TONTS. - Climate Action & What We Can All Do Right Now with Claire O'Rourke

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

My guest today Claire O’Rourke is an author, environmentalist and advocate, with more than two decades working in journalism, communications and campaigns across Australia and around the world. Claire helps others take action on climate change, currently as Australia Energy Transformation Program Co-Director at The Sunrise Project. Claire's first book, Together We Can, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2022.Previously Claire was National Director of Solar Citizens, a community-led renewable energy advocacy organisation. A former journalist, Claire has extensive experience advocating for social impact, including driving communications for the Every Australian Counts campaign for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and as a senior leader at Amnesty International Australia. Claire’s father worked at coal fired power stations all his career, and now she spends her days working on how we can replace them in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and ensure that workers, communities and First Nations peoples share the benefits as the world quickly moves to clean, renewable energy.https://claireorourke.com/climate-action/https://greenelectricityguide.org.au/https://www.marketforces.org.au/superfunds/https://350.org.au/https://indigenouspeoplesorg.com.au/For more from Claire Tonti you can head to www.clairetonti.com or instagram @clairetontiShow credits:Editing - RAW Collings, Claire TontiMusic - Avocado Junkie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak, and write today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respect to their elders past, present, and emerging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. Hello, welcome to Tonts, a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they shape our lives. I'm your host, Claire Tonti, and I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I speak to writers, activists, experts, thinkers, and deeply feeling humans about their stories. Now, before I tell you about my guest this week, I want to tell you another story. Actually, it's more of a confession. I have put climate change and our environment deep down on

the back burner. I don't know about you, but I have been quietly freaking out for a really long time about climate change. But especially when the pandemic hit, I couldn't cope with it. I couldn't grapple with it. There was the washing and the shopping and the babies to be caring about. And just the, frankly, keeping my head above water with homeschooling and, I don't know, admin of a house and work. And even though I deeply, deeply care about our planet, obvious reasons, and have for a really long time. I mean, I remember when Kevin Rudd came into power, how excited I was that we would finally have a leader who was going to do something on climate change and really talk about it like it was the challenge facing our generation. And then I kind of got worked on, like I think a

lot of us did. And I became kind of stuck, particularly once the pandemic hit, in kind of stuck, particularly once the pandemic hit in kind of an inertia and then it's all too much and I bury my head in the sand kind of vibe. So if that's you, you're not alone. And I hope I'm not the only one that feels like this. I definitely has felt like this in the past too, too big, too hard, too scary to look at right in the face. So when I met my guest today, Clara Rourke, and she told me about her book, it was at an event, the launch of Groundswell, which is an incredible organization that is doing really amazing work, funding powerful change-making projects in the climate space. I immediately thought, I can't read this book. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it.

I don't want to open the first page. I just, there's too much on my plate already. I'm drowning. And if I have to care about this as well and really look at it deeply, how do you get out of bed? How do you really start to think about the future for our kids? Anyway, something in me knew that I had to talk to Claire and read this book. And I am so glad I did. Her book is called Together We Can. And honestly, it's opened up a whole other part of me that I think had let go dormant. And also kind of made me feel unstuck in the space

that I was sitting in with the idea that it was all just too big and too hard and too huge for me to do anything about. And I just cannot wait for you to hear from Claire herself because no word of a lie, I didn't want to turn the first page. And then once I did, I raced through the book and was so grateful by the end. I think the biggest takeaway for me from Claire was learning that the very first step to making change and actually making meaningful change, which we all have the capacity to do, is about connection and connecting to ourselves and our emotions and then connecting to each other in a

real way and building relationships and then also connecting hyper-locally with the planet that we walk on and not in a big broad sense like looking at Antarctica documentaries or traveling down to, I don't know, the Mornington Peninsula or somewhere, but actually walking into our garden and going, who's here? Who arrives? Not people, but birds. What animals are in my garden? What plants? What insects? What creatures am I noticing? And what can I do to care for them in my backyard, in my local park, in the school that my kids go to, in the local community centre. And that for me distilled something and shifted something, which I hope you feel in this episode too. Let me tell you more about Clara Rock. She is an author, environmentalist and advocate with more than two decades working in journalism, communications and campaigns across Australia and the world. Claire helps others take action on climate change, currently as Australia Energy

