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The Sustainable Hour no. 609 | Transcript | Podcast notes
What happens when understanding the climate crisis is no longer simply a matter of science, but becomes something intensely personal? For coral ecologist and climate advocate Marie Carvolth, that moment came with motherhood.
Marie began her career studying coral reefs – the ecosystems she had fallen in love with as an 11-year-old girl. Her work eventually took her from tropical reefs across the Indo-Pacific to New Zealand, Antarctica, the sub-Antarctic islands and the Russian Arctic.
Along the way, she watched climate change begin to alter the places she loved. For years, she assumed governments would eventually respond. Surely politicians would stop approving new fossil fuel projects. Surely they would accelerate renewable energy. Surely, once the science became clear enough, action would follow.
Well, as we know today: it didn’t.
Then Marie became a mother – and climate change stopped being an environmental issue somewhere in the future. It became a parental responsibility.
In this episode of The Sustainable Hour, Marie tells the story of how that realisation eventually led her to co-found Parents for Climate, today a national organisation with more than 26,000 supporters around Australia.
The conversation becomes a powerful exploration of climate anxiety, parenthood, political influence and one deceptively simple question: What can one person actually do?
Marie’s answer is: “much more than we tend to think.”
From coral reefs to parent power
Marie’s climate activism grew alongside the School Strike for Climate movement in 2018 and 2019. Her son was only four at the time – too young to march independently or lobby politicians himself – so Marie decided she would help speak on his behalf.
She connected with young climate strikers on the Gold Coast, where a gathering of around 50 people eventually grew into a march involving thousands.
At the same time, parents around Australia were beginning to ask another question: if young people were finding their climate voice, where were the parents?
In January 2019, a small group of mothers from regional, rural and suburban Australia came together and created what became Parents for Climate.
The response was immediate. Parents were looking not only for a way to act but also for connection – somewhere to meet others who understood their concern and could help transform that concern into something constructive.
Today the organisation works through local groups, volunteers, media engagement, meetings with MPs and national campaigns. As Marie describes it, Parents for Climate is essentially the parent arm of the climate movement.
Turning concern into practical change
Marie highlights several campaigns that demonstrate what organised citizens can achieve.
• Solar Our Learning campaigns for solar panels, batteries and clean-energy upgrades for schools and early childhood centres. Parents for Climate says its campaigning has helped unlock $71 million in state funding.
• The organisation successfully pursued a landmark greenwashing case against EnergyAustralia over its “Go Neutral” product. EnergyAustralia acknowledged that carbon offsets do not prevent or undo the harm caused by burning fossil fuels.
• Parents for Climate is also campaigning against fossil fuel companies gaining access to children through sponsorships, educational programs, sporting organisations, museums and other community institutions under its Our Kids Are Not For Sale campaign.
For Marie, these examples matter because they challenge the feeling that ordinary people are powerless. Change rarely begins with one person possessing extraordinary power. It begins when ordinary people connect.
How do we talk to our children?
The conversation turns to perhaps the most difficult question facing climate-conscious parents: How do you talk to children about a crisis that is getting worse without leaving them frightened or hopeless?
Marie argues that pretending everything is fine is not the answer. Children can see that something is wrong. Instead, adults can acknowledge the seriousness of what is happening while also demonstrating that the people who love them are doing something about it.
That distinction matters. Fear without agency can become despair. Concern combined with action can become hope. Or, as Marie puts it, active hope.
Her own son is now 12½ years old and already understands the contradictions around him. For Marie, that makes continuing to act not simply political advocacy, but part of being a parent. She compares it with discovering that your child has a serious illness for which treatments exist. You wouldn’t simply shrug and give up. You would do everything within your power to help.
Anger is not enough
Tony brings the human cost of climate change into the conversation, reflecting on the tens of thousands of excess deaths recorded during Europe’s brutal 2026 summer heatwaves.
Marie doesn’t argue against anger. Quite the opposite. She is angry. But she argues that anger needs direction. Signing a petition. Joining a local organisation. Calling an MP. Writing a letter. Showing up at a rally. Talking with neighbours. Supporting a campaign.
None of these actions individually looks revolutionary. Collectively, however, they can shift what politicians believe the public expects from them.
Marie makes the point that politicians and their offices notice what constituents contact them about. If people continually call about roads, roads become politically important. If constituents repeatedly raise climate change, politicians notice that too. The challenge, then, is not to suppress outrage but to turn it into participation.
Listening before lecturing
Towards the end of the conversation, Colin raises the growing attraction some Australians feel towards One Nation and other political alternatives to the major parties.
Marie’s response is worth hearing carefully. She argues that simply telling people they are wrong rarely changes their minds. People may have genuine reasons for feeling angry, ignored or let down by politics. Starting a conversation by dismissing those feelings simply builds another wall.
Instead, she advocates listening. Ask questions. Understand what somebody is actually worried about. Find common ground.
A parent worried about electricity bills, housing, food prices or their children’s future may appear politically very different from a climate campaigner – but underneath those differences can be shared concerns.
Marie recalls advice she received from former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres: Find common ground.
People are often more willing to reconsider an issue when the conversation comes from someone they already know and trust than when it comes from an advertisement, politician or expert appearing on television.
Listen. Relate. Connect. Then have the harder conversation.
Be actively hopeful
At the end of every Sustainable Hour we ask our guest what we should be. Marie’s answer is: Be actively hopeful.
