizens
00:10:34.580 and especially the younger emerging ones?
00:10:37.520 We think that too.
00:10:38.200 We think that if there's one job of politicians, it's to hand over a world to us that is safe,
00:10:43.300 that is livable.
00:10:44.300 If there's one thing that they should be doing when they exercise their power, it should
00:10:47.540 be making decisions with our best interests and heart. Because currently there's no legislation
00:10:52.860 that addresses or acknowledge these intergenerational impacts of climate change.
00:10:57.620 I know it's something that you're working on right now. Do you think that we'll see more
00:11:02.420 cases similar to yours as time goes on? Absolutely. I think that young people are
00:11:08.300 becoming so much more aware and passionate about the issues that affect them. And that's symptomatic
00:11:13.880 of the fact that we have the world's worth of knowledge at our fingers.
00:11:17.820 We can flick a button on our screens and have the headlines of the day
00:11:22.580 at our fingertips and so many of the headlines now are
00:11:27.420 this climate record being broken, this month was the hottest month
00:11:30.440 on record, this year was the hottest year on record,
00:11:32.940 there's this climate disaster happening in this part of the world.
00:11:36.020 There wasn't a single soul in the country that wasn't touched
00:11:38.540 by the massive bushfires of 2019 and 2020.
00:11:41.800 and similarly the effects of the floods that have happened
00:11:46.360 in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland
00:11:49.200 have also sent ripples around the country.
00:11:52.420 It's getting to the point where climate change isn't an issue
00:11:56.340 where the can can continue to be kicked down the road
00:11:59.160 because it has touched so many of us so deeply.
00:12:02.780 And I think that that's especially true for young people,
00:12:05.640 which is why we are seeing this increasing, I guess,
00:12:09.220 radicalisation, if you want to call it that,
00:12:10.960 where people are seeking out every avenue that they have available to them.
00:12:16.180 Just yesterday, we saw nine young people who have launched a complaint
00:12:19.460 before the UN to the UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change
00:12:23.480 that Australia is neglecting current and future generations
00:12:27.100 on climate change action.
00:12:28.320 We're going to see more of that.
00:12:31.180 I've got to ask about this because I feel a lot of, I guess,
00:12:36.220 fear talking about politics in the sense of I don't know the terminology.
00:12:39.560 I don't really know how the political system kind of works and potentially the same way before you
00:12:46.080 entered that first school strike for climate meeting like I feel like sometimes am I going
00:12:50.940 to be the least knowledgeable person here am I going to say something that's wrong I know that 0.81
00:12:55.800 you've um said in different interviews and such that like politics isn't made for young people
00:13:01.740 and I would say that it's almost purposely exclusionary right so I'm curious what's it
00:13:07.340 like working and advocating um in this space honestly for almost most days of your week
00:13:13.540 absolutely politics is inaccessible and that's the case for a lot of the population but especially so
00:13:19.680 for young people um it just you know you look at the voting age and you know that politicians have
00:13:24.980 absolutely no reason to be considering the impacts of their policy decisions on anyone younger than
00:13:30.160 18 because nobody younger than 18 is actually going to play a hand in whether or not that
00:13:34.620 politician then returns to their seat in three years' time. The structural issues in the ways
00:13:41.540 that politics caters to people, a lot of it leaves out young people and youth perspectives.
