This is an excellent question, and one of the questions most students want an answer to. You can be someone who takes climate action!

Each of us can act individually (on our own) and collectively (together with others) to act on climate. We know, from scientific evidence, that climate change cannot be stopped and is happening already – but it can be reduced and slowed down. People today and into the future (including you) can make changes and decisions that will greatly reduce climate change and its impacts.

Some of these decisions are happening on a systemic scale - they the really big changes we need to reduce emissions from industries and electricity generation.

For example, world leaders are meeting together at COP26 (which is the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties) to discuss pathways to do this – in particular, to ensure that global temperature rises do not exceed 1.5 degrees, and how we can adapt to climate change impacts into the future. If we can manage to greatly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions (such as carbon dioxide) we can limit climate change. 

You might wonder how young people can influence big changes like this? By using your voices! Young people are involved in many groups and movements such as the School Strikes for Climate that have already made a difference to the way world leaders think about climate action.

At a smaller scale, all of us can do something to make positive changes and have an impact on tackling climate change. Some people can do more and less than others, and that is OK - it’s great actually because lots of small changes can lead to big impact. In everyday life, there’s lot that you might be able to do, for example: 

• You can aim to take the bus or walk, or ride your bike to school more. 
• You could eat more vegetables, and eat meat less often (maybe even encourage your family and friends to have ‘meat free Mondays’?!). Plant-based foods generally produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions and they also require less energy, land, and water usage. 
• You can speak up! Tell your friends and family about climate change and the small changes each of us can do to make a difference - remembering that we all have different abilities to make these changes, big and small. 

There are a lot more ideas you can check out on our 'What can I do?' page.

We are experiencing climate change here and now. Some of the changes might be subtle things that we don’t readily notice – like small changes in average summer day time temperatures, or the number of extreme heat days a year. Each decade since 1980 has been warmer than the last - but often people don't remember how these things were different in the past - we suffer from ‘shifting baselines’ which means we only recollect what happened in the recent past like last week or last year as a comparison for what we experience today. This means that these subtle changes may be hard to notice.

Some of the changes we are experiencing are actually much more dramatic – these include extreme weather events like unusual and severe storms or prolonged heat waves.  Each year in Australia we are breaking lots of records. The Bureau of Meteorology puts out a great annual summary that you can refer to but I created a map collating notable examples for 2018 that gives you an idea of the types of climate change impacts and events we are currently experiencing. 

The impacts from these extreme events are being felt in different ways depending on who you are and where you live. But as examples – if your home is in a low lying coastal area the cost of flood insurance is often too high for the average home owner. And councils and state governments are considering planned retreats from the coast in terms of where they will support recovery from flood events versus where they will encourage home owners to move to as an alternative. Similar experiences are being felt in Australia’s fire prone city fringes where home owners have to monitor high fire danger index days and consider moving out of their homes on those days to protect themselves.

Other ways that individuals and families are already feeling the impacts are through their home environments.  Many are finding their homes aren’t built for our new extreme heat days in summer and so they have to install air conditioners or run the AC for much longer periods of time resulting in substantial electricity bill increases.  Individual, council, and state led adaptation measures are needed to make sure our built environments can cope with these changes from floods, fires, storms through to changes in heat.   

It can be very frustrating to witness the slow pace of action by governments to limit climate change, particularly when we look at the record of the current Australian Federal Government. But Australia did once have a very effective climate policy. Julia Gillard's government introduced the Clean Energy Act, which put a price on carbon emissions, and operated from 2012-2013. This reduced carbon emissions by the biggest polluting companies by 7%. But the price on carbon only lasted one year because Australians voted to replace the Labor Gillard government with a Coalition government under Tony Abbott, who repealed the Act.

Since then, Australia has not had an effective national climate policy. But several state governments, local governments and and some companies have introduced their own policies. The Tasmanian Government is now legislating that Tasmania will have a Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Momentum is building and we still have a small window of opportunity for our governments to make systemic change to limit global climate change to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celcius.

What are the things that make governments act on climate change?

1. Voters. If enough people of voting age tell political parties that they won't vote for them unless they promise to act on climate change, they would be forced to act, or lose power. You may not be of voting age, but you can tell the adults in your life who do vote how important this issue is to you.
2. International pressure. Australia is part of the United Nations. This organisation of 193 countries has an international convention on climate change, which Australia is a signatory to, and must abide by. The COP 26 Climate Summit in Glasgow is the latest meeting at which countries will agree on actions over the coming decade.
3. Economics. Fossil fuels are becoming risky investments, while renewable energy is a growing industry that will create more jobs and profit. Governments eventually have to face this reality, and make sure their policies enable Australians to profit from new industries, rather than propping up doomed ones.