Not the hope that somebody else will eventually sort everything out. Hope because you are contributing to the solution. You don’t need to become a climate scientist, campaign organiser or policy expert.
As Marie says: “You don’t have to be an expert on anything except for your love for the people in your life or the love for the natural world.”
Start somewhere. Take the next step. Because every fraction of a degree of warming avoided matters – and every person who decides to show up becomes part of something larger.
That is one of the most important messages in this week’s Sustainable Hour: The opposite of despair isn’t optimism. It is participation.
→ Learn more about Parents for Climate on their website: www.parentsforclimate.org
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ORIGINAL SONGS
Finding Common Ground | Lyrics
– A song about finding connection beneath political division – by listening first, rebuilding trust, and remembering the ground we all share. Inspired by our interview with Marie Carvolth.
How Many More Must Die | Lyrics
– An emotional song about loss, climate-driven disasters, and the desperate plea to wake up before more lives – especially children’s – are lost. Premiered in The Sustainable Hour no. 557
→ More songs from The Sustainable Hour on www.climatesafety.info/music
“We absolutely should be outraged and angry about the damage that climate change and fossil fuel driven climate change is doing to our loved ones, our communities, our societies, our planet. But let’s not leave it as outrage. Let’s channel that into active hope and stubborn optimism for the world that we all deserve and the world that we know is possible.”
~ Marie Carvolth, cofounder of Parents for Climate
→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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“People say: “There’s a fight on our hands — a fight for our children’s future! How can you be so irresponsible?” As a martial artist, ex-doorman and someone who’s been in a few violent confrontations I can tell you with certainty that if there is a fight, it’s not the angry, anxious person who wins. It’s the person who is very, very calm. (…) We can’t all join a five-day protest and we’re not all ready to sit in a circle and talk about our feelings but that’s not what’s being asked of us. The invitation is to start building the new society from inside each of us.”
~ Max St John, ex-business leader, international leadership consultant, trainer and facilitator
I’ve come to a different place with it all
”I’m writing this from my little desk in my children’s ‘reading room’ (where we also keep the xbox). I’m surrounded by their books, piled up on shelves, scattered on the floor. ‘Brave Bitsy and the Bear’ gawps at me as I tap at the keyboard and, if I glance out of the window, I can see a picture perfect view of spring in rural Cornwall.
And this morning I read about the collapse of the insect population, decimation of soil productivity and saw — for the fifth (or is it sixth?) time — someone share that post by academic Marc Doll about how woefully positive the narrative on climate change is that we’ve been given by the IPCC.
And in the room next door, my four-year-old (who wants to be a dog) and seven-year-old (who wants to be a marine biologist or live in Minecraft, I can’t be sure which) are fast asleep.
Personally speaking, it’s hard not to feel worried and stressed about climate change. For most of the summer last year I carried round this edgy feeling, a sense I was already living in a dystopian nightmare.
Somewhere inside me I think I’d already given up. Resigned myself to the collapse of civil society and eradication of so much of life on Earth.
Along with this, a sense that I’d been deeply irresponsible bringing my children into such a world.
The reason I’m writing is that I feel that I’ve come to a different place with it all, and I want people to know that the narratives we’re sharing and behaviours we’re encouraging in each other are potentially working against us.
What I want to tell you might be difficult to read. It might be triggering. And if it is, that’s probably a good thing.
What I want to tell you is that the anxiety we’re producing for ourselves — while it feels very much justified — could be a symptom of everything we’ve been doing ‘wrong’ and is making things worse.
And the alternative isn’t inaction but instead wiser action.
Hear me out.
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Why are we talking about power bills, not climate?
| Last week, the UN warned that we’re on track to blow past 1.5 degrees of warming. This is a catastrophic outcome that we’ve all spent years working to avoid. Decades of burning fossil fuels, governments dragging their feet and continued investment in coal and gas have pushed the climate closer and closer to the edge. We know one reason that got us here: Fossil fuel mega-corporations and their political mates have spent decades telling people we can’t afford climate action. But the facts tell us they’re wrong. The choice isn’t between taking climate action and keeping bills affordable. Climate action is part of how we make energy more affordable. That’s why the report we launched this week matters so much. The independent modelling from Nexa Advisory shows that delaying the transmission Victoria needs will cost the state at least $33 billion by 2050, pushing up a typical household bill by $472 over five years. Cancel the projects outright, as One Nation and the Coalition are proposing, and it gets worse. Both the Liberal National coalition and One Nation are telling Victorians they will prop up polluting old coal power stations, block new clean energy projects and lean on expensive gas, and this will somehow bring energy prices down. The fact is that low-cost electricity from solar and wind is the only thing working to bring electricity prices down right now. And the more of it we build, the better things get, for our climate and our bills. The media coverage we get this week matters because this argument doesn’t win itself. Coal and gas money will keep backing whoever is telling Victorians that climate action means sacrifice even though we know the opposite is true. And the more Victorians understand that cheap energy and clean energy are the same thing, the more pressure there is on whoever wins in November to keep us moving forward, not send us backwards. Media coverage alone won’t be enough to make the message stick, which is why we’ll be out in the streets over the next couple of months, talking to people about how clean energy will save them money. Not because we think that matters more than the climate future we’re fighting for, but because we know people don’t need to choose between the two.   You can help get the word out on your own street with a yard sign, helping people in your neighbourhood connect clean energy with lower bills every day between now and 28 November. Order your yard signs Sign up to put this message on your fence and help me make sure all Victorians know that the cheapest path forward is also the cleanest one. In solidarity, Jono La Nauze and the team at Environment Victoria |
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 609
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:14)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony: (00:24)
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. Through their ancient wisdom, we have access, if we’re open to it, to a great wealth of ancient wisdom. Wisdom that they’ve accumulated by nurturing both their land their community for millennia before their land was stolen. In that ancient wisdom there are so many lessons for us in how to navigate the climate crisis and that’s something that will shine extra lumens on week after week after week.