00:13:49.740 That's never been more obvious to me than there was a time we did a duty of care lobbying day
00:13:55.100 where we brought 26 young people from around Australia into federal parliament to meet with
00:13:59.440 their MPs and senators and four of them were aged 12 years old and they came with their school
00:14:06.300 uniforms and their big backpacks and they walked around the halls of parliament and the halls of
00:14:14.760 parliament were they were gossiping they were talking about the fact that they were primary
00:14:18.680 school kids walking around because that's just not the type of thing that's done but these four
00:14:23.520 young people were some of the most knowledgeable young people that I'd ever met in fact I remember
00:14:27.200 sitting down in my first meeting with one of them um and it was with the labor politician
00:14:31.560 and he was first to speak the 12 year old um and he looks at the politician in the eyes and he says
00:14:37.220 i just think the duty of care bill is complementary to your policy platform
00:14:41.000 it's you know while it's not accessible for young people young people are finding ways to make it
00:14:48.840 accessible for them and forcing themselves into avenues that haven't traditionally been carved
00:14:52.980 out for them. But that doesn't mean that there's not a lot more work to do by the people in power
00:14:58.120 to ensure that there are more and more diverse ways for young people to have their voices
00:15:03.320 actually taken into account. I think that's a conversation we've seen a lot of this week,
00:15:10.160 especially all the last two weeks, because Australia has a federal election coming up
00:15:13.880 in a month's time. And we're seeing kind of new media be in the rooms with politicians
00:15:20.680 kind of having more of a say on social media and the issues that young people care about and it's
00:15:26.220 causing like such a conversation in like old school media and older politicians and stuff
00:15:32.360 um so why do you think this election is so important for young people and do you think
00:15:38.280 that having these like younger voices stepping up and being a bigger part of the conversation
00:15:44.100 will hopefully put us in the right direction yes absolutely um yeah like you said over the last
00:15:50.320 week we've seen that insane knee-jerk reaction to influencer media being invited into the budget
00:15:57.680 lockup and you know that's just symptomatic of the way that politics um and kind of the political
00:16:03.440 circle expects to do things that the way that they've been done for the last for the last
00:16:07.940 hundred years since federation even but things have been changing as more and more young people
00:16:13.900 as more and more traditional um and less reflected perspectives do force themselves into the
00:16:19.760 conversation, that can only really be a good thing because this election is the first time that
00:16:25.000 generations, Generation Z and millennials will outnumber all other generations at the ballot box.
00:16:31.020 So it's kind of the first time that policies that do cater to young people will actually be really,
00:16:38.700 really tangibly scrutinised and will have an impact at the ballot box. And that's, I think,
00:16:44.780 why we've seen so many youth focused policies coming out from all sides of parliament.
00:16:49.760 Um, and this election will be crucial in kind of deciding what our futures look like.
00:16:55.940 We know that the cost of living is a massive conversation, this election, as is housing.
00:17:02.020 We also know that we can't be divorcing climate change from those conversations because climate
00:17:06.920 change will drive up the cost of living.
00:17:08.700 It will make housing insecurity more, um, it will compound housing insecurity.
00:17:13.960 So these are all conversations that young people have been having for so long, have
00:17:18.180 been demanding that politicians listen to them on. And they're the conversations that look to
00:17:24.260 be shaping the federal election in a time where we actually have a massive influence at the ballot
00:17:29.260 box. I was listening to a podcast the other day, I'm pretty sure it was broadly relevant,
00:17:35.340 and they were talking about how climate change is even affecting things like insurance and that
00:17:41.620 in getting you know houses insured and even like personal insurance um has become much harder and
00:17:49.960 even if people listen to this are thinking oh like that doesn't affect me it's it's things like music
00:17:55.020 festivals it's getting harder to insure them and we've seen what's been happening in previous years
00:18:00.040 and it's it's terrifying it really touches every every part of our lives yeah absolutely and if
00:18:06.300 people are listening to this and thinking that doesn't affect me then i'd like i would encourage
00:18:11.220 you to reconsider that because actually climate change is creeping its way into every aspect of
00:18:16.920 our lives. Have you noticed your milk getting more expensive? Have you noticed your fruit and
00:18:20.900 veg getting more expensive? That's all because of unpredictable weather patterns that are caused by
00:18:26.120 climate change that are driving down the supply of these essential goods. Even things like coffee
00:18:31.480 and chocolate, the prices of them are being affected because of the changes in weather
00:18:36.400 patterns that climate change is bringing to Australia and to the places where these things
00:18:41.500 are grown and farmed.
00:18:43.700 And it's because of that that climate change is causing a massive hit to our hip pockets.
00:18:48.380 Also, the impacts of insurance will actually have a flow-on effect because as more and
00:18:52.180 more areas become less insurable, like northern New South Wales and southern Queensland,
00:18:58.080 those people who live there currently will have to find other places to live, which is
00:19:02.240 only going to compound housing insecurity by increasing demand.
00:19:06.400 So actually, it's not a conversation for any of us now where we can say, oh, it doesn't
00:19:11.420 affect us because it does affect us and it has been affecting us in so many diverse ways.
00:19:16.700 It's just realising that and realising that actually your increased grocery bills do have
00:19:22.560 something to do with climate change.
