Welcome, everyone to 100 Climate Conversations. Thank you so much for joining us. I’d like to start by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We respect their Elders past and present and recognise their continuous connection to Country never ceded. This is number 96 of the 100 conversations that have been happening every Friday. The series presents 100 visionary Australians who are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time which is climate change. We’re recording live today in the Boiler House of the Powerhouse Museum. Before it was home to the museum, it was the Ultimo Power Station. Built in 1899, it supplied coal powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system well into the 60s. In the context of this architectural artefact, we’re shifting our focus now away from that past, forward to the innovations of the net zero revolution.

My name is Nate Byrne. You may recognise me as your friendly morning breakfast weather presenter on the ABC. I have a really keen interest, obviously, in the weather and in science and climate as well. Simon Bradshaw is the research director at the Climate Council, where his recent work advocates for Australia to achieve net zero by 2035. Simon led the groundbreaking Climate Trauma Project in 2023, highlighting the mental toll of climate disasters in Australia. Simon has spent two decades researching climate impacts and solutions in Australia, the Pacific and South Asia, previously with Oxfam and the Australian Conservation Foundation. We are so thrilled that Simon is joining us here today. Please make him feel very welcome.

You’ve spent your career really advocating for vulnerable communities. I’m interested to know where that desire to bring together vulnerable people and their needs with that specific climate focus, where did that come from?

One of the first times I really got to grips with the climate crisis, this was early 2000s, I was studying at Melbourne University. I was doing some research in Tibet, right up there in the roof of the world. And Tibet’s a remarkable place for many reasons. First of all, it’s sitting there at the headwaters of all the rivers that then flow through those hugely populous countries: China, India, all through South Asia. So, what happens there is incredibly important for a huge amount of the world’s population. It’s also a place where people have lived and flourished sustainably for thousands of generations. And I was really fascinated by what it enabled, the kind of practices, the traditional rural economy, the belief system [that] enabled people to thrive there so very well. Of course, going there, I got to see how Tibet was changing, how it was drying, how the glaciers were melting, how things were changing before people’s eyes, and the impact that that was having on the traditional livelihoods. It was the first time I also understood that very often I think people who have the most to teach us about how to live sustainably on this planet are the very people whose voices are not being heard. That’s true there. It’s true all over the world. So, I think from that moment I came to see that climate change is an issue of human rights. It’s an issue of inequality. And it’s so crucially important that we are listening, first and foremost to communities on the front line about the challenges, but also about the solutions.

We’re all equally affected by the environment, but the actual impacts that you end up with aren’t as equally applied.

And look, I think you see this between countries. We see this very obviously between Australia and the Pacific, where you have communities that have contributed nothing to the causes of climate change, to the burning of fossil fuels, but are obviously suffering very real and immediate impacts, also showing tremendous leadership when it comes to solutions. But you see it within Australia as well. You know, it’s not people like me living in Sydney that are really being hit hardest with the consequences of climate change. It’s people in our regions, it’s especially remote communities and it’s so important we recognise that reality and find solutions that leave everyone stronger.

Your initial research really interests me, environmental philosophy, and you completed your PhD researching nomadic societies in Tibet. How did that shine a light on the impacts of climate to you, and what’s environmental philosophy?

I guess it’s about understanding how we relate to our environment, how we understand our connection with the things that sustain us, and of course this difference between different communities and through time. I set about very earnestly trying to understand what was it about our modern beliefs that was kind of steering us to plunder the earth and get us into all sorts of problems. How were different people around the world understanding their relationship with the environment, and whether [there were] things that we could learn that would help us understand the pickle that we’re in and how we’re going to get out of it.

I studied a number of philosophies. I was very drawn by Buddhist philosophy, also by some modern environmental philosophers. The thing that was common to all of them was this radically interconnected view of the worlds. You know, the view of us as very much part of a larger system and very much being embedded in the larger scheme of things and dependent on our environment for our survival. And that’s intuitively known to a lot of people anyway. But one of the consequences of the modern industrial era, for all its advances, is this profound disconnection we’ve ended up with – from our environment, from the things that sustain us, also from each other. That was the single biggest lesson I got out of years studying environmental philosophy was that so much about dealing with this challenge was going to be fostering that sense of connection again, with each other and with our environment. From that then, of course, we’re more inclined to deal with these problems and to protect the environment for all of us.