Clover Hogan – linkedin video clip: (01:20)
I think it’s so easy to feel really overwhelmed by the scale of the climate crisis, and especially now it feels like we’re having to fight so many fires. It’s not just climate, it’s the, you know, disillusion of democracy and the rise of fascism. I think a lot of young people don’t feel like those who are in power really represent the world that we want to live in and are making decisions that will ultimately affect us more than anyone else. What I would say is that the world has gone through tremendous changes and if we look at all of the positive things that have happened in past hundred, two hundred years, from, you know, the abolishment of slavery and segregation through to the civil rights movement, the rights of women to vote in this country, the rights extended to the queer community, all of those changes have come not from people in positions of power, but from people in the margins and people who were up against really tremendous odds. And I think they were so brave because they acted not when it was easy, but especially when it was hard.
Mik Aidt: (02:18)
Says Clover Hogan, a young British climate activist. And I know I can say personally a lot of Australian climate activists who are finding life somewhat hard these days. It’s hard – it’s actually really depressing to watch how easy it is to con people into thinking that this climate crisis, this problem with our pollution, our carbon emission, that’s not really a problem. Actually “it’s a hoax!” And “it’s certainly something we don’t need to worry about”. We should worry about cost of living and not give any thought to why it is that we’re struggling and prices are going up. What does that actually have to do with the bigger picture, the climate crisis which is happening and affecting our food production and energy prices and the rest?
It’s hard – the fact that there are politicians and thought leaders and these tech gurus in America and billionaires who actually see this escalating climate crisis as a good thing. Because that’s something that’s going to wipe out a couple of billion people – poor people – on the planet. People in Africa and Asia. And it’s going to help put an end to democracy. Which is exactly what they are hoping for. They deliberately want to put us into this havoc and devastation. And meanwhile, as polls are saying, up to 40 per cent of Australians are going to vote for politicians who promise they’re going to take us there.
It’s hard to accept. Which is why – that’s what I say – we need to speak up. And it’s also why we have The Sustainable Hour, where we… every week we look into the genuine and the positive alternatives that actually exist, these better options, the safer ways forward.
Much more about that once we’ve had our weekly dose of news from around the globe. Colin Mockett OAM is ready for us, as usual, with his news bulletin. And Colin, I think you have been a little bit hard on us and gloomy in the last couple of weeks. I’m hoping you will bring some good news at least today from the big wild world out there?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK (04:28)
Yes, Mik, and our roundup this week really isn’t that much better. It begins in New York with another United Nations report that stated the planet’s global warming’s long term average is already at 1.3°C degrees and accelerating. All of these reports are coming up ahead of the COP that’s coming in Türkiye [on 9–20 November 2026].
Now this latest one warned that we’re about to get a short-term taste of the Paris Agreement’s high end limit of 2°C degrees, thanks to what is shaping to be the strongest El Nino in modern history. The world is currently on a path to 1.8°C degrees of heating at the very least, it said, but it’s much more likely to hit 2.6°C degrees.
It said that to avoid the worst impacts of the greenhouse effect, we will now need to suck a lot of that carbon back out of the air, and we haven’t yet worked out how to do this. That’s in their report from the UN. The report was from the UN’s environment programme and it pointed out that one point five degrees target is now unlikely.
It was rated by scientists as a trigger for our planet’s most sensitive climate tipping points. That included coral reef die-offs, a collapsing of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets, and boreal permafrost thawing. And when all those tipping points actually tip, the report warns, they create feedback loops that affect other global systems, heating the Earth even faster and warping the environment in ways that directly hurt and kill human beings.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that even before we cross the 1.5°C degrees threshold, we’re already feeling the real time impacts of simply approaching it.
Their new paper states that during the past Northern Hemisphere summer, the US and Europe have suffered through deadly heat wave after deadly heat wave. Bushfires have consumed millions of acres from Canada to the United Kingdom to Myanmar, and it was melting ice in the Himalayas that unleashed that devastating flood that killed more than a thousand people in Nepal, with thousands more currently missing.
And just to hammer home their point, the report says scientific evidence is emerging that climate change is making El Niños more powerful, including the current supersized one that we in the southern hemisphere are expecting this summer. So the droughts, floods and bushfires and other extreme weather that El Niños tend to produce will become even more extreme as a result.
And the amazing thing is that despite these climate changes affecting us repeatedly, we still refuse to defend ourselves. In fact, our leaders are doing everything they can to avoid responsibility for this. Because alongside all the warning signs, the floods, the fires and deaths, this is undeniably a golden age for clean energy with tumbling costs making solar, wind and batteries economically superior to fossil fuel alternatives. But almost at the same moment that has happened, the world’s powers that be have collectively decided it was more important to build energy guzzling data centres around the world. That was from a report last weekend in the Age.
