So you’ve probably heard that we are in a climate crisis. That is massively scary and overwhelming. But there are things you can do about it! 

Greta Thunberg’s words “to change everything, we need everyone” is to say your individual-scale climate action is vital. It is for you to harm yourself with the tools, knowledge, beliefs, and practices to radically transform the way we think about and do things. This change of perspective can be used to transformatively challenge the powers that want to keep the exploitative political, social and economic systems that sustain the climate crisis in place. 

 

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It may be easy to get bogged down in anger about the corporations and billionaires that are funding the climate crisis; the countries and intergovernmental organisations that refuse to restrict their actions; and the greenwashing that these powers push on us to make us think that they care and are acting to stop climate change. 

But it is important to remember that you have power, and you can channel your anger into productive actions. There is no singular correct way to enact climate action.There are multiple paths forward. Solutions are numerous, kaleidoscopic and interdisciplinary.

Here are some of the various, coexisting and interdependent levels at which climate action can take place, and what different forms that action can take:

Self

It starts with you. In just a few steps your perspective and small scale actions can radically transform life for many.

• Dream

We know that sounds like something naive and out-of-touch that your whimsical but slightly unhinged art teacher in primary school would say to you… but she was onto something.

One of the most radical and terrifying things you can do in the name of climate action is to reimagine what the future could look like and creatively rethink the ways we are told to think about the world. 

As we know, colonialist systems of power and thought shaped this crisis and our actions to stop it (see our article on decolonial environmentalism). So if thinking got us into this — it can get us out!

Take the sci-fi artistic movement of Solarpunk that envisions collectivist, ecologic utopias where nature and technology grow together. 

Think of a society governed by a partnership between human intelligence and the Earth. Rather than a tense, competitive, and extractive hierarchy of humans > nature. What does a circular economy, shared power, and sustainable infrastructure that has in turn allowed us to tackle the climate crisis in camaraderie look, sound, and feel like? 

Maybe like Curry Hackett’s use of AI-generated images to imagine an Afrofuturist world that centres Black sustainability?

Do some deep-diving on Afrofuturism here and here.

Apalech Clan member Tyson Yunkaporta discusses how “we are all refugees, severed from the land, disconnected from the genius that comes from being in a symbiotic relationship with it.”

In his book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World, Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective, and discusses how “there are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living…the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry… there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.” 

The first 30 pages of Yunkaporta’s analysis of how we could do things differently are free on Google Preview, have a look!

You don’t have to be tearing down buildings to create these worlds right now, but thinking beyond the limits of what the current system tells us is the necessary way for the world to go about its operations. In turn, staying radically (but not blindly) optimistic — in a system that wants you to feel nihilistic and apathetic — is pivotal work for the climate.

• Practical Action

You can weave these radical imaginings and thoughts into the way you go about your regular, everyday behaviour.

Pay attention to how easy it is to produce massive amounts of waste:

• Compost food
• Use less single-use plastic
• Recycle where possible
• Reuse when you can
• Try to mend
• Reimagine things you own or create yourself rather than buy new versions of things.

Be aware of how much our current system relies on fossil fuels:

• Walk, take public transport and cycle
• Switch off unnecessary heating and lighting
• Hang washing on the line instead of using a dryer
• Try buying local produce or increasing your intake of plant-based meals. 

Buy less and buy slowly: 

• Double-check that you are investing your money into organisations and business structures you align with — this can be an awkward balancing act between affordability and sustainability, but doesn’t always have to be. 
• See if you are happy with how your bank or super is conducting their operations
• Do some research on the practices of some of your favourite brands and boycott those that may be funding political beliefs you don’t align with,
• Op shop or use circular economy schemes like a marketplace where you can. Check out (and fight for the protection of) locally-owned food stores or markets that may serve an alternative to the Woolworths and Coles duopoly. 

Community

Changing your perspective and actions are important steps in the journey – however, you can’t change the world alone! Getting involved in community organisations is a perfect way to feel less alone and create a bigger impact. 

• Form/join groups

Find a community of like-minded young people talking about, bonding over and acting on the climate crisis. Sharing resources, worries and ideas with a politically aligned community is a one-way ticket to feeling capable and energised.

Do you feel unsure of how you might fit into climate activism if you’re not directly working in the lab, a confident public speaker, or conducting mathematical calculations of temperature increases via complex coding? Every skill and interest serves a crucial purpose in climate activist collectives. 

If you’re into organising:

Helping figure out the parameters, requirements, and paperwork needed for a protest is fundamental. The most intimidating part of a protest for many of those in power is the cohesive organisational capacity they represent — organising that many people to turn up in the same place, for the same reason, to safely protest is a great feat of effective people management and teamwork. So if you’re good at organising stuff, try applying that skill! 

If you like working on design:

The power of visuals is everything! Would you read a poster, banner, social media post or organisation’s website if its aesthetics didn’t grab your attention first? A keen aesthetic eye behind content makes people want to engage with what is written!

More of a writer?

Creative writing causes many to empathise with a movement they might otherwise feel detached from, and research or journalistic writing is key to spreading and analysing information through important intersectional lenses. 

Send your writing to the big-dog newspapers, or local press or check out these publications:

• Kill Your Darlings, 
• The Penny Mint, 
• Overland, 
• The Big Issue, 
• Right Now, 
• Voiceworks, 
• Liminal,
• Westerley
• Or you can of course pitch an article for Rosie!