Looking out for those connections is something you are not a stranger to by any means, you were the climate change advocacy lead at Oxfam Australia for eight years. How is climate change intersecting and impacting the work of aid organisations like that, like Oxfam and others, because there are so many working in this space?

One of the brute realities of climate change is that whatever inequalities and vulnerabilities already exist, climate change makes them worse. It’s just compounding pressures that are there. So, existing inequalities between genders, between generations and between and within countries. You add the compounding impact of climate change and things become a lot more challenging. There’s some very confronting examples of this, the increases in gender-based violence that happen after disasters, for example, and obviously real challenges around food security and water security that come through extreme weather disasters, wiping out harvests, in an entire stroke. That’s the really difficult side of things.

But the other thing I learned through that time and that I think is so important is that the same things we need to do to deal with the climate crisis are very often the solutions to a lot of these entrenched problems as well. We see so many examples of this, whether it’s renewable energy, bringing affordable power and new livelihood opportunities or, you know, lighting in areas which have never had electricity before. Also supporting small scale producers, which is key to food security, as it’s more sustainable agriculture. And we see so many examples of what works for the planet works for people as well. So, I think that’s how it’s changed a lot of development practices, recognising that we can solve a lot of these challenges at once.

Fundamentally, it has to begin with listening to communities, understanding the local strengths, supporting true grassroots community-led resilience and development. I think that’s the other thing that we’ve learned is not to think we have the solutions because the solutions are normally there in traditional knowledge and practices, and sophisticated understanding, and in community and social capital and learning how to understand and support all of that so that everybody ends up stronger and we’re dealing with the climate challenge as well.

While you were at Oxfam, you were working on quite a few projects through the Pacific. They are our nearest neighbours and some of them the most affected people by climate change. Tell me about those projects you were working on.

Well, there was a theme through all of them, which is one of incredible strength and leadership that is there in the region. I’ll speak to a couple of examples. One of the most formative experiences I had was going to Kiribati, which is an atoll nation, you know, acutely vulnerable to climate change because of rising seas and storm surges and so forth. A lot of people, I think myself included, have been guilty over the years of just focusing on that, which is not helpful. One thing that struck me when I was there and that has always inspired me, is how people are developing solutions from the bottom up to deal with extreme weather events and build their security in the face of climate change. About how they’ve been taking back that story that was told by a lot of us about [them] being victims of climate change, actually [saying], ‘The oceans are rising, so are we. We’re going to deal with this problem, we’re going to hold the world accountable. We’re going to build on our strengths and build a brighter future.’ That’s what I felt every time I’ve been in the Pacific.

I have been taken to places – there was an outer island atoll of Kiribati called Abaiang, which was one of the most wonderful places I’ve ever been, just beautiful and the most warm and welcoming place. Such richness of continuous culture and such healthy people at such a wonderful place to be, and then being taken to the end of the island and seeing these sites that are being inundated by storm surges. People weren’t able to grow traditional crops there, you know, seeing just how much was under threat. But then seeing the incredible determination of people to deal with that, at every level from using a knowledge of that local environment to come up with ways they were going to protect from inundation and be able to still grow crops in the face of climate change. But then also to be alongside some of these people at UN climate negotiations using these stories and powerful narratives, they had to kind of hold all of us accountable. It’s always been an enormous source of inspiration, that bit of time I was privileged to spend in the region.

You’re currently the projects research director at Climate Council. Firstly, before we go any further, what’s the Climate Council and what did joining it in 2020 mean to you?

The Climate Council is Australians’ own independent climate science research and communications organisation and it arose from the ashes of the former Climate Commission, which was a hugely important body that was then axed under the Abbott government. But then there was very quickly a fundraiser put together and thousands of members of the Australian community got behind it. It was very clear they wanted a fully independent voice out there. So, it’s quite an amazing origin story.