Transformation Program co-director at the Sunrise Project. Claire's first book, Together We Can, as we discussed, was published by Allen and Unwin in 2022. It's now out, so you can grab a copy from wherever you get your books, and I so recommend you do. Previously, Claire was National Director of Solar Citizens, a community-led renewable energy advocacy organisation. She's also a former journalist, and Claire has extensive experience advocating for social impact, including driving communications for the Every Australian Counts campaign for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and as a senior leader at Amnesty International Australia. Interestingly, Claire's father worked at coal-fired power stations all his career

and now she spends her days working on how we can replace them in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and ensure that workers, communities, and First Nations peoples share the benefits as the world quickly moves to clean, renewable energy. Okay, here we go. Here she is, Claire O'Rourke. Oh, thanks for having me. Oh, I have just raced through your book. And I wanted to start by saying that I didn't want to read it

because for me, and I think I'm not alone in this, I was so passionate about climate change and then the pandemic hit and then I had a baby and I just couldn't, I just couldn't look at it. And it broke my heart. And I was at the bottom of the, you know, there's just some things like there was the washing and then I was like, read about climate change. Not climate change. I just couldn't access it. And then after I read it, I just felt so hopeful. I want to just start by asking you about why this book came into being. So what happened in your life that this kind of eventuated? It's so funny that you talk about your experience of trying to face turning the first page because it was like that for me. and any time difficult emotions would rise up around climate

or actually thinking about the scale and nature of what's at stake on this, I'd go, I'll think about that another time, cast it aside, put it at the bottom of the washing heap, you know. And I just got to a point after the Black Summer fires when I got really smacked in the face by the reality of it. So, and that was because it was like something that came really close to my home. So we were, we went up to a meeting at the local fire station in the middle of those fires, you know, and you can remember a lot of people listening will remember the skies were like full of this like

acrid orange smoke. And every night at dusk, we'd have these thousands of flying foxes that seemed to come from nowhere, kind of circle everywhere. So we were living in this kind of weird hellish time. And we went to this meeting at the local RFS, like Rural Fire Service station, and they basically said, get ready. And I live between the beach, about 10 minute walk from the beach and the Illawarra Escarpment rainforest. So it's usually pretty damp. It is at the moment, actually. It's like there's leeches everywhere through the garden, but it doesn't feel like it's a place that could ever burn and it's beautiful country. And so we had to go home and get ready for potentially the wind changing and fires coming through over the next week or two.

And it was actually packing up the trailer with my young daughter standing there and she just started crying. And I was just, I still get teary when I think about it, even though she's, you know, pretty hardcore teenager these days. But it was just, what is going to happen to my children? What's going to happen to our home? And this is not something that can be put off anymore. Thinking about the impact on myself, I've thought about like big picture impact of climate change and how it's very dangerous for people in other places. but it became a really big confronting issue for me. And so

I freaked out completely, didn't know what to do about it, and also pretended everything was fine to everyone around me. So, you know, I work with some pretty amazing advocates all through the climate movement. I know a lot of people have been through this process of thinking about their place in the world and the scale and nature of the crisis that's in front of us and done that work. But they all seem to be really great and cool with it and, you know, able to face it. And I didn't feel like I could show up saying that I wasn't coping.

So then the pandemic hit. Yeah. And I got this email from Friends of the Earth Melbourne were holding a good grief program, you know, over a 10 session period. And I rang up the person who was convening it. Her name's Elizabeth Wade. So I had this conversation with Liz that I thought I'll just suss her out a bit. And we ended up talking for like two or three hours. And I thought, well, what have I got to lose? You know, there's nothing to do anyway. The pandemic is keeping us all at home on the weekends. And so I just took part in this program called Good Grief. And it's run by the Good Grief Network, by a couple, Laura and Amy, who designed

a program based a little bit on the Alcoholics Anonymous framework of 10 steps. And I found it an incredible experience. It was a safe place talking in circle on Zoom with wonderful women who were all trying to process really charged emotions around climate change. And I came out the other end of that feeling like I knew what my place and my role was. My commitment to working on climate was more solid. And I started thinking about what I could contribute. And I saw not a lot of positive storytelling around climate, which is why people don't want to pick up books or actually think about it too much. And I thought there's so much positive action going on that I'm aware of.