00:19:23.880 The fact that there's 20 people going to every housing inspection on your street and
00:19:30.300 that there are lines around the block does have something to do with climate change and
00:19:33.460 that to solve all of these issues together we do have to think about climate change. Yeah we see it
00:19:38.940 all the time right in places like Lismore where they recover from a flood and then they have maybe
00:19:44.440 three months and then there's another flood and it's just so heartbreaking you really feel
00:19:47.860 for those people and I think in major cities we are sheltered from it a little bit more but as
00:19:52.560 you say like it's becoming if there's that quote that's like climate change is something you watch
00:19:57.720 on your phone until you're the one recording it um which yeah is definitely scary I think that like
00:20:04.600 I always say this like I think our children or our children's children will find it crazy that
00:20:09.900 at one point in human history we could go to the supermarket and find everything we wanted like
00:20:15.820 even if it wasn't in season um think like eating food more seasonally will definitely become more
00:20:22.680 of a thing in the future but it's a little bit of a sidetrack ahead of this like new elections
00:20:28.860 coming up in a month what do you want people to know and to think about when they're making up
00:20:35.240 their mind on who to vote for on what you said about food becoming more and more seasonal we've
00:20:39.840 seen little like snippets of that like post cyclone yazzy in 2011 i know that the price of
00:20:44.800 bananas went up to 14 dollars a kilogram so we've seen that in bits and pieces unfortunately i think
00:20:50.660 you're right. That is what will start to happen in the future. And what people really need to
00:20:57.160 be thinking about this election is it flows just off that. It's very similar to that. It's the
00:21:02.140 fact that politicians have done really well, unfortunately, leading up to this election to
00:21:06.620 kind of move climate change away from the central issues of the election. We're talking about cost
00:21:11.480 of living. We're talking about housing. But unfortunately, climate change isn't making its
00:21:15.960 way into that conversation as much as it should. But we know that it is such a core part of
00:21:21.440 addressing those issues, because like we've talked about all of today, climate change is having a
00:21:26.860 direct impact on your grocery prices, on housing demand, on insurance, on the cost of fuel,
00:21:33.680 on the cost of living. And it's not something that can just be taken away from those issues
00:21:40.620 and kicked down the road as something we'll deal with after we've dealt with cost of living and
00:21:45.040 housing so when you do go to the ballot box with those two issues in mind know that climate change
00:21:51.360 plays a significant part of tackling those issues and that we can't do a one-at-a-time approach
00:21:58.600 yeah completely i mean i only learned that um i guess that term a couple years ago i'm not going
00:22:05.180 to get it properly correct but something like you're kicking a tin can down a road or an alleyway
00:22:11.180 which essentially means you know you're just postponing the inevitable like yeah that's so
00:22:15.740 true exactly near the top we spoke about how you grew up in India and we also spoke about
00:22:22.180 your parents I guess in relation to your work in the climate space and I'm curious
00:22:26.900 if at all how does being a woman of color influence your work in the climate activism space
00:22:34.040 I think it's a massive part it's a massive driver of what I do and also continues to give me that
00:22:39.940 motivation to continue my work every day because so many of those headlines around the world of
00:22:47.300 climate disaster have unfortunately been seen so so tangibly and in such a large way in in the
00:22:54.700 global south in areas where predominantly people of color live. India has been a country that has 0.59
00:23:01.080 been on the front lines of climate change for so many years. For 2022 there were absolutely
00:23:07.780 massive heat waves that saw asphalt melting and birds falling out of the sky and rubbish
00:23:13.940 poles on fire, followed quickly by floods that swept away trees and cars and houses.
00:23:19.980 And that's been the pattern that's then been repeated 2023, 2024, and is happening again
00:23:24.560 this year.
00:23:25.660 It's the same case across so many of the world where predominant people of color populations
00:23:31.360 reside. 0.85
00:23:32.540 And unfortunately, it's these stories that don't project themselves into our living
00:23:36.420 rooms through breakfast TV in the morning. And so it's these perspectives that have been ignored
00:23:42.160 for so long. And that's why so many people think that climate change isn't a major issue because
00:23:47.860 it's not affecting them right now, but it is affecting populations around the world who we
00:23:51.840 just don't unfortunately hear about that much. It's those stories that I really, really seek to
00:23:58.020 tell as much as I can when I do something like this and when I have these conversations.
