Opinion: Dear Prime Minister…
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Dear Prime Minister,
I’m writing to introduce myself. Hello.
I’m a pretty boring, late twenties person with a fair amount of privilege, an embarrassing devotion to my two guinea pigs and a healthy level of terror about the climate emergency that our country—and the planet—is in right now.
You’ve heard from the climate scientists, from the fire chiefs, from the economists and the biologists, the botanists, the journalists and the former politicians, the religious leaders, the non-religious leaders, the doctors, the farmers, the First Nations peoples. From the children, who scream the loudest for action. All of them have told you: this is not normal. Do something. Do something more than the guise of a response you are currently doing.
I’m not a scientist, or a politician, or a political strategist, or an economist, or an expert on anything really. I will not quote statistics or facts at you because so many more qualified, and justified, have done so before. But you haven’t yet heard from me and so I’m writing this letter to you.
I live in our beautiful bush capital, Canberra. Canberrans often use the term ‘bush capital’ as a bit of a jibe—aware of our dorky status as political nerds with too many hobbies, living in a city famous for roundabouts and bad statues. But really, we love our city.
I love that it feels like a big country town and that, for every one of the four places I have lived here, the bush has been within a five-minute walk. The Canberra bush is dry, but a refuge for many—yellow-tailed black cockatoos, echidnas, brush-tailed possums, kangaroos, galahs, crimson rosellas, and me.
A part of my job involves reading and writing about climate change.
I read every day—bad news, worse news, catastrophic news, bad predictions for the future, worse predictions for the future, catastrophic predictions for the future. I’m sure you understand what burn-out is and I know you agree we all need a little holiday from work now and then. When I get weighed down by absorbing a shitheap of bad news, I like to go walking in the bush near my house. It is quiet and holds a calm that doesn’t exist elsewhere. It reminds me that there is still so much worth saving.
The last week has been a big one for bad news. Over a thousand houses have burnt down in the worst bushfires we have ever seen in this country. One of the biggest peacetime evacuations in Australia clogged roads, with hundreds still trapped, unable to leave. People are running out of water, and of hope. Twenty-five Australians have died. The ACT is now part of a weirdly exclusive group of two jurisdictions (hey NT) not directly impacted by emergency-level bushfires this season.
We are lucky and we are thankful that we live in a place that is not burning to the ground. Yet.
But we are also not fine. Over the last week, Canberrans have choked through the worst air quality ever measured in our city. It topped the global list of worst-polluted cities for three of those days.
The usual stream of cyclists over Commonwealth Bridge slowed to a trickle and then stopped. In lieu of a walk, I Iook out for birds from my back window, but I can’t see any. I can smell the homes and the lives of our fellow Australians going up in smoke, 60km from us.
I am breathing the anxiety and the despair into my lungs and it is suffocating. Are you breathing it in too? What does it smell like to you?
I have read about climate change for a long time, and I have noticed the hotter days and been nervous. The constant stream of news about disasters elsewhere, even ones close to home, has led me to a numb acceptance that this is really happening. But the immediacy and the invasiveness of this smoke has instilled a panic, and a resolve to draw your attention to my all-too-common experience.
Please, listen. Please, panic. Now is the time.
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