I bet there's more. I'll go and have a look around. And I used to be a journalist, so that's one thing I know how to do is talk to people and write stuff down. So I just started a journey. Yeah, and you can see that in the book. The number of characters you speak to and their stories, every one made me laugh and then sometimes cry and just think about the power of ordinary people being hyperlocal

in the change that they can make. Can you tell us the story of Susan Mungall? Oh, Suzanne. She's so amazing. So Suzanne is a mum of four who didn't really think about climate change much at all until, I don't know, a few factors kind of contributed to her transformation. And she lives in Kingaroy, which is the peanut capital of Australia. So it's a couple of hundred k's west of Brisbane. It's where Sir Joe Bjelke-Peterson hailed from, you know, and they have like a pretty

thriving community and, you know, the Tarong power stations down the road and coal mining's a part of their community. And she didn't really think about climate change until a few little factors started creeping into her life. Her son was doing a war on waste at his local school and she started having these conversations with his primary school teacher. And she started doing a Master's in Public Health. She's a speech pathologist and so she started reading the research. But it really all landed for her when Greta Thunberg made her speech to the UN in 2019 and she said to me that it felt like Greta said

was pointing her finger at her and everything landed and she fell into a really massive hole of grief and anxiety. She can kind of confess this to a friend of hers in a cafe where she was just sitting there in tears. And so she did a lot of the things that you would do when you're a competent, educated, engaged human. She started, you know, journaling and listening to podcasts and starting a gratitude diary and doing regular exercise and all of those self-care things that are good if you're going through any kind of psychological or emotional distress. But she said that just one day she woke up and kind of wrote in her journal, I'm really sick of this. I'm going to do something about this.

And so she just started doing amazing things. She started a local Eco Mums Facebook group, and she's lobbying the South Burnett Regional Council, and she's joined Climate for Change, which is a great organisation that facilitates intentional conversations about climate change that are, you know, both face what's at stake, but also are quite generative and drive people towards taking action. So she's had, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of conversations in groups and individually through that work. And it's an amazing transformation. It also happened pretty quickly, you know, over about an 18-month period. So what it taught me was anyone has the capacity to go through that type of transformation, even people who are opposed

to climate action or don't believe in it very much, it's possible. Well, she was from cattle farming. Yeah, that's right. As well. Yeah. She hadn't even comprehended what an impact that itself has on the climate. Amazing. And I love the phrase she talks about

the crystals, how she'd never met a hippie in inverted commas before, only in the crystal shops or something. And now she's a full-blown greenie, you know, and that gave me so much hope. I thought, wow, that's the power of emotion. And I loved in your book how you talked about the way to combat what we do with the climate, which is what I did, not read anything and just parent and do everything else I need to do. We combat that through tapping into people's emotion. Can you tell us about that, why that is such good psychology? It was great lessons in this because I think we know that if we're going through processes of acknowledging our emotions and having practices around accepting them, that is useful self-care.

You know, go to a psychologist, they'll usually teach you some self-awareness tactics and then some, you know, other methods to work with your emotions. But when I spoke to psychologists for a safe climate, their advice is not only to acknowledge your emotions, but to share them with other people, preferably working with groups because that mutual support is so nurturing. But then I also looked at some other therapies around, it's called acceptance and commitment therapy. And it's also handily an acronym. So where you kind of accept the way you're feeling, you're choosing a course of action in line with your values and taking action. So there's a kind of combination between acknowledging your emotions, like being aware of them, acknowledging them, nurturing yourself, but also sharing them and

then taking action with other people. But the key thing about sharing your emotions, which is from climate psychologist Renee Lertzman, is that sharing your emotional state with people frees up the prefrontal cortex of your brain. And that's the part of your brain that controls our problem solving, our ability to be creative, brilliant humans. And so if we're pushing down or refusing to acknowledge and share our emotions when it comes to climate change, and there's plenty of them, we are hampering our ability

to solve the problem, which is a massive lesson, but it's also a very simple thing you can do. Yeah. Yeah. It's just sit and talk, right? Yeah. Which came through for me in that idea of connection as well and you're right about what happened at Cobargo as well.