I’ve spoken to many of those original councillors and I’ve been super lucky to join this organisation and be part of that going forwards. One of the amazing things about it is the climate councillors who are there – many who’ve been part of this series; Tim Flannery and Lesley Hughes, Greg Mullins. People who are modern-day heroes really, they’ve done – they were the ones doing some of that pioneering science 30 or 40 years ago before they had any idea what we were dealing with. And it’s an amazing legacy of knowledge and experience and vision and determination to build on. So that’s what Climate Council is. We’ve evolved over the years and now we’re not just communicating the science. Very much involved in the big political battles of the moment. A lot of our work is not talking ourselves but elevating the voices of trusted messengers around the country; fire fighters, teachers, nurses, community leaders from regional Australia, people who really get it and who are going to be trusted voices and bring the rest of us along.

You’ve had many privileges, I would suggest, during your career, and one of them was working closely with the world-renowned scientist and climate change expert, Professor Will Steffen, who was actually slated to be part of this series but Will passed away in January 2023. Can you tell us about Will and about the incredible legacy of his work that he’s left behind?

I think about Will every day, asking [myself] what would Will do in this moment? I think a lot of us are. He was an absolute giant of climate science and a real pioneer. Somebody who connected all these different fields of ecology, of atmospheric chemistry, of biology, everything else, into this vision of earth system science. This radically holistic view of how the planet works, which underpins so much of our modern understanding of the climate crisis. So, he made this phenomenal scientific contribution, but was also a remarkable communicator, had an incredible gift with words. I look at all the reports that we do these days, and you can see the fingerprints of Will’s prose throughout because he just had an amazing way of taking these complex scientific concepts and putting it in terms we all understood.

I think the thing that we really learnt from Will beyond any of that, beyond the scientific achievements, beyond these gifts as a communicator, was how to live in the current moment with a lot of optimism and positivity. How to show up as a really good person and lift up those around you. I mean, he had this unrelenting determination, but [also] I think this ability, despite never holding back from the confronting realities of what we deal with, to always find some hope and perspective in the current moments. And one thing I remember he used to say many times is that people often say that hope leads to action, but really, it’s the other way round. It’s action that leads to hope. And he lived this. I think he instilled that in all of us. Dealing with climate change can be incredibly difficult when you think about the gravity of what we’re dealing with. The only antidote to that is just to get active and it can be in little ways. Obviously Will was incredible. You know, he sent waves that influence things in big ways. For others of us, we’re doing smaller things. But I think when you get on that virtuous cycle of taking action, coming together with your friends, whatever it is around you, making smart choices in your own life, building communities in ways that we deal with these challenges, going out, talking about climate change, whatever it might be, you know, you can build from that. Gradually you get the confidence that, as confronting and big as these challenges are, we can solve them together. I think that’s what stuck with me from that precious bit of time with Will, his amazing science brain, his communication abilities, but [also] his ability to make all of us feel that this can be done and that we’re part of this great project together.

As I talk to people about climate, especially researchers who have been around for a while, I am getting this deep sadness and fatigue. So [it’s] good that you can find the positivity in there somewhere. And I think we really need to hold on to it. But it’s not just the researchers, [it’s] especially more and more young people in Australia, considering the trauma associated with climate, whether it’s hearing about it all the time or living through it specifically. And because you’ve worked on the climate trauma report, which was examining that growing toll that it’s taking on our mental health, could you tell us a little bit about that?

I was up in Lismore actually just a couple of days ago in a meeting with some of the many people who had courageously contributed stories to this project. And we are obviously living in an era of consequences for our past inaction on climate change. This is no longer a future threat. We are seeing things play out right now. Yes, how bad things get is very much in our hands. Huge amount we can do to limit future harms and that we will do. But there is a lot of very real human suffering that we see unfolding here and throughout the world. We were hearing a lot of stories of people’s mental anguish following extreme weather disasters or that anxiety you’ve described, especially among younger people looking at a more uncertain future, we realised we needed to lift the lid on this. We needed to get a handle on the impact of climate change on mental wellbeing and we partnered with Beyond Blue, who are a fantastic organisation.