00:24:01.960 um unfortunately being a woman of color has also been thrown back in my face quite a lot when I've
00:24:09.640 you know when I've had that opportunity to be um be on tv or be on a podcast or um be profiled in
00:24:18.680 traditional media um but to me I see it as one of my biggest drivers that's so awful that it's
00:24:26.180 been thrown back in your face I'm so sorry yeah I think it's like it's a it's a massive thing that
00:24:32.600 people who are climate deniers or otherwise you know right-wing online use as kind of a weapon
00:24:39.240 to silence people who do speak out in ways that they don't like but that's what happens when I
00:24:45.280 guess they don't have much to say about the argument that you're making they target the
00:24:48.680 person that you are and so that's a good thing to remember yeah exactly it's like the tactic of a
00:24:53.820 literal bully like yeah go for the appearance rather than the argument because they know there
00:24:59.640 is some truth in it yeah and it's a it's something that's shared across so many um activists you know
00:25:05.640 they come for if you're a woman of color they come for if you're a woman if you're a young woman
00:25:09.760 um it's very it's a shared experience for sure something a lot of our listeners and ourselves
00:25:16.160 live with is climate anxiety how do you deal with climate anxiety especially when you're so close to
00:25:21.980 these conversations? Yeah, absolutely. Staying kind of across everything going on in the climate
00:25:28.300 world does come with a lot of increased climate anxiety. And unfortunately, I know that's the
00:25:33.540 case for a lot of young people now, given that we do see the headlines and that we do see these
00:25:40.040 records being broken day after day. My biggest antidote to climate anxiety is a circle of people
00:25:45.760 that I've built around me that do also use all the time that they have and all the energy to speak up
00:25:50.780 about these issues, I'm really lucky to work with three other amazing young people on the
00:25:55.500 duty of care campaign. And they all have such amazing skills and such amazing talent and so
00:26:00.700 much passion. And I draw a lot of strength, I think, from them when I'm feeling overwhelmed
00:26:05.200 with the state of the world. There's always someone there to keep going and to keep pushing.
00:26:09.300 And it's like that for across the country. I'm seeing so many amazing people like those
00:26:15.120 nine young people that I mentioned who have just launched that complaint, the UN Special Rapporteur
00:26:19.440 about Australia neglecting future generations in the face of climate change.
00:26:23.760 There are so many organisations, so many influencers
00:26:26.180 who are having these conversations now in the public sphere.
00:26:29.980 And I think that that's when I feel like everything's too overwhelming.
00:26:34.140 That's something that re-energises me.
00:26:37.100 That's really refreshing to hear.
00:26:38.480 And I do think that community is needed.
00:26:41.340 It's a balm for us, but it's also how we move forward together.
00:26:44.860 Another by-product, I guess, of climate anxiety can sometimes be inaction.
00:26:49.440 So we're curious, do you have any suggestions on how people can get involved in climate action if they're feeling that apprehension?
00:26:57.240 Absolutely.
00:26:57.820 I think the scale of the problem and kind of just how large it seems and how much of an uphill battle it seems is a big reason that people often don't do anything at all because they kind of have no idea where to start.
00:27:09.620 I think that my biggest piece of advice to anyone feeling like that would be to know that you don't have to be.
00:27:15.100 There is no one single model of an activist and you don't have to tackle it all.
00:27:20.900 You don't have to change everything.
00:27:22.480 You don't have to feel like you're breaking new ground.
00:27:26.260 The biggest thing about being an activist is about finding something that you're good
00:27:31.160 at and finding something that you're passionate about.
00:27:34.320 So say that you're passionate about speaking up for greater climate action and you're good
00:27:39.800 at sport.
00:27:40.340 There are organisations of sports people who are using those particular skills, like frontrunners for climate, to call for greater climate action.
00:27:49.020 Say that you're good at music.
00:27:50.160 There's amazing organisations of musicians who are doing the same.
00:27:55.420 You don't have to be good at public speaking and you don't have to front the media.
00:27:58.780 But if you're good at communications, there's always organisations and agencies looking for people to make their socials content.