Do you want to tell us for people who aren't aware of Cobargo, what happened there? Yeah, Cobargo was a lot of people did hear about Cobargo around the Black Summer fires because it was a town on the New South Wales south coast or Yuin country where most of the main street of the town got destroyed in the fires. It's a very small community of about 800 people and a lot of people lost their homes, people lost their lives both during the disaster and also since then. And that community has a lot of can-do already embedded in it. They have a thriving folk festival and a committee that raises money for the folk festival every year and lots of initiatives, you know, are happening, but they had a process straight after the fire started dying down in around

February 2020, where they had some kind of stock standard community consultation processes and they weren't going amazingly well. And so Deborah Summer, she is skilled in something called the art of hosting, which is basically a way or a practice of holding groups so they can be creative and work together in a really kind of, not productive, but a nurturing way. So you're nurturing the group as much as trying to achieve an outcome is kind of the broad way of thinking about it. So this community consultation stuff wasn't going incredibly well and so they just decided to open some space and hold some space using the practices

from the art of hosting. And so they set up a time and a place and advertised it around the local Cobargo Hall and about a hundred people turned up. And so that was just one meeting. They had other meetings as well, but the meetings developed principles on how they wanted to work together. And they shared a lot of their emotional state and that people were laughing and crying. And this was the first really generative, you know, healing coming together that the community had had post that disaster. And that's just kicked off a whole, it's like a tipping point in that community that's incredibly positive. They've got community garden projects and creative art projects, including like children's books, and they're rebuilding the town centre

with a lot of the new buildings will be cooperatively owned. They've got a massive bushfire recovery centre that will be a multi-purpose community hall being built. They've got a tool library. It's like it's just incredible. I mean, that's all just amazing, isn't it? And they've got a tool library. It's like, it's just incredible. Amazing, isn't it? And they've raised a whole lot of money. The folk club helped raise the money, but they've managed to leverage about $18 million in government funding as well. So they've created this incredible set of outcomes, as we'd call them in campaigning world.

Yeah. But they started something without necessarily having outcome in mind that was concrete. They just held time and space and care for the community as the priority and let what was those creative solutions were emerge. And it just shows the power of what we can do when we take time to hold space for emotional and connection and relationship building that we too often push aside in our, you know, crazy busy lives. Yeah.

That attentive listening. I was just flicking through the book to look for it. Attentive listening that they created, like they created a whole lot of rules for that group. But one was that, that we're just connecting and we're not trying to do anything. We're just holding that space. And that to me is so beautiful and valuable. And because otherwise it feels really overwhelming, climate change and the action that we can take. But we all know how to make connections, you know, and that is what I loved that came so strongly through. You're looking very hyper-locally at the people in your life and the communities that are just in your little network and where can you

make a difference just there. And that feels much more achievable because I always thought you had to like lobby governments and do all of these things. I wanted to go back quickly for people who have not thought about this and have popped their headphones in and they're going for a walk and suddenly they're like, oh, that's right. Climate. Oh God. Climate change. Here we are. Okay. Yep. Because everyone's got so much going on in their lives at the moment and with the economy, the way it is and everything. Can you tell us what the biggest area we need to focus on is? Because I know a lot of us look at recycling and composting. Where are we at? Like, what is it that we actually need to address?

It is really interesting because we did a set of research back in 2020, and we've just refreshed it actually, called Climate Compass. And it's a suite of attitudes that Australians have on climate change. That's the moment I realised I wasn't alone in being completely freaked out about it because it showed that there's about 5 million Australians who are really worried about climate change. They're so worried, we called the segment in our research, the alarmed. And I'm making a guess that you're pretty alarmed. I'm definitely very alarmed. That would be me. And most people in that category, there's really high levels of recycling.