We did, initially, a scientific survey of all the communities around the country and the results for that were really striking. I mean, the first thing we saw was that 80 per cent of participants – this is people from all parts of Australia, from downtown Sydney to the remotest part of the continent – but overall, 80 per cent of people had had some experience of an extreme weather disaster since 2019. Bushfires or floods or extreme heat. Of those, more than half said that that had that some impact on their mental health. It just showed that climate change is affecting us all. No one is immune. But as soon as we looked in the data, you could see these real patterns and disparities. This probably won’t surprise anybody. I mean, there was a big difference when it came to urban Australia and rural and remote Australia. You could see just how more severe the exposure to extreme weather events, but also the mental toll was and, you know, the access to the kind of support was also going to be more limited. You could see differences across age groups. Obviously, the younger you are, the more of your life ahead of you, the more this is going to take a toll.

I think back to something I was sharing at the start. You immediately see those who, goodness we really need to be listening to on this and very often we’re not. And so that was, again, one of the lessons of this. Really, we need to listen to rural and remote Australia, of course, more than anybody we need to be listening to our First Nations communities. We need to be listening to young people about the experiences they’re having, but also about the solutions. In this case, how can we support each other with our mental wellbeing in the face of climate change?

The other positive thing that came from that research, because there was more than 500 Australians [who] shared quite detailed accounts of their experiences of natural disasters. And the other theme there was that people’s efforts during recovery to support each other, to be building community, to be coming together, that was extremely important in supporting their mental wellbeing. And then we were seeing these community resilience hubs, as they’re often called – pop ups – and there’s a number of these now in the Northern Rivers where people work together to understand the local risks, making sure they’re equipped to deal with whatever challenges are coming up. That was really important and that could really enable people to still flourish in the face of climate change and to be much better prepared. Then these same groups also go on and they’re advocating for stronger government action to get us out of fossil fuels and so forth. And it really reinforced personally what I’d come to understand when I first started studying climate change is it can be this crisis of disconnection. And the only antidote often is about building community again together. That’s so important in building resilience and in building the future we want and holding our decision makers to account. So, the solutions often are technical, require a lot of funding to support communities on the front line. But so much of it is about how we pull together and that’s how we can maintain some mental wellbeing in these very difficult times.

I was in Lismore myself about a month ago. And I found it quite shocking because we’re now 18 months on from the record flooding event that was deadly. The way that community has responded is really, really heartening. You see the flags with the hearts out and people showing that they’re there to help. But then also so much hasn’t been done – that place is still in so much need. And there were reminders constantly. That can’t help. What should we be doing, do you think, in order to help those communities? I mean, even down to…you could see the holes in a building where somebody was cut out of the roof still there. Where should our focus be?

Well, first of all, I think you’re absolutely right about those ongoing realities there. For a lot of people, that trauma of what happened 18 months ago is still very, very real. It comes back to them every day. And at the moment, sadly, as we go into another very hot, dry period, there’s elevated risks of fires. So, those same communities that face devastating floods are now looking at a very difficult fire season. People will talk very honestly about how triggering that can be. You know, just the smell of smoke or just the lightest fall of rain, can pull them right back into that traumatic place. A lot of people do hear all these nice stories of how resilient the local community has been, how great the response is. And they’re [thinking], ‘Well, wait a minute, you know, I still don’t have a house. And we were promised all this support and it’s not come.’ And that is equally the reality. There’s also, I think, a sense of abandonment, [that’s] what I felt last week. Well, what do we need to do about it? I think we cannot abandon communities like that. I think we need the public investment that’s necessary, if it’s infrastructural solutions that are needed. Of course, if people are still homeless, a year and a half later…I mean, we’re a wealthy, developed country here. This should not happen. We should be able to do better than that.

Look, these are difficult challenges. I think in the most extreme cases, there are communities having serious conversations about having to move out of harm’s way. That’s really tough, if your entire community and connection to place is there, to have to uproot and move. It’s not only logistically complicated and expensive, but obviously there’s a lot of very difficult feelings go with that. But what do we have to do? We can’t move on when these things happen. We need, as a country, to have a real commitment to those most vulnerable among us and be supporting with the necessary public investment from all levels of government, but making sure there are long term durable solutions and recognising that we’re going to have to be dealing with this a lot more in different parts of the country. We need to have honest conversations about how difficult this is, but also recognise that there are solutions. I’ve talked a lot about the importance of community building and so forth, but at the same time people cannot do this on their own and there’s an onus on all of us to be listening to the most vulnerable amongst all of us and providing whatever support we can. It’s very often the answers are there. It just needs the money and the support to make it happen.

