Bella Burgermeister terrified after ‘disappointing’ class action against Federal Environment Minister

Bella Burgermeister is a Bunbury teenager who should be anticipating a bright future and making plans. Instead, the young climate activist is so pessimistic about the future her potential children will inherit, she is not sure that bringing another person into the world is something she will ever be able to justify. And at a time when the window for action on climate change is closing, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised the threat of nuclear conflict, and after two years of a global pandemic, perhaps it is not surprising that the number of young people who feel the same way appears to be growing. Bella Burgermeister, 16, said it was a common topic of conversation among her friends. “I have that discussion with a lot of my friends and a lot of them are feeling quite wary about having kids and bringing them into whatever the future is going to look like,” she said. “I know that a lot of my friends and people my age are considering the same thing and thinking: is it really worth bringing another human being into this world as we’re going downhill?” Earlier this month, Ms Ley successfully appealed the previous landmark victory, which had concluded she had a duty of care to future generations. The decision came at a time when the effects of climate change — from bushfires to floods — are increasingly visible and has Bella gutted. Their fellow activist, and the leader of the action, 17-year-old Melburnian Anj Sharma, described her mood outside the court as “angry”. “It will not deter us in our fight for a safe future,” she said. “The Federal Court today may have accepted the minister’s legal arguments over ours, but that does not change the minister’s moral obligation to take action on climate change. “It does not change the science. It does not put out the fires or drain the flood waters. We will not stop in our fight for climate justice. The world is watching.” Given Bella’s role as a climate activist and her awareness of the risks, her caution about the future makes sense. The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last month, warned that time for action on climate change was running out. It said without urgent action the world “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. Young people are not being irrational to worry about future generations living with the effects of climate change. One reason for young people’s pessimism might be how often they are told to sit down and be quiet by adults, despite being charged with dealing with the fallout from past generations’ mistakes. After Greta Thunberg gave an impassioned speech at the UN in 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned the debate was subjecting Australian children to “needless anxiety”. Ms Burgermeister said it was frustrating not to be taken seriously because of her age. “It is extremely frustrating and something that I know a lot of us do (encounter) quite regularly and nearly daily,” she said. “It’s that frustration and that pain of not being able to actually make the difference that we want to make or to see in our political systems. A lot of people have told me that I should just sit down because I’m a young person, and I shouldn’t really have a say. “But there’s no way for me to have a say in this situation. I can’t vote, that’s how most adults have a say (about) what they want in their communities. “So we need to voice our concerns in other ways and that’s what we’re doing really, trying to take action to show people that we care about the decisions that are being made. Basically, destroying our futures is really putting us on the path that there’s no coming back from.”