And recycling is a really great thing to do. Waste management is really, really important for the climate problem. If you're doing it, do not stop recycling. Please recycle. But when it comes to the emissions that cause climate change, waste is about 2% to 4% of the emissions problem. Everything else is energy. So it's about where your electricity comes from. It's about the energy to get your car, you know, driving. It's your, you know, it's flying. It's all of the energy use, but then it's also buildings that use energy and industry that uses energy and land use. So when you think about everything else that makes our lives work, yeah, that's all causing emissions. And that's super overwhelming, but don't worry about it

because you can actually take a whole lot of actions that can help influence the conditions for all of that energy system to shift. I think we kind of think about climate changes. I've got this, like everyone's got a to-do list of everything in their lives. They've got their parenting responsibilities. They've got, you know, work. You might have, if you've got lucky enough to have a hobby or fun things to do fun i don't know what that is and then and then you've got a whole list of things you need to do on climate change that sit over there and it's like that's a whole nother thing like that is

ridiculous it's too many things to do but i think one of the best things to do is think about how you can kind of start incorporating some changes into the things you're already doing and that you love doing that will help influence the entire system. Can you tell us what you mean by that? Let's get practical. We're talking to mums here. People don't have all the time. Totally.

So I look to Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, who is the founder of the All You Can Save project. She's a marine biologist, incredible person. Go and look up her TED Talk. It's super inspiring. She talks about a Venn diagram between, you know, what you love doing. So make a list of what you love doing. Make a list of what you're really good at, whether it's like maybe it's getting your

toddler to eat their bloody peas or maybe you're really good at organising incredible dinner parties. You know, maybe you're really great at making sure that, you know, the local environment or the local park is clean or something. Maybe there's just stuff you're really good at. Maybe you're a really great project manager at work. You know, maybe you make really great podcasts. Yeah. And then look at what's required and, you know, energy use is where it all lands and there's a whole lot of big policies and things that influence that, but there's also individual changes you can make as well. So looking at those three areas, you'll possibly, if you start writing down lists in those three areas, you'll probably find

some overlapping things or things that you're interested, most interested in working on right now that you can probably stack into your life. But the other really important part, and I've kind of added to the Venn diagram that Ayanna has come up with, which is around looking at your networks. Because humans are really great at relationships, right? And we know from the behavioural research that social change spreads really quickly when you've got people creating change in a particular network and then a bunch of people in that network are also in another network. So that's how behaviour change spreads.

It's a bit different to how information spreads. Information, yeah, it's good to have a big audience and, you know, be Oprah Winfrey or be David Attenborough. That's how you'll get the message out. Yeah, it's good to have a big audience and, you know, be Oprah Winfrey or be David Attenborough. That's how you'll get the message out. Yeah. And that's been really successful. We all know what climate change is. We all know how bad it is and we all know we need to do something about it. But in terms of the what we need to do, thinking about what networks you're in and the networks you can start influencing, the things you can start doing together, because then when you've got people in one network, then you'll often find that they're

all in other networks and that's how that behaviour change can spread. So there's great apps like, you know, One Small Step is a really great sustainability app where you can do individual challenges, but they've just released a new community feature. So you can, you know, sign up a group of your friends and say, well, we want to do this thing together. And then you can actually track your carbon emissions impact as a group. Yeah. Which is super interesting and you can share the results and things like that. But yeah, I think more broadly thinking of, there's no one answer to climate change because energy is running all of our lives. So think about where you can start, where you feel like it's manageable. Because the other part of the social research

that I looked at in writing the book is that it's something that's called spillover effects. So, you know, I work in advocacy and campaigning full time. I know that like lots of people influencing politicians and decision makers and bureaucrats makes a massive systemic difference. So it actually does make a difference. It does, but not everybody's ready to go and start doing a lot of that political action straight up. So the research says people who are doing things in their own lives, where they're starting to take pro-environmental behaviours, they're doing that in their own lives, those people are more likely in time to be taking part in more of those collective, you know, advocacy related and campaigning related behaviours.

So everybody's going to be on a different kind of stage in the journey. Yeah. But it's okay to start where you are with your skills and your passion and connecting that with what's required because like taking action on climate can actually be fun. There's lots of examples in the book that show people having an awesome time making change, connecting with people and doing what's necessary. So I wouldn't, I think sometimes, I don't know, I go to the supermarket and I can't decide on what type of milk to buy because there's like 50 different types of milk.

And I just stand there for like five minutes going, I don't know which one I should be buying or what's most important. And then I've got to go and buy the soy milk and the almond milk for everybody else in my household. But, you know, it's, I think choice anxiety on climate is almost amplified. It's like, it's huge. It's so huge. It's huge.