We started this series in March 2022. Here, now, towards the end of 2023, things look very different in Australia from a climate change action point of view. Are you encouraged by the progress we’ve made?

Absolutely. But I’m going to have some caveats. Yes, but! I’m sure you’ve asked this question many times and got a version of this answer. I mean, clearly, we’re in a better position than we were ten years ago. I mean, goodness, we lost more than a decade to that paralysis. I mean, it was maddening. I won’t go there. I want to focus on the now and looking forward. I mean, we’ve got some wind in the sails now. We’ve got tremendous community support for stronger action across all demographics. Of course, that delivered the most sort of progressive government – parliaments – on climate that we’ve had, and that’s enabled some progress. Now it’s about building on that because we [when] look at the science, incremental change isn’t enough at this point. You know, we’ve really got to jump to warp speed. Globally, we need to roughly halve emissions by the end of this decade, and that’s only for about a coin toss chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees in the long term. It’s crucial that we continue to strive to limit warming as far as possible.

What does that mean for Australia? If you do the maths and if you look at our very high level of emissions, think about our historical responsibility for climate change, think about the enormous untapped renewable energy potential we have. We should be aiming to reduce our emissions by about 75 per cent by 2030 and getting to net zero by 2035. This is building on Will Steffen’s pioneering work [that] really introduced us to the reality of the global carbon budget, how perilously close we are to some of these dangerous tipping points in the climate system that could send us cascading into an even more dangerous future and the true scale of action required. So, I’m encouraged by the progress we have made. I have a big tantrum every time I hear we’ve approved a new coal mine or gas field, because obviously that flies in the face of what we need to be achieving and sets us further back. And yet when there’s momentum, we can keep building.

As big as that challenge seems, and when we also look at what’s happening around the world, where again, there are always setbacks. I do still have some faith that we can get on that virtuous cycle, that these initial modest reforms are going to prove popular. Because after all, I mean, renewable energy is the permanent bill buster and, you know, investments in public transport and that’s all lovely, more connected communities. This is all about better health, better cost of living and everything else. We can start to understand the future that we can have and it will start to accelerate and Australia will start to realise this opportunity to play such a big outsized role in the global response. But I don’t want to understate the challenge because goodness, we’ve got to give it everything we’ve got over the coming years.

I guess it’s better to have started with something, right, than to not do anything but you’re saying 75 per cent reduction by 2030. What’s our commitment? 43 per cent?

43 per cent and we’re not even really on track for that. But have we really gone for it yet? We haven’t. I mean, I think when you see what we can do here in Australia, I think the path to zero emissions here is possibly easier than almost anywhere else. I mean, yes, we have built a lot of wealth in the past off extractive industries, off coal and gas in particular, and we need to transition out of those in a way that isn’t going to leave anyone behind, that we’re all left strong with new opportunities. But of course, we are coming from that history and that present and then we’re also sunniest, windiest inhabited continent on the planet. There’s so much here. It must be so enviable to the rest of the world, you know, home to the world’s oldest continuous living cultures and this incredible trove of wisdom of how we could be living sustainably on this continent.

You mentioned the tipping points and that’s, I think, something that’s becoming increasingly more important to try to get our heads around, because there are a few points where if we cross them, things could go pretty bad pretty quickly. We’re starting to see already some indicators around the world that we might be a bit closer than we think. What are the ones that you have in mind?

We’ve all been watching the Antarctic sea ice this year. I think, among other things. I can see you drawing a breath.

It has me more worried than I can let on.

