Tasmania’s youngest Deputy Mayor | Public Speaker | @TobyThorpeAus | 2021 Young Australian of the Year TAS | 2020 Premiers Young Achiever of the Year TAS
It has been a few weeks since the UN Climate Talks, COP26, concluded in 🏴 Glasgow 🏴 but I am still trying to figure out my feelings and thoughts. A two-week conference that has been annually convened for longer than I have been alive, dictating the immediate future my generation must face – it is a lot to process. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been convening the Conference of Parties (COP) for 26 years, I just turned 20 and COP 26 was my 3rd that I had attended. Yet still I come away confused on how the words fossil fuels, action, leadership, mitigation, and ambition lose their true definition, if mentioned at all by our world leaders. The failure to announce National Determined Contributions (NDC’s) that will keep global warming under 1.5 and divert the world from facing the most devastating impacts of climate change was a direct representation of the failed intersectionality of high-level diplomacy, sub-national inclusion, and the reality of climate change. Although I do feel a lot of disappointment and frustration with the outcomes of the Glasgow Climate Pact, I do find a continuing profound sense of determination, passion and drive to continue to advocate for climate action, not only because I have no other option like all my generational peers, but because I know that if we are on the right side of history, then the world of solutions is for all of us to dictate. Real impact, real solutions and real action does not come from climate diplomacy, it comes from us, you, me. If we think that the same processes that got us into this mess will get us out, then it’ll be another 26 years before we decide that it’s not, maybe at COP 52. Climate Change for me has never been a debate on whether you care about the environment or not because the fact is everyone does. I do not deny this at all. I also entirely acknowledge that sometimes it is hard to contextualise what climate change actually means when living secluded from the very present and real impacts that a lot of the world are facing right now, as a consequence of climate change. Climate Change for me also isn’t a debate on whether you believe in it or not, it’s a decision to whether you are on the wrong or right side of history. It is time to draw the line! ✏️ ⏰ #climatechange #leadership #cop26glasgow Kaytlyn Johnson
Nothing worth doing is ever easy!! That’s what I tell myself a lot. It can be so demotivating some days but you can’t let that stop you! If you don’t try to make a change, everything will stay the same!
Manager Discovery Ranger program at Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service
3yVery well said Toby. We have to be on the right side of history or there will be no future for most of the species that exist on the planet now. Already we are losing so much. It’s not the leaders who lose out because they have the capacity to protect themselves. It’s the rest, especially now for the vulnerable, those without the privilege of walking into a house to shelter from the heat or who live on islands just to name a few. We have seen with covid how quickly nations can pivot and how people can work and change behaviour to protect each other and this is exactly what we need to do now. Collaborate and work for the greater good.