So what are some examples specifically? Say you're someone that lives in the burbs and you're looking around thinking, okay, with climate change, the best thing I can do is try and conserve energy, really, which is electricity mostly, right? What are examples that people have done from your book? There's lots of examples of local action that have been really great in terms of like joining a local land care group or like doing activities where you're connecting with other people, probably most nourishing, but also most useful. So there's lots of land, land care is a really great example of that. Your local land care group, there's going to be one in your suburb, even if you don't live in a regional area.

Lots of anecdotal evidence, but also reports have showed that groups like land care can deliver incredible psychological benefits to the people who participate in them, even if it's only two to four hours a week, and particularly in more urban areas. So thinking about joining a land care group or bush care group or dune care group is a really great idea because you'll build your crew as well, right? You'll build people that you can start feeling more confident to share how you're feeling about climate change and environmental damage, and while you're also doing something about it. But if you're kind of not there and, you know, there's not enough hours in the day,

there are small steps like changing your energy provider, changing your bank and your super are all useful things to do, even though sometimes changing some of those things can be a bit challenging. But the number one thing is to not only switch, but then tell your old provider why you're leaving. Yeah, I love this tip. So, yeah, just tell them why you're going because you won't be the first person. Yeah. Yeah. So you also say we need to be sealing our windows and things, right?

Oh, yeah. So there's like practical. Most of our houses are really energy inefficient. And the wonderful thing about making your life a bit more energy efficient, which can mean insulating your house, it can mean sealing up drafts, it can be, you know, putting solar on your rooftop is one of the best things you can do if you're buying or you're on your home because then you can start switching out your appliances away from gas. And gas is not good for you.

It's not good for your kids. Like the emissions that come from gas inside your house, particularly for heating and cooking, no good. They're actually no good for your health. So you get all these co-benefits when you start doing that, because you'll start conserving energy, which will save you money, make your home healthier. But again, it's a process. So, you know, we had a house, our last house, we lived in for 12 years as we were raising our little kids who are now almost practically adults, which is a total headspin. Yeah, but we did a renovation on that place to make it intentionally energy efficient and, you know, solar hot water and solar power and everything. And it was, that was a really big job. And so we're in a different house now, which is not a great house for energy efficiency, but insulating for the bang for buck on in terms of like the

comfort and sound, you know, sound management, you know, the noise reduction and cost savings because your heating and cooling costs go down, brilliant, and putting solar on and maximising solar panels. Yeah. As much solar as you can put on the top of your house because soon we'll all be encouraged to be a lot more energy independent. So you don't have to buy an electric vehicle straight up. I know there's a lot of challenges about that. We're on the cusp of, oh, it almost makes sense to kind of get a car loan

and get an EV. And it's just, we just can't quite make the economic stuff at work. But like those big things you don't have to do straight away. But once you start doing the smaller, more affordable things, it starts making the kind of cost benefit analysis of whether you should do other bigger energy interventions worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it strikes me in all of this, what you said before about connection and building community and that actually there's so much joy in that.

I wanted to read you a Nola Turner Jensen quote from your book and then I want to talk about what she mentioned. So Nola Turner Jensen lamented the fear, guilt and shame she sees from so many folks with colonial roots. Fear to engage, connect and learn from the country and ancient culture that's alive in every plant, animal and person around us. Your perspective of knowing and our perspective, I think, would be rather different. But it doesn't mean that you couldn't learn, she said. The capacity to learn our ways and thinking is what we've wanted from the very beginning, but very few have been willing to take that up.

To me, it feels like a symptom of the affliction of the world we live in now. We're lonelier, which begets being too wary of human-to-human contact, and so busy being connected online that we don't get connected to place, people, culture, knowledge that's all around us. Can you tell us about Nola? Nola's one of the most incredible people I've ever met. And I got to meet her in person just a week or so ago. And we had a good few hours talking through, you know, big conversations, but also some of the themes that I've pulled into the book. So Nola's a Wiradjuri woman. She's a cultural linguist. So she is mapping the language of the second biggest language group in Australia, the Wiradjuri

people who are in most of New South Wales, big chunks of New South Wales. And she is basically looking to rebuild the pictures and the cultural ways of knowing and being by using the place names and using language, you know, because, you know, every word in Aboriginal languages I'm learning means a very specific thing. Like there are, you know, multiple words for water because it's about where water is located, what its purpose is in that place at a particular time of year, there will be different words for it. So you can actually map the landscape using the language and the people who come from particular places. I'm probably not representing that work as well as I could.