00:28:05.900 there's always a role for you particularly in the climate movement to do the thing that you're good
00:28:12.020 at and the thing that you're passionate about without changing who you are without having to
00:28:16.100 get new skills and without having to be the most knowledgeable the most
00:28:19.620 well-spoken person in the room and also the fact that all these problems seem so large
00:28:27.220 if you personally can tackle one aspect small one small aspect of the problem at any given time
00:28:34.660 know that there are so many other people doing the same at different times if we all combine
00:28:39.960 our cumulative efforts that we are making a massive difference together I've got goosebumps
00:28:46.040 I honestly have goosebumps that's so great to hear and up top you also mentioned that you are
00:28:51.520 studying law and art so I'm curious what do you kind of envision for your career in the next I
00:28:58.720 guess 10 years yeah I guess I went into studying law I'm hoping that I was going to come out and
00:29:03.960 be an environmental lawyer. I obviously had the privilege of working with so many amazing
00:29:08.620 environmental lawyers as part of the court case. And they have been a massive, I think,
00:29:14.920 support and motivation throughout my journey from then to now. And a lot of them are still
00:29:21.500 some of my closest friends. So I think that that's something that I potentially see in my future. But
00:29:26.560 for now, I do love my role in advocacy. As tough and as unpaid as it is, it is nice to, I think,
00:29:36.480 be on the outside and to have that access into parliament and to push for people who traditionally
00:29:42.820 haven't listened to young people to be forced to do that. That's something that I'm really
00:29:47.460 passionate about. And so I guess I'm just going to continue combining my passion for advocacy,
00:29:54.440 my passion for law and pushing for the rights and needs of young people especially in the face
00:30:00.260 of climate change to become a more mainstream conversation. How do you balance being this
00:30:06.060 climate activist you're studying you've got a lot going on with being a quote-unquote normal young
00:30:13.040 person who's in your early 20s you're still you've got so much you're just getting started.
00:30:19.040 Yeah absolutely I think that it's part and parcel now of being a normal young person to be aware
00:30:24.320 of the fact that our futures aren't going to look like the futures
00:30:27.720 of generations before us.
00:30:29.600 And, you know, while I am quite in the public spotlight
00:30:34.860 with what I've done, I guess, to overcome that,
00:30:40.200 this is a view that a lot of young people hold and it's, you know,
00:30:43.980 a lot of young people are doing similar things in their daily lives,
00:30:46.540 whether it's studying climate science courses at university
00:30:49.600 or reading the news a lot more than they otherwise would have
00:30:53.360 in their time off or, you know, reading journal articles about this stuff and getting, finding
00:31:00.600 more and more ways to increase their knowledge about it. I think it's a shared experience now.
00:31:06.300 And apart from that, it's just about leaning on the people who are around you. And I'm so lucky
00:31:11.900 that so many amazing people around me do also care about the things that I care about. It's nice to
00:31:16.780 have a conversation filled with doom and gloom about the climate sometimes, and then transition
00:31:22.320 that very quickly into a conversation about a funny Instagram reel that one of us saw because
00:31:26.640 we're all off TikTok because hashtag mental health. But yeah, it's really nice to have that
00:31:35.960 community. Do you feel like you can still, you know, I don't know how to word this because this
00:31:41.800 is something that I think I've thought about a little bit, which is like, how do you still
00:31:48.260 navigate yeah in this everyday world when we're bombarded with things like you know like fast
00:31:54.680 fashion to like the different brands that come up on our feed um and then like you just also want to
00:32:00.700 live like a normal human being while you still obviously advocate for the climate like I still
00:32:07.540 don't know I don't know what my question is out of this but I mean how is that balance I get it I
00:32:13.200 get it sometimes it's it's so annoying to have to think about that all the time and you know to be
00:32:19.940 to to think about your impact on the world constantly and you know to question your
00:32:25.040 decisions and um and to continuously make sure that your decisions every day match up with
00:32:30.300 the values that you seek to espouse um and to feel like you have all these standards that you
00:32:35.100 measure yourself by and you know um trying to be that person who who walks the talk um it's
00:32:42.400 exhausting sometimes you do just want to turn your brain off and live like a normal person but I think
00:32:46.540 that um it's kind of about remembering the proportional impact of your decisions and the
00:32:52.360 decisions of the people who um are actually really causing um causing climate change and the fact
00:33:00.460 that you know you can avoid fast fashion for as long as you want and you can um minimize your
00:33:06.480 water usage and your electricity usage and um turn off every single light when you leave every room
00:33:11.940 and make sure you don't ever leave the tap running
00:33:13.820 while you brush your teeth.
