(Image: Climate Guardian Angels, Paris, during COP21, 2015)

Today it’s important that we are all activists. By that I mean we all have a responsibility to actively use our resources, connections, talents and determination to persuade businesses, institutions and governments to take evidence based action on climate change, in the same way and with the same urgency and financial commitment that they did for the COVID-19 pandemic. If the pandemic taught us one very important lesson, it’s that on a global scale we’re all intimately connected: humans, all other species, and the biosphere which we inhabit. It’s no longer enough to think global and act local because global is local. That is something scientists and environmentalists have been trying to explain for decades,

We can join and support climate action organisations. Some Australian groups to support include:

• Australian Conservation Foundation

• Australasian Center for Corporate Responsibility

• Climate Council

• Environmental Justice Australia

• Environment Victoria

• Groundswell

• Market Forces

• The Next Economy

If you have bank accounts, superannuation or shares, you can take action that will directly influence the policies, investments and culture of these corporations.

Two organisations that have been extremely successful in exposing, influencing and changing the corporate response to climate change are

• Market Forces

• Australasian Center for Corporate Responsibility

  By participating in campaigns run by Market Forces and Australasian Center for Corporate Responsibility I have moved my bank accounts to Bank Australia, a bank that does not lend to fossil fuels industries. I have also signed on to a number of shareholder resolutions that ask companies to take the threat of climate change seriously both for our environment and also as part of their financial risk management.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to create hope.

But we need a certain type of hope. It’s not the hope of “She’ll be right mate;” it’s not the hope of “I wish things were different;” it’s not the hope of magical thinking or leaving it to someone else. That’s not hope – it’s abandonment.

The hope I speak of is active, creative and wise. It’s hope born of courage and action.

With courage and action humans have overcome daunting obstacles and achieved remarkable reforms: the abolition of slavery, the recognition of civil rights and then human rights; the end of apartheid; the acceptance of same sex relationships and then marriage; the defeat of Fascism; the fall of the Berlin Wall; and the unprecedented global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We must always remember that the future is not predetermined. It is ours to create.