But I think what we had this really rambling conversation the first time or second time we spoke. And she started asking me about where I was born, which was on Wiradjuri country. And she asked me what side of the river I was born on. And then we ended up in this quite meandering conversation about birds and how, you know, she was like, oh, maybe you're a bird person. And so I started thinking about all the birds that come and visit our backyard because we get the king parrots and the rosellas and the black cockatoos in our area. And I ended up in this kind of going on this journey that was quite spiritual and kind of way out of my usual, very practical, more logical kind of way I present to the world. And after that conversation, I just realised she'd

actually opened a doorway for me to have a little bit of insight on what it is like to think about being deeply connected to country all the time. And she's an expert in what's called Sky World Totemic Ancestry. So totems and how you think about living beings, like non-human beings, in the world all the time. So if you have a totem and you see it, whether it's a plant or an animal, you think about it as an ancestor. You don't think about it as something that's other to your humanity. And she challenges us to think about if each one of us had just one totem and we took it on, how much healthier our environment would be and how much more connected to nature we'd be

and how we would be taking responsibility for the creatures and the plants that we should be looking after because we don't take responsibility at the moment, she says. We outsource responsibility to other people. And I think there's a lot of lessons in that. But it was beautiful because she not only gave me some good lessons and I hope to learn a lot more of them from her if she has the time. She's in demand. But she also gave me permission to connect with this country because we don't really feel, I don't feel like I really have a right to be here. I've got Irish ancestry,

I've got British ancestry, I've got way back one of way back, one of my ancestors was a, you know, sheep thief who was a convict and another one was a red coat. And you can only imagine what kind of brutality they could have well been involved in. And I just thought, I don't really have permission to engage in that way. And we, you know, I don't think I'll ever really understand what it's like to be truly connected and responsible for, you know, dozens of humans and then more non-human beings. But it made me think I can try it on and I can have a go at this because it does, when you start practising that idea of, oh, there's my close friend, which is an animal or a tree,

it takes you out of the, oh, I've got to, you know, look at the next thing on Instagram or whatever. Like that's not connection. That's content. You're just viewing content or listening to content. But if you're really thinking and observing the natural world, it's a form of education that, you know, you can't really learn in a book. You're observing how things are happening around you. It was an amazing set of lessons. It was just such a privilege to spend that time with her. Yeah, so big lessons, but they're quite simple practices. And I think there's a knowing when you hear them, for me anyway,

there's a knowing that that is it. That's why we're feeling lonely when we're hyper-connected. That's why the world isn't working. That's why everything's heating up and life feels so difficult because we're not being still. We're not observing the very local environment around us, our garden, just even the park, even the birds that visit us, we're not really deeply understanding that we're creatures and we're sort of disconnecting from all of it. So I thought I loved so much the feeling that I had at the end of your book, because I thought this is spiritual. That's how we're going to solve it. It's not, I mean,

obviously there's big things in terms of science and all those technologies that need to happen. But the first shift seems to be, and I hadn't heard the phrase that Nola spoke about before, you've come from colonial roots. I really hadn't thought that deeply before about like that, what you were saying. Yeah, we're disjointed, we're disconnected, we're in this sort of foreign landscape that our ancestors didn't come from. And yeah, quite possibly, one of mine was a prostitute who stole a watch in Britain, you know, on the first fleet. And who knows what she endured? Who knows what she inflicted? I don't know. But yeah, giving

ourselves permission to be on the land and observe and care for it, it's hugely moving. And then I hope it leads us to a different way of being. Do you see that? Do you think that there is a shift happening right now in people's consciousness? Oh, for some, definitely. Like, I think we are seeing a massive shift in the way this country is viewing, engaging with and working to combat climate change. I think about it more in kind of political terms because, I don't know, I'm a nerd. It's like just seeing there was a shift in 2019 at the federal election, but we didn't,

but climate didn't win the day because, you know, the government ended up rolling back a whole lot of policies and, you know, it didn't really, things didn't really change, but the voting patterns did shift. And then this election in 2022, massive shift, right, with people are describing it as a climate super majority in the federal parliament, makes a massive systemic difference. So it's like we're in this tipping point where everyone got so sick of not enough action happening in particular spheres of our society that, you know, they started voting with their feet. And so, and now it's open, there's a whole lot of space opened up because we've got