It said that rather than letting us reap the benefits and finally ditching the dirty fossil fuels that have driven most of the planet’s warming, renewables are now being swallowed by an energy supply that can’t be installed quickly enough to meet that data centre demand. So the old fossil fuel plants are being kept on to meet that demand. And all this is happening in a global political environment that has turned against climate action. That started with the US, where the Trump administration has attacked renewables and climate action while bragging about supporting polluting fossil fuel companies.
But it also extends to China, which has cut its subsidies for renewables this year, to Germany, which has pushed the EU to weaken its climate policies, and to Canada, which cancelled its carbon pricing mechanism and presses ahead with its fossil fuel development. And that’s not even mentioning Australia, where we’ve put 37 new fossil mines in operation just in the course of the current government. Scientists have long warned that as climate change’s impacts become more brutal, the need for climate action would finally be inarguable, and we would all be forced to take action.
And sure enough, vast majorities of people around the world are telling pollsters that they’re concerned about the climate and they want their politicians to do something about it. But then they turn around and vote for the very politicians who are abandoning climate action, even as they’re suffering extreme climate impacts. It makes no sense.
Those fossil fuel multinationals and the billions of dollars they spend advertising, influencing and lobbying, not to mention supporting politicians and their parties, will be judged, I’m sure, by future generations as the biggest drawbacks in this struggle that we’re all involved in.
As the report concluded, the capacity to limit and maybe even reverse the warming above 1.5°C degrees is still very much in our hands. The actions taken after the Paris Accord was insufficient. Yet it was still enough to bend the curve of warming away from its worst outcomes. The UN report states that it’s still worth fighting to save every tenth of a degree that we can. Heating of one point eight degrees is bad, but it’s still far better than 2°C degrees.
And finally, for those who’ve been wondering about my reports on the world’s only vegan environmentally friendly sports club, Britain’s Forest Green Rovers, well, here’s an update. The Rovers missed out on promotion by a whisker last year, losing on penalties in the playoffs sessions. So they sacked their manager and disbanded their women’s team in order to concentrate on gaining promotion this year. But those plans have gone astray. They clearly took the wrong path there. This year they’ve only won four of their nine games, and they sit in 14th place in the 24 member league. So I’ll be keeping an eye on them, or they lost one three at home to Boston United at the weekend.
I will be keeping an eye on them and as soon as they get their act together and start winning again I’ll be including an element in the global roundup each week. And that ends our roundup for this week.
Jingle: (12:58)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
. . .
Tony: (13:05)
Our guest today is Marie Carvolth. Marie started out as a scientist studying coral reefs. She then became a an activist, I guess. So concerned was she about climate, that she founded the very successful Parents for Climate. And yeah, let’s find out about what the the whole story is there. So tell us about your scientist days.
Marie Carvolth: (13:36)
Yes, my first career was as a coral ecologist, and that came to be because coral reefs are my first true love. I first got introduced to coral reefs by my parents on a family holiday when I was about 11 years old, and a young woman – a marine biologist – took me out snorkelling on the reef and showed me the colourful corals and starfish and the fish and sea cucumbers and she explained to me how they all interrelate and you know and I was just absolutely blown away by this thriving incredible ecosystem and I fell in love at first sight and I vowed that I would become a coral ecologist.
So you know, I went to university, I did that, and I had the absolute privilege and pleasure of studying and diving on some of the most incredible coral reefs on the planet, particularly throughout the Indo-Pacific and Australia. and I guess from there I got distracted over to New Zealand where I worked in temperate marine ecology and then onto a ship that took tourists on eco-tourism voyages down to Antarctica and the sub Antarctic islands and up to the Russian Arctic. So I spent two years doing that and just experiencing these incredible polar regions after a decade of incredible coral reefs.
I absolutely loved all that work, but throughout it all I could see the damage that climate change was doing to these environments and I could see it getting worse. And the whole time I sort of thought, right, well the politicians will do something about that. The decision makers will do something about that. Right, any moment now they’ll do something about that. They’ll they’ll stop approving fossil fuels. They’ll support renewables.
And it became apparent throughout my twenties that they were not doing anywhere near enough and a lot of them were stuck in absolute climate denial. And I guess that’s where I started engaging in taking climate action, simple things like signing petitions and going to rallies, things like that, showing up and speaking out.
And then then I met my husband. I jumped ship to be with him, and we quickly decided to have a child. We were in love – let’s have a baby! I was in my mid-30s. And so we did. And suddenly the climate crisis became intensely personal and it was no longer optional whether I act and support efforts to address the climate crisis and secure a safe climate future. This was now a parental responsibility, just like you know, dealing with dirty nappies and you know making dinners is a responsibility.
And so that’s how I came to transition to climate advocacy full time. I just sort of got got more involved in in the various local campaigns around me. I linked in with national campaigns, I helped organise rallies. And then it came to the time of the student climate strikes back in 2018 and 2019. My son was four years old at the time, and I thought this is fantastic that the students and the youth are standing up and raising their voices about this. And I want my son to be able to raise his voice, but he’s four. He can’t. So I will do what I can on his behalf.
So I connected with the local student strikers and I offered to volunteer for them and and informally mentor them to support their efforts. And they were incredible. They’re so driven, they understand it so clearly. They puts a lot of our current parliamentarians to shame. And I was really proud of them. For their first climate strike in late 2018, they had 50 gold coasters show up outside the then MP Karen Andrews office and within a year they’d grown the climate strike on the Gold Coast to 4,000 people, which I think might be the biggest rally of any kind on the Gold Coast. 4,000 people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, all marching through the streets of Surfers Paradise calling for really strong climate action.
