The Swedish activist known for pressuring governments to address climate change and social issues gained global attention when, at just 15, ignited world wide passion that became a movement known as “Fridays for Future”.
What began with a lone young girl sitting outside the Swedish parliament became, seemingly overnight, a world wide protest movement involving thousands of young people, including here in Shepparton.
Led by the then Shepparton student, Emily Minotti-Watson, some 200 students and a smattering of older people marched through the city’s Maude Mall to make it known they were worried about climate change.
I was something of a latecomer when it come to climate change - the warming caused by carbon dioxide had been understood for centuries, but it became a real issue when climate scientist, James Hansen explained the dilemma to the U.S. Congress in 1988 - as I first grasped the reality of this crisis in about 2006.
My time as editor of this newspaper ended in 1997, but I retuned to writing a regular column about the time I heard climate scientists, from Australia and around the world, explain the realities of climate change.
So concerned was a I about climate, even then and more now, that I referred regularly to the issue in my columns and recently I heard from former fellow worker at The News, that there had been some discussion about suggesting to me that I drop the topic.
Credit to the company, that never happened.
However, about the same time a friend did suggest to me that blunt facts about climate change were of little import to people whose kids are sick, their mortgage has just gone up, their car has broken down and their dog has just eaten rat poison.
My friend, of course, was correct as raw facts do not change minds or attitudes, rather it has to be some cataclysmic reality - such as the east coast bushfires of 2019-20 or Lismore 2022 floods - that impacts thinking.
Yes, it has to be facts driven by emotion.
Oversight on the content of this newspaper, for me, is gone, and while I have sympathy for the views Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, I understand how the bluntness of facts achieves little.
However, every story, I believe is a climate story and I’m convinced that newspapers such as this, should include at least one paragraph pointing to that connection.
Covering Climate Now, an international organisation set up by journalists for journalists has found that more than 80 per cent of people from around the world are concerned about climate change.
Subsequently, it has also found journalists need to avoid tedious facts and help their readers better understand how climate change is impacting everyday things in their normal lives and what’s needed to produce a future with which they would be comfortable.
Addressing and resolving climate change is something that only we can resolve - “we” being you and me, our friends, neighbours and all three levels of government, meaning, with regard the latter trio, your vote counts.
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