Look, when scientists first started talking about tipping points in the Earth’s system, it was assumed that we’d probably get to about 4 to 5 degrees of global heating before some of these would start to become active. This is when we go back to the first or second assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now we’ve seen those sorts of thresholds come lower as our understanding is increased and now it’s 1.2 degrees of warming. We are seeing signs of instability in some of these big systems. So, this is the polar ice sheets, this is large ecosystems like the Amazon, like tropical coral reefs. It’s also the ocean circulations that distribute heat and moisture and carbon and nutrients around the planet. That precipitous decline in Antarctic sea ice this year is really worrying and also the speed of damage to our tropical reef systems. I mean, these are things that should happen over geological periods, thousands of years, millions of years. Happening so quickly, it’s almost putting our reports out of date that we did last year. And it’s deeply unsettling. It’s seconds to midnight is what the earth is telling us when we see some of these changes unfold. So, we have to get our emissions plummeting. We have to be leaving our fossil fuels in the ground. We have to be shifting the trillions into clean energy. And we have to be thinking about all our choices. We have to be throwing everything we can at this challenge and in the smart ways that leave all of us stronger. I think that goes without saying.

I might just talk about the ocean a little bit more Nate, because I know this is something close to your heart, but it’s also a really important part to the climate change story because the climate crisis is in a very real sense, a crisis of our oceans. You know, the ocean and the atmosphere are a joined up system that distributes heat and weather around our world. And the vast majority, more than 90 per cent of that excess heat that we’ve trapped through the burning of fossil fuels, wrapping the earth in this thicker blanket of greenhouse gases, that’s been absorbed by the ocean. In some ways that may have masked the true extent to which we’ve been interfering in the climate system. I think part of what I feel in my gut when I see that trend in the failure of the Antarctic sea ice to be re-thawing as it should this year or these incredibly high ocean temperature anomalies, it’s some of that now starting to come back and bite us.

Everything on earth, all life on Earth, depends on a healthy ocean and it influences every aspect of our lives. We’re going into another El Niño summer. Of course, El Niño, like other dominant climate drivers, is a function of ocean temperatures and that release of heat from the ocean and then how that affects distribute of heat and rainfall. And that affects, in a very real sense, our lives here. Placing the ocean at the heart of this climate change story is something that’s really important that we do. As well, when we think about solutions, because mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes are incredibly efficient stores of carbon. More so even than the mature tropical rainforests. And yet we’ve been wiping them out over the last few decades. So, I think, as with every element of the climate crisis, we can see the problem there. We can also see a really important part of the solution that we need to double down on.

The crucial part of what the Climate Council does is communication, helping governments, policymakers, as well as public forum connections. You’re all about communicating. Does your background in environmental philosophy inform your approach to how to make those connections with people?

Ah, that’s interesting. I think it does because I think, look, what I really learned through studying environmental philosophy and through having that good fortune to work in various parts of the world and to learn from a lot of different circumstances was the thing we touched on earlier, fundamentally it’s a crisis of connection. We’re disconnected from each other and from the environment that sustains us in the world we’re dependent upon. I think a lot of responding to climate change is about re-weaving those connections. It starts with empathy for the different circumstances we’re all in and how we’re affected and what matters to us, and finding ways to communicate these realities in ways that speak to different people and show them what’s possible. Show them what’s at stake.

One of the most rewarding things we get to do at Climate Council is through a project called the Climate Media Centre, which is there just to support people from all around the country, not all – well, not many of them are scientists actually. I mean these are local business owners, these are emergency workers, these are teachers, these are farmers, everybody to talk about climate change. What it is that they’re seeing and what they’re doing in their community and what solutions are there. So, I think all of that helps weave us back into this common problem that we have. In all these different ways it affects us. Of course, a lot of what we do is communicating about the realities of climate change, how our ecosystems are changing and relating that back to the basic things we depend on for our survival. So, we all understand what’s at stake, and we all see that we’re part of that solution. Increasingly, we talk about climate change adaptation, which we’ve touched on, it’s so much about that. It’s about building community, building connection. When it comes to talking to decision makers, of course, again, it’s about finding that common ground. It’s about working out how is this individual connected to this problem? What do I really need to learn from them about what’s happening in their constituency and why that’s a problem or what particular touchstones that they have. I’m working with that.

Decision makers are one thing, your kids are another. How do you talk to them about climate change?