I was so proud of the students and so so grateful to them for raising their their voices and helping all of us raise ours. And it was around that time when I was also connecting in with parents and grandparents online, it was mostly through Facebook groups back then, and one of them, the fantastic Suzie Brown, who I think I’ve you’ve had on your show once or twice, she reached out and she said, ‘Marie, I see you’re you know you’re active on climate. Would you like to join a chat with a bunch of us mums about starting a group for parents?’ And so I said, ‘Okay, let’s let’s see where this goes.’
And we got together January 2019. So it was actually sort of when the student strikes were still gaining steam. And we all got together over Zoom, we’re all across different parts of the country, rural, regional, suburban mums. And we said, Yeah, we like it’s great that the kids have found their voice, but what about the parents? Where are they? Where’s their voice? They’re all too busy with all the everyday chores and work. It’s hard for them to show up. We need to start a group that helps them to amplify their voices and connect in their communities and to decision makers. So we all agreed, ‘Okay, well let’s start this group and let’s just give it a go and see what happens.’
So that was 2019 and here we are almost seven years later, and the group instantly grew rapidly because parents everywhere were saying, my gosh, I’m so relieved that I’ve found you. I’m so relieved that I’ve found other parents who are worried about this and who are wanting to work on it.
So they were grateful for the connection, the support, the emotional support, and then also a way to channel their concern concerns into something constructive. so, you know, we rapidly grew into a large group and ended up becoming a national charity.
Colin: (21:28)
A national charity, Marie?
Marie: (21:31)
That’s right. That’s right, Colin.
Colin: (21:33)
How does that work? You get a protest group as a charity, so your tax free status and you get all the people all the donations you can use?
Marie: (21:38)
Well, I would I would love to paint it as you know we’re we’re bathing in money. But yes, after after it it was it was a lot of work just to to incorporate so that we could start to fundraise. we spent the first year and a half or so as entirely volunteer driven by just a few of us mums. Numbers grew as as our supporter base grew. and then it was years before we managed to achieve charity status.
Colin: (22:25)
Can I just sort of nail you down here? How many have you got in your membership and what do you normally do, apart from apply for a charity status? What is your protest physically consist of?
Marie: (22:39)
Sure, okay. We we’ve grown quite rapidly to have about twenty six thousand supporters spread right across the country and across every federal electorate. And we’ve got hundreds of volunteers who are really the the engine of the organisation. We’re a very small staff team because we, you know, we’re pretty strapped for resources, but we really make our resources go a long way. So we do have a small staff team, they’re incredible, as are our volunteers. We’ve got 26 local groups right across the country. And really our mission is to engage and amplify parents, grandparents, anyone who cares about a safe future for their kids to speak out in their communities and in the media and to decision makers to call for actions that secure a safe climate so all of our kids can thrive.
Colin: (23:45)
How do you do that? Do you write to the papers? Do you hold marches? How do you physically do it?
Marie: (23:52)
Yeah, sure. So we do a lot of connecting in communities. We do a lot of supporting our supporters and our volunteers to connect with each other and engage over issues that matter to them either locally or nationally. And then we offer support to amplify them in the media, so in newspapers, in radio, online.
We offer media support and training. We also have MP engagement teams where also we we train volunteers up to understand how they can meet with their elected representatives, their MPs, and express their concerns and possible solutions. we’ve got a number of national campaigns that we invite everyone to engage on.
I can list them off for you if you like, but some some of them…
Colin: (24:54)
I’d much rather you tell me the name of your organisation and the website if p other people want to join you. You’re basically a a speaker group for parents and grandparents for the climate.
Marie: (25:08)
That’s right, we see ourselves as the parent arm of the climate movement. We don’t seek to produce technical policy, there’s other fantastic organisations doing that. We support parents to show up and speak out. So you can go to our website, parentsforclimate.org.
Check out our campaigns there. Sign up to hear from us. Some of our key campaigns include Solar Our Learning, which is asking for the federal and state governments to fund solar panels and batteries on every school around the country. And we’ve had some fantastic progress there.
Over the years we’ve had three states, Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, commit $71 million in state funding to solar and batteries on schools. And just recently the New South Wales Labor Party passed a motion in support of it. So that’s now New South Wales Labor Party policy, but it’s not yet government policy. So we’re encouraging all New South Welsh people to to jump on our website and find out how they can support, you know, they can call or write to their decision makers about that.
We have lots of national campaigns. We’ve got one at the moment where we’re asking everyone to sign our petition. It’s called Our Kids Are Not For Sale, because a recent report by our our friends at the organisation Comms Declare has found that the six biggest fossil fuel companies are funding and otherwise managing to get programs in more than 260 programs in our kids’ schools and community groups, sporting institutions, museums, cultural organisations. These are the organisations that are damaging the climate and threatening our kids’ futures. And they shouldn’t be allowed to do this soft marketing in our kids’ spaces. So we’re asking for a Senate inquiry into that.
We encourage people to go to parentsforclimate.org and sign the petition Our kids are not for sale.
Tony: (27:35)
Yeah, you said it was soft marketing, it’s some of it is not so soft as well. Like it’s hard to understand how that’s been allowed to happen.
