Prominent Voices Unite to Demand a Climate Duty of Care Bill, 11 January 2025:
An Open Letter to Protect Future Generations
Addressed to:
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister
Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment and Water
Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change
Anne Aly, Minister for Youth
Dear Prime Minister and Ministers,
2024 is officially the hottest year on record. A child turning ten years old this year has lived through the ten hottest years on record. How many more records will be broken in this child’s lifetime? How many more broken records will future generations witness?
Young people are this country’s future. We are Australia’s future leaders, future innovators, future changemakers. We will soon inherit the world our leaders leave us, and we will be charged with taking it forward, with the responsibility of addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities that lie ahead of us.
We are waking up every day to news headlines of climate-related emergencies such as shattered temperature records, bushfires, floods, and heat waves impacting new corners of the Earth. Climate catastrophe is no longer an abstract concept or a far off possibility - we are watching it take hold of the world we love, the world we will soon be required to create our lives within, the world we must soon lead.
We know that climate change will have a disproportionate impact on current and future generations, as the world continues to warm and climate disaster increases in frequency and severity. And yet, there is no Australian domestic legislation that mandates the protection of the health and wellbeing of young people in the face of climate change.
The responsibility to legislate this duty lies squarely with the Federal Parliament. The case of Sharma v Minister for the Environment, in which eight Australian children argued that the government owes Australian children a duty to take reasonable care to protect them from climate change harm, found that this was a matter unsuitable for judicial determination. This task is now yours.
Your actions and policies right now are shaping what our world will look like. The futures of the young people of today and tomorrow are being crafted by your decisions right now.
We call on you to acknowledge your duty of care to us. We call on you to ensure that the decisions you make today are made with our health and wellbeing at the forefront of your minds, and that this is guaranteed by law.
Young people deserve nothing less than a duty of care in the face of climate change.
Signed,
Anjali Sharma, Jess Travers-Wolf, Hannah Vardy, Daisy Jeffrey
Presented with the support of over 80 prominent persons, politicians and organisations.
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