I have an eight-year-old daughter and we live at the northern fringe of Sydney on beautiful Dharug Country. She’s at that age where we have the most wonderful adventures going out bush, going paddling, going surfing, going on holidays. You know she’s discovering the world around her and I think through that, I’m rediscovering it and we’re both nurturing this love together of where we are in our community. I think the way I’ve actually – we’ve not had many direct conversations about climate change yet, but we have had a lot of conversations about how the world works. I’ve talked about Professor Will Steffen a lot, but I think that’s something I took from him. As you know, we work from these fundamentals about how the world works, and then from that we get to understand climate change and we get to understand our agency in the situation and we get to work, hopefully, towards solutions. So, I think Lhakyi and I are having that journey together at the moment. I recently headed up to the Barrier Reef and to the Daintree and unfortunately she wasn’t with me, but we were on FaceTime every day and I was showing her what I was seeing. And then we drove back through the Hunter as well, back through coal country to try and connect those dots. So, it’s a journey we’re taking on together. I think that’s one thing. I don’t want to suddenly drop it on her all at once because I think obviously that’s an experience a lot of people have had. I think that may have been an experience that a lot of school strikers had. This incredibly inspirational group of leaders one day realising that everything they loved was under threat from climate change and that really dropping like a bomb. That’s got to be incredibly tough. So, that’s the way I’ve been approaching it with my daughter, Lhakyi.

But how it affects me personally is, I mean, when we look out to 2060, 2080, 2100 and a lot of young people alive today will still be alive. The kind of future they’ll be facing is going to be so influenced by what we do right now. I think this is, again, the purest expression of what the science tells us. It’s what we do now that matters. Now, if we keep letting things rip, if we keep opening up fossil fuel projects, if we don’t get our fossil fuels plummeting, if we don’t listen to people on the climate frontline, if we’re not listening to young people and people really get this, then that future is – I mean, you know, this is where I risk getting a bit teary. I mean, you know what – it’s really, really confronting.

The future we can have is still one where people can not only survive, but flourish. It will be different. It will have changed. There will be pressures and uncertainties that I was blessed to never have to deal with, but it can still be a really bright and exciting future. But so much of it comes down to what we do in this moment. So, now this year through the 2020s, are incredibly consequential. When I think about my daughter, that’s what it does to me – is think, goodness we’ve got to get onto this now because we are creating that future, and we can all be part of making sure that future is a good one and one where people have at least some of that safety and security and dignity and joy that anyone my age has been blessed to have.

Deep in your gut, not the science side of things, but your deep down. Will we do it?

We have to. We will. We’ve got to have the right perspective here because we can’t flip things back to how they were. Yes, we can deal with this crisis together and we have to. But it’s a lot of change and a lot of change that has to happen very quickly. And the future is not going to look like the present and the past. There’s things we’ve got to let go of.

There’s ways that it can be really exciting because when I think about the future where we’ve dealt with climate change, it is one of connected communities because we’re not driving around in cars, we’re actually out there walking and biking and skateboarding, whatever it is we like to do. We’re much more interacting with the people around us. We’re healthier because we’ve not got all that particulate pollution from the burning of fossil fuels. You know we’ve worked really hard at regenerating and restoring degraded ecosystems. We have listened to, and we’ve supported the most vulnerable in our community and we’ve driven solutions that mean affordable energy, mean affordable food and everything else. We’ve had this great levelling up. We’ve all got stronger together. We can do that.

The future can be bright. The future’s going to be different. We’ve got to reckon with the things that we are losing and that we will continue to lose. So, I suppose it’s not a binary. It’s not can we do this or can we not? We’re going to do this in the sense that every decision we make now matters and every decision can be a nice investment in a clearly much better future, or it can be delaying action. Now thinking about this series, all the incredible inspirational speakers that you’ve had, I think it just exemplifies what we can do in this current moment, what we must do in this current moment and what the future can look like. It’s a moment of crisis, but it’s a moment of enormous opportunity for transformation if we’re willing to embrace it in that way.

Here’s to transformation. Simon, thank you.

Thank you, Nate.

To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.