Marie: (27:46)
It really is, isn’t it? We wouldn’t let tobacco companies into our schools. Why are we letting fossil fuel companies into our schools and museums and other places? It’s a bit obscene. so I think that’s a very easy one for people to understand and get behind.
Tony: (28:05)
So in your time, what’s been the the most proud you’ve been of an action or an event or a campaign that Parents for Climate have run?
Marie: (28:18)
There’s actually there’s quite a few of them. It’s definitely difficult to pick a favourite. So there’s certainly our Solar Our Learning campaign where we’ve you know we’ve helped shift seventy-one million dollars in state funding to solar and batteries on schools, and now it’s New South Wales Labor Party policy. So we’re excited to to see if we can really get that rolled out across New South Wales. If it was if it was rolled out across the whole of the country, it would be the nation’s biggest renewable energy project. It would bring jobs to all of the regions and you know opportunities and cost savings to every school across the country. So it it makes so much sense. It’s such a no-brainer, which is even what MPs tell us when we meet with them.
So that’s something that I’m really proud of. Another thing I’m really proud of is we had a landmarking in our greenwashing case against Energy Australia, which is a a huge electricity company and polluter in Australia. We alleged that their product which they called Go Neutral was not in fact doing something good for the climate in the way that they claimed. It’s a product that they sell where, you know, you can buy their electricity and they do a bit of carbon offsetting, but they still burn the coal and gas to give you your power in your home.
We won a landmark settlement where they acknowledged that offsets do not undo the climate damage that is done by burning coal and gas. That was absolutely huge and that’s had massive ripple effects throughout the industry and to the point where now the government has chosen to scrap their climate active offsets program which was allowing businesses to voluntarily certify themselves as carbon neutral by using offsets and a lot of these offsets really don’t help the climate and simply allow companies to continue burning coal and gas. So the governments recognise that and they directly linked it to our Parents for Climate legal case against Energy Australia. So – really, really proud that we’ve achieved that.
Mik: (30:42)
That’s that’s excellent, Marie. But you know, I see a lot of bad news about climate on TV. Every day almost and I imagine a lot of parents would be wondering, how do we talk with our kids about the bad news? You know, we all sense that something is wrong, something is dramatically going in the wrong direction. And it’s getting more and more intense, isn’t it? Like, the temperatures every summer keep rising. This year we saw the news in in Europe that 35,000 extra people died in the European heat waves. 35,000 people just imagine if that had happened in a war or something, in a conflict. But here no one’s talking about 35,000 excess deaths, except, yeah sure, it’s in the headlines of the news just one time and then it’s gone and we forget about it.
So how do you approach as as an organisation for parents? How do you approach the problem of how a parent speak to their child or children about these doomy-gloomy topics? I saw a survey just recently that said that 56 per cent of young people today actually believe humanity is doomed. Half of young people saying or thinking that humanity is doomed.
Marie: (32:13)
Yeah. It’s really upsetting difficult stuff, isn’t it? I absolutely agree. And it’s really hard to absorb all of this and it seems like with every week it’s getting you know, there’s more bad news and the climate fuelled disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense, and that is really upsetting. And I think it’s really important that we acknowledge that and we we don’t brush that aside. It’s really tough stuff. And I guess this is how I would speak in an age appropriate way to kids and to adults. You know, age appropriately but acknowledging that, yeah, this is not right. There are things that are really not right in the world and we as parents, grandparents, concerned community members are stepping up to do what we can to address this because we want everyone to be safe and we will all do what we can.
And I think that that’s something that’s really important for kids to understand that their loved ones are showing up. It’s also important for all of us to realise that when we step up and get involved as part of the solution, then we’re able to turn that despair into active hope.
Colin: (33:53)
In that regard, Marie, is your son still an activist? I’m guessing he would be a teenager now. They have other things on their minds, don’t they?
Marie: (34:03)
He’s twelve and a half.
Colin: (34:07)
Too early then!
Marie: (34:09)
Well, yeah. Not too early for lots of opinions and he certainly has his views about who’s doing right things in the world and who’s not doing right things in the world, and he’s very clear and perceptive already on decision makers who aren’t acting for a safe climate or who are continuing to approve coal and gas projects, or who, you know, are also being racist, being misogynistic. He understands that these things are intertwined. So I guess he’s aware in that sense.
All of the twelve years that my son has lived have been the twelve hottest years ever recorded. That’s really upsetting and sobering. And it’s what drives me every day to keep on showing up even when things feel tough. Because you know, as I said earlier, I feel it’s my parental responsibility. It’s just like if a doctor told me, well, let’s say if a doctor told you that your child had a serious, serious illness, but there were solutions available to fix it. You’d probably choose to do everything you could to implement those solutions, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t just give up. And it’s exactly the same for climate change. This is a serious illness, but we have the solutions to address most of it. And we need to be doing that at speed and at scale.
And I guess that’s where I see that the most valuable thing that each of us can do is try to influence our decision makers by showing up and speaking out because just acting at home as individuals isn’t going to produce the change we need at at the scale and pace that we need.
Tony: (36:17)
Mik referred earlier to the number of people that died in Europe over the summer because of the heat there. And that like I think we’ve so many of us don’t like they’re real, each one of them is a real person with real loved ones, with kids. And during the summer, it’s going to happen here. During our summer, it’s going to happen here. Now there are a whole lot of Aussies who are active right now that in say February they’re not going to be with us because of the extreme weather events that are going to happen. And the fact that we can confidently predict that they’re going to happen. You know, it’s it’s just a crazy situation. And, you know, I just keep wondering how many people have to die, how much damage has to happen before it’s taken seriously.