These publications will often be looking for your prose on climate anxiety, sci-fi theatre/film script on the future, long-form essays on what climate crisis responsiveness can look like, or research articles on your community’s approach to the climate crisis translated into your own language.

Take a look at where your local contingent of groups, such as: 

• Australian Youth Climate Coalition 
• Tomorrow Movement 
• School Strike for Climate 
• Extinction Rebellion 
• Seed Mob 
• Friends of the Earth

Meet up or check out their digital spaces for young climate-conscious folk to connect.

Capitalism relies on profit-driven, competitive individuals. So organisations and people who value sharing, collectivity, and circularity are massively effective! Gathering like-minded climate-minded folk to connect, discuss, and act will always be a form of activism. 

This could look like starting a conscious kitchen potluck — share locally sourced, minimal-wash meals with those who live around you. Or create your own group chat/page among your friends to trade goods, ask for advice, call out for a working bee, and share resources.

With a community of inspired, informed, passionate people, start designing and implementing projects together. 

• Help create school/workplace action 

Forming a climate action group within any institution you are a part of can be a good way to educate others and change the potentially harmful practices of the organisation.

Your action group could:  

• Hold discussion forums

Have events with different speakers for your community to learn from and listen to different voices on climate justice.

• Host activities that instigate climate-responsive practices (a clothes swap event, plant-based Wednesdays at the cafeteria, ride your bike to school/work day) or fund-raise for particular organisations.
• Ask about  the policies around sustainability and climate action that your organisation has in place 
• You can advocate for certain curriculum changes about how climate change or the ongoing impacts of colonisation are taught, or you can all work together to research and present a Climate Action Plan or a Narragunnawali Reconciliation Action Plan to your school’s leadership. 

Take a look at how these students conducted roundtable discussions and worked alongside their teachers to establish and enact climate action.

Moreover, your working rights are inextricably linked to the climate crisis (see ‘What is Climate Justice?’ to understand how exploitation of workers is symbiotic with the exploitation of the planet), so join your union and start talking about what more sustainable working conditions look like for you! 

Local and Nation

• Write to your MP

Members of Parliament are there to listen to the views of the public, understand your perspective, and represent you. The more people contact their local MP on a given topic, the more they will feel the need to act on them.

You can find your state members here: 

• Vic 
• NSW 
• WA 
• SA 
• NT 
• Queensland 
• Tas
• And your Federal Member.

Send an email, a letter or give them a call and tell them about the local, national and international climate circumstances that concern you, that you feel you need their action on to achieve a powerful, long-lasting result and that you expect them, as your representative, to respond to.

Go to page 11 of the Climate Council’s toolkit and you can read this for advice on how to structure your email!

But what should you write your email about? 

• You could write about Victoria’s highway extension program that involves the destruction of Djubwurrung country, as well as an “800-year-old tree that has seen over 50 generations born inside of a hollow in her trunk and a 350-year-old directions tree.”
• Or your first-hand experience of natural disasters or bushfires, your understanding of the value of First Nations-led fire management, and the need to implement something like the Kimberley Land Council’s Fire Management Program in your rural area, instead of currently disconnected practices. 
• Or the need for the Australian Government to reform its treatment of refugees, especially in the context of the climate crisis and its creation of a new wave of geographically proximal displaced peoples given by 2050, up to 300 million people around the world will be displaced by climate change

Reach out to those with the political and economic capacity to make a change and let them know how you feel!

• Help take legal action

Climate litigation — the process of using lawsuits as a tool to fight for climate justice has more than doubled in five years. 

At age 16, Anjali Sharma filed a class action lawsuit against the Australian federal government for failing to have a duty of care towards young people from the impacts of climate change. Listen to her discuss this process here.

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (a research activist group) is suing Santos for greenwashing and presenting deceptive claims of carbon footprint reductions and net-zero aims. 

Tiwi Islander members of the land council have filed a lawsuit against leaders of the Barossa gas field project arguing that they were not consulted on the drilling of the Country and that the 300-kilometre gas pipeline would disrupt the community’s livelihoods and threaten local wildlife.

Australia has become “the second most litigious jurisdiction in the world for climate change.” Thus, is a ripe field for further innovative legal approaches to climate action!

International

• Connect and learn from global climate activists online

The internet has enabled us to listen to, learn from and amplify voices from all over the world. 

While great internet disparity and social media inequality (such as in the form of shadow banning) persist, the digital space remains a powerful tool to inspire climate activism across the globe! 

The evolution of Greta’s one-person school strike in Sweden to hundreds of thousands of students across the globe was only possible in the age of the internet.

Below are some young climate activists we recommend you check out, get inspired by and follow to keep your finger on the international pulse of climate action! 

• Dominique Palmer 
• Mikaela Loach
• The Slow Factory
• Tori Tsui
• Earthrise Studio
• India Logan-Riley
• Beaker
• Isao Sakai 
• Txai Suruí
• Ayisha Siddiqa
• Kevin Patel
• Re-Earth Initiative 

So! There are myriad, endless, intersecting modes and levels of climate action.

We can’t wait to see the way you choose to weave your activism. All the way from your internal perspective to international reach — all climate activism is powerful!