this kind of society we're in has a bunch of hierarchy in it. It's got a bunch of power holders in it that have more power than others. And we could debate about whether that's a good thing or not. But at the moment, there's a lot of folks in power that are starting to change things. We have climate legislation that's been passed in parliament and we never thought that was possible again after the last kind of 15 years or so. So, and now business is starting to talk more about climate. We've got the economics and technology are all coming together. And, you know, so there's all these kind of practical things

that are happening, but that doesn't happen for no reason. I think it happens because people are aware and they're worried and things are shifting. Consumer demand is shifting. Yeah. But tying it back to NOLA, I think the black summer fires and the flooding events that we've had in Australia over the last 12 months or so have really shown up what we have to lose. And Australians love their environment. We're engaged in it all the time. Maybe we're not paying enough attention to it, but we're going, we're holidaying in nature where we love, we love nature. And for a bunch of us, we're lucky enough to access it pretty regularly. So I think once, what's, what's brought into sharp focus for us, and it's certainly what

I went through and why I wrote the book, we are realising what we have to lose quite soon if we don't act. And that has helped us get on with what needs to happen. So yeah, I think we're at a really big tipping point. And I'm really excited about the potential. It sounds ridiculous to be excited about climate change, but there's so many things that can be done on climate that it's actually a massive opportunity. And I think about the opportunities. Yeah, we can get the emissions down, but how we go about, you know, making sure that we've got really just outcomes on climate for people no matter, you know, how much they earn or where they live or what kind of other kind of, you know, inequality they're dealing with. You know, we have an opportunity to make sure that climate solutions can also address a whole lot of other systemic social problems

that we have, which, and we're at a position where we can do it now because the technology, the politics and the economics are lining up. So I'm really excited about it. But I also know from the experience of the last 20 years how quickly a lot of that can turn backwards or be slowed down. So if anyone reads the book, there's many different entry points to get involved because getting involved will help us really kind of create this big wave of action that allows no turning back. And the other really massive lesson I learned through writing the book is that we

really chronically underestimate how quickly we can get things done. So there's some killer facts in the book about, you know, the International Energy Agency predicted that we'd get to five cents a kilowatt hour for average global solar prices. That's the US, US dollars figure. So 5 cents, we'd, they predicted in 2014, we'd get to that by 2050. And we got to it in 2020. So, you know, 30 years ahead of schedule. Yeah. So incredible. So we, we have this ability to kind of, I think it's because our brains are engineered to try and prevent risk, you know, keep ourselves safe. So we don this ability to kind of, I think it's because our brains are engineered to try and prevent risk, you know, keep ourselves safe. So we don't want to imagine that change can happen really fast, but it does all the time. And that's why I'm excited about what we can do.

There's a section in the book where you talk about a guy called Jackson who wrote that perhaps we have the story backwards. What if the challenge confronting us is not our biggest threat, but our biggest opportunity and overcoming challenges are when wisdom and heroism are possible. Is that what you were referring to when you were talking before about how this is actually an incredible opportunity at this time? Yeah, it seems really counterintuitive, doesn't it, to think that, you know, we could actually look at climate change as the best opportunity we've had, like, and it kind of feels a bit uncomfortable and wrong, but I had this incredible conversation with Will Steffen, who's a climate councillor and has, you know, been on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Committee and, you know, super smart guy,

Australian National University, because I saw him present on one of the Climate Council's more scary reports when I was kind of still in the throes of my climate grief process and we were getting briefed on the report and how all this bad stuff was going to happen and we're already at 1.4 degrees average warming in Australia and it was just really overwhelming. And I was just waiting for someone to ask the question about tipping points where, you know, one global system starts falling apart,

which has this cascading effect. And then we all end up, the sea level goes up in like two minutes and these types of, I was just waiting for it. And someone asked, what about tipping points? How much more likely are tipping points under the scenarios identified in your report? And I was like, oh, here we go. Oh, and I was about to like press hang up on Zoom call. And then, and Will said, oh no, tipping points, that's why your work is so important because positive social tipping points have the ability to solve this problem. I'm