00:33:15.100 And yet still there will be companies like BP and Rio Tinto
00:33:17.900 and Santos who are mining, exporting, exploiting, extracting
00:33:21.900 and they won't stop until significant government action
00:33:26.620 is put in place.
00:33:29.400 So it's actually not that big of a deal if you do one day decide
00:33:34.500 that you want that new jumper from H&M because it's ultimately
00:33:40.940 not you who will be whose decisions we will look back on 50 years from now in the future
00:33:46.780 should the world look unlivable and tainted because of climate change as much as I also
00:33:55.420 try and espouse those values in my daily life I think that we all have to just give ourselves a
00:33:59.480 break once in a while and know that it's not us condemning the world to a climate disaster forever
00:34:03.960 how do you balance that sentiment something I struggle a lot with like balancing that sentiment
00:34:09.080 of like okay Rio Tinto and BP are like ruining the world and that turning into like a sort of apathy
00:34:16.280 um it's so I guess it leaks into climate anxiety like they overlap obviously
00:34:23.880 yeah it's hard like how do you not just take that mindset and run into like well it doesn't
00:34:31.180 even matter what I do because like they're ruining the planet anyway so I'm not gonna do anything
00:34:37.800 is that is that like a fine line to kind of pull yourself back from like total apathy yeah no I
00:34:44.280 get what you're saying I think um for me it's about knowing that while it is people like Rio
00:34:49.140 Tinto BP and Santos who are driving climate disaster it the world needs people like us who
00:34:55.580 are going to push for accountability because otherwise there's going to be no end to this
00:35:00.100 um and so the responsibility does still fall on people like us um who have that ability who have
00:35:06.100 that capacity and that energy to be able to call this out for what it is, call out the
00:35:12.360 greenwashing, call out the extraction and the exploitation and the misuse of First Nations
00:35:16.860 communities and the absolute destruction of land and community and the poisoning of water
00:35:21.540 supplies, that takes people like us.
00:35:24.380 And so there is still a role for us, even though it's not us doing the damage, it's
00:35:29.900 us who will have to come together as communities to ensure that the damage isn't allowed to
00:35:35.020 continue.
00:35:35.380 we are now up to our final question and as um you might know every week on the podcast we give our
00:35:42.420 listeners a recommendation on something that they've loved reading listening to or watching
00:35:46.860 and we're wondering if you could share a recommendation with us too oh absolutely
00:35:51.260 okay um so I'm currently in a massive Leanne Moriarty phase I've been reading a lot of Leanne
00:35:57.560 Moriarty's books I don't know if either of you have um but she has the most amazing way of writing
00:36:04.200 like it's every like every book I'm just gripped and it's really bad to be reading during exam
00:36:08.680 season because it's like it's perfect procrastination because it also doesn't feel
00:36:12.400 like procrastination it's not like you're watching Netflix and it's like okay I should
00:36:15.500 stop bed running and do some work it's like it feels productive it's so it's dangerous um but
00:36:22.040 yes I've been reading a lot of Leanne Moriarty and also my ongoing recommendation to anyone
00:36:26.600 who ever wants to read a book would be Taboo by Hannah Ferguson um such an amazing book it just
00:36:32.480 it deconstructs so many lies and myths and taboos that women have been forced to internalize
00:36:39.040 and you know in such a personal and anecdotal way and it's yeah it's really changed a lot of the way
00:36:46.360 that I think about myself and think about my relationship with the world so I would recommend
00:36:50.140 that anytime to anybody any gender any age it's such a good book. Hannah is so great we also had
00:36:58.040 her on the podcast a little while ago but her books are absolutely incredible we love her now
00:37:03.660 which Leanne Moriarty book is your favorite though oh okay um I'm currently reading Here
00:37:11.340 One Moment by Leanne Moriarty but I've got to say my favorite is Apples Never Fall
00:37:15.140 it's high on my list I need to read it I can picture the front cover like
00:37:20.080 I'm glad it gets the praise thank you so much for coming on the pod Anjali I feel like it's
00:37:26.600 been a long time coming we're such huge fans of yours and it feels really reinvigorating to
00:37:33.160 chat with you thanks so much for having me maggie and jazz reinvigorated is exactly how i feel when
00:37:38.600 i listen to culture club so i'm glad we're on it i could bring a bit of that thank you
00:37:44.520 thanks for having me oh thank you so much again bye bye anjali