I felt the intensity of this event as the air was filled with smoke making it difficult to breathe. My family and I had to wear masks purely because of the effect of the bushfires.
Gisborne South, VIC
Hi my name is Shaun, and I am a university student currently living in regional Victoria. I am 21 years old and for most of my life I lived in Melbourne, Victoria. Recently my family and I moved out to Gisborne South which is considered regional Victoria however is still somewhat close to Melbourne city. Personally, I have not felt any serious impact as a result of natural events causing harm, however I have definitely seen the repercussions of not acting to reduce climate change. It is something that I am deeply concerned by especially considering Australia’s current stance on it and their lack of action to prevent it from causing irreversible damage.
In 2020 – like many other Australians – I felt the first-hand severity of climate change. The bushfires happening around Australia were causing harm across the country, with Melbourne CBD covered in smoke. I felt the intensity of this event as the air was filled with smoke making it difficult to breathe. My family and I had to wear masks purely because of the effect of the bushfires. Because of this, I limited how often I left the house because I wanted to prevent breathing in such polluted air as much as I could. My dad has asthma and it was upsetting seeing him breathe with so much difficulty. I vividly remember scrolling through my phone and seeing so much media of people’s homes being burnt down and our natural habitat being destroyed. Most upsetting for
me was seeing all the innocent animals harmed by the bushfires. That period was definitely hard and I remember feeling so down every day that the fires continued.
The bushfires were the first time I really felt the disastrous consequences of climate change and it really made me think hard about what is coming next. My view is that there has not been much action taken to combat climate change and as a result catastrophic events like this will continue to occur. At times I feel overwhelmed about the future I will be living in and the future of generations to come. On top of all the problems university students like myself face every day, anxiousness about climate change and the certainty of our futures should not be one. Although I do think everyone has a part to play, I hold large corporations and the government most responsible and sincerely hope that they take necessary action to help secure our future.
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We have spent a summer trapped in our home with heatwave after heatwave hitting our city in the longest and hottest summer of my lifetime (and indeed the city’s lifetime). I have had to stop my three year old son playing outside day after day and we have all had to stay in the same room as it is the only air conditioned one. Summer used to be a time of fun, of outdoor barbecues for dinner, of freedom. Now it has a feeling of containment and dread. My job requires me to confront climate issues and victims of bushfire and other disasters and their experiences and the flood of climate information leave me feeling deep grief, distress and helplessness. My little son loves animals passionately and i dread the day I will have to tell him about climate change and about how so many of the creatures that inspire him are threatened by mankind’s very existence. I fear he will grow into an adult in a time of increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, in a country weakened economically and fragmented socially by these disasters. That by the time he grows up the Great Barrier Reef we describe to him will be dead and gone. Having him despite my fear for his future was an act of hope and defiance, but that hope is hard to maintain when our governments will seemingly not act to end the use of fossil fuels and replace them with renewables with the speed that will give my beautiful child the bright future he deserves. I hope and pray that this case changes the situation. And I thank these elders for bringing this action.
Read my storyPeople all across Australia are being harmed by climate change. These are some of their stories.
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