Marie: (37:12)
I absolutely agree and I’m with you that you know this is way overdue. This is so overdue and decision makers have the responsibility to turn this around. As you say, every single one of those people was a real person with real hopes and dreams and with real loved ones who are suffering now incredibly. And it doesn’t have to be like that. It should not be like that. And I’m outraged, and you know, you can hear that that I’m really upset because it shouldn’t be like that, and none of the people that any of us love deserve that. And so I think if any person who’s listening to this is outraged by it, then if they’re not already connected in with a climate organisation or signing petitions or going to rallies or contacting their decision makers, I really implore them to do so.
Because we’ve had decision makers tell us that they need to see the the numbers of their constituents or the constituents in the strategic electorates that will back them if they take action. They’re scared. They – well, you know, I think, I’m sure – I’m not giving you any news here that our politicians don’t lead, they follow. And we have to lead them where they need to go. We have to be louder and more active and more powerful than the coal and gas lobbies that are currently influencing them so heavily.
And I think a lot of people despair, ‘I’m only one person, what can I do? I can’t make a difference.’ Well, of course that’s all that’s ever made change – is a bunch of people coming together. And parents, for example, are incredibly powerful together. Around half of Australia’s adult population are parents. Politicians really pay attention to that, and when politicians see that people in their electorates are showing up about issues and when they are calling up and their office worker at the end of the day or the end of the week gives them a tally of how many calls on different topics, they pay attention to those calls and they’ve told us. If they get more calls about fixing roads, that’s where they put their attention. If they get more calls about climate change, that’s where they put their attention.
So yeah, I agree, we absolutely should be outraged and angry about the damage that climate change and fossil fuel driven climate change is doing to our loved ones, our communities, our societies, our planet. But that let’s not leave it as outrage. Let’s channel that in into active hope and stubborn optimism for the world that we all deserve and the world that we know is possible.
And I guess, you know, as we as we are exposed to these ever worsening events, either in person or through the headlines or through the stories of our loved ones. As we’re exposed to these ever worsening events, I think we need to keep in mind that that is not a signal to give up. That is a signal to keep pushing harder and harder because every fraction of a degree of warming, every fraction of a degree of warming that we can avoid makes for a safer world for ourselves and for those we love. It makes for a more prosperous world, it makes for a more pleasant world.
So I really would just implore everyone to get in involved in any small or big way they can. Just start with signing a petition. Start with following a couple of climate groups on social media. Show up to a rally when you hear about it if you can go. You’ll actually discover that some of the best people are there taking action on climate. And seriously I consider that everyday people taking actions on climate, small or big, they are my heroes. They’re my everyday heroes. I can picture them walking around with their invisible superhero capes on. You know, that’s what we need. Everyone showing up because that is what will achieve the change that we need.
. . .
SONG 1 (42:11)
‘Finding Common Ground’
Verse 1:
You say I’ve simply got it wrong
I say you’re absolutely being conned
We’ve learned to raise our voices
before we learned to listen
So tell me what keeps you awake
And who are you hope to protect
I’ll tell you what I am frightened of
And we can talk about what’s next
Chorus:
Finding common ground
Not where we think the same
Underneath the anger
and without the blame
Finding common ground
A place where we can start
Not by winning the argument
But by listening with the heart
Verse 2:
We stand outside the school gate
Watching children disappear inside
Wondering what the world will look like
Twenty years beyond this time
You worry about the mortgage
I worry about the heat
Different words but same concern
Same ground beneath our feet
Chorus:
Finding common ground
Not where we think the same
Underneath the anger
and without the blame
Finding common ground
A place where we can start
Not by winning the argument
But by listening with the heart
Verse 3:
A lie does not become the truth
Just because of how we talk
But I hear you before I tell you stuff
And a bridge is built with trust
Outro:
What do you love?
What would you save?
Whose face do you see
When you think of the days ahead?
A river
A street
A child asleep
A patch of earth
A memory we keep
That is where we meet
on the earth beneath our feet
Finding common ground
It’s inbetween our fences
under every word we say
in the earth beneath our feet
Audio statement by Marie Carvolth: “Find common ground. Find that common ground and then bridge to how you feel and what you’ve experienced and what you suggest as a solution.”
. . .
Colin:
That’s lovely, but unfortunately it’s not clear and simple, isn’t it is it? Our decision makers as you call them, our politicians, are hand in glove with the people who are causing all the problems. It’s not an illness with a doctor. If it was an illness with a doctor, it’s a doctor who’s in the in the hands of the drug companies and they’re saying, ‘Don’t do this, don’t fix them with that, because we want you to keep using our drug even though it’s not good for them.’
So that’s the real problem. It’s not really a lack of people. I’m pretty sure all of the people are behind fighting against climate change. We’ve got the biggest take up of roof solar of any nation in the world. So the people and right now we’re all switching our cars from internal combustion to electric at a huge rate. But our government isn’t stopping selling our gas and fuel around the world where it doesn’t even count for our emissions. It’s other people’s are burning this stuff and it’s still going up there at huge amounts. If they counted all of the fossil fuels that we export from Australia, we would be far and away the highest emissions in in the world.
And politicians instead of saying, ‘We’re doing good things, look at us doing good things for the climate’ – in fact they’re not. They don’t give a stuff because they’re getting… Their parties are being paid by the fossil fuel companies that are causing all the damage.
So, look, that’s why I say: more power to you! Keep going on because you’re aware of that and you’re you’re keeping keeping at them. Keep at them!
Marie:
Thank you, Colin. I absolutely agree with you that it’s incredibly infuriating to say the very least that our major parties seem to be so heavily influenced by fossil fuel donations. You can look up and see how huge the donations are to their parties from fossil fuel companies.
And so, that’s another area where we really encourage people to think about who they’re voting for come election time, whether state or federal elections. And we encourage people to vote for candidates who prioritise genuine action on climate. And that has to include not only supporting renewable energies but not approving any more coal and gas projects. If your policy is to keep approving coal and gas projects, then your climate policy is to make climate change worse. You can’t have it both ways as our our current government does. They say they’re acting on climate and yet they continue to approve fossil fuel projects. Another one approved this week. You can’t do both.
And I think this is where… whilst the vast majority, I agree, Colin, whilst the vast majority of Australians support action on climate, our decision makers are not seeing that translated into votes that affect their jobs. And if their jobs are still safe, then they are going to be a whole lot less inclined to act on climate with the scale and urgency that it needs. So this is where we all need to show up as much as we can to show them that their jobs are on the line, their votes are on the line.
Colin:
Here in Victoria we have an election coming up and it’s pretty obvious from the polling that both of the major parties are on the nose, but unfortunately they’re going in the wrong direction. They’re saying that they would rather have a super climate denier in One Nation rather than going green. How on Earth can you change people’s minds in that regard, Marie? I can’t understand it.
Marie:
I agree. It’s it’s worrying and confusing. I think that it’s important to recognise why good people are being attracted to the far right and two parties like one nation. People are right to be upset with politics as usual. They’re being let down.
They’re being let down in the cost of living by climate lack of climate action in so many areas. So they’re it’s understandable that they’re angry, but unfortunately, these far right groups are selling a false solution. What they’re saying and what they do are in some ways, in some cases, quite quite different to each other, and you just need to look at… I’d encourage everyone to look at the website TheyVoteForYou.
This shows a voting record of the various parties. And you can see the voting record of One Nation, for example. It has voted against renewables, it has voted for nuclear energy, and you can you can draw your own opinion on a whole lot of other ways that they voted as well. So what’s really important here, the research shows that the best way to connect with people in your community over how they might vote is to have conversations with them, with people who know and trust you. You’re already the trusted messenger.
And start by listening. Don’t start by telling them they’re wrong. Don’t start by telling them the facts. That only puts up walls. We need to build bridges. And the research shows that we build bridges by listening. By asking questions like, and what makes you think that, or what makes you feel that way? Christiana Figueres, who was the architect of the the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, I had the honour of meeting her back in our earliest days, early days of Parents for Climate. And I said to her, What can we do? How can we be effective when there’s all these people denying climate change. And she said: ‘Find common ground.’ Find common ground.
And you know, that remains true now and it remains true on almost any area that people disagree on. You need to find where you can connect with people and you almost always can. Maybe they’re a parent. Maybe they go to the same sporting club as you. Maybe they’re worried about the cost of living just like you are. Find that common ground and then bridge to how you feel and what you’ve experienced and what you suggest as a solution. And because you’re the trusted messenger, they’re more likely to listen to you than to an ad on the TV or to some sort of expert on the radio. Listen, relate, and then steer them in the direction that you think is going to achieve the outcomes that you’re both looking for.
Jingle
Mik:
That’ll be all we could fit into yet another constructive and action-oriented Sustainable Hour. Marie, I think you’ve you’ve sort of touched on it already, but you know we we always hear at the end of the show talk about what should we be? What should we become? So what would you tell our listeners that or recommend our listeners what we should be?
Marie:
We should embody active hope. not hope without doing anything, hope because we are doing something to contribute to the solution. Small or big, just take the next step. You don’t have to be an expert on anything except for your love for the people in your life or the love for the the natural world. Be actively hopeful.
Colin:
Lovely. Thank you, Marie!
. . .
SONG 2:
‘How Many More Must Die?’
Verse 1:
It was a summer day, the sky was clear
Laughter carried through the air
But the clouds rolled in, and the river swelled
And no one knew it was a farewell
I held her hand as the current raged
But the water tore the world away
Now I stand with her name in my chest
And the question burns with each breath
Chorus:
How many more must die?
Before we open up our eyes
Before we hear our children cry
Before we stop living on a lie
How many more must die?
Verse 2:
Every headline reads another name
Every storm feels just the same
Young hearts lost in the rising flood
Dreams washed away in the mud
You can taste the fear in the air tonight
You can see the wrong in what feels right
You scream the words, but no one replies
The silence echoes in the skies
Chorus:
How many more must die?
Before we open up our eyes
Before we hear our children cry
Before we stop living on a lie
How many more must die?
Bridge — instrumental
Chorus — repeat, bigger and layered:
How many more must die?
Before we open up our eyes
Before we hear the children cry
Before we stop living on a lie
How many more must die?
Outro:
The rain returns, the rivers rise
I never got to say goodbye
Look in my eyes, don’t turn aside
How many more must die?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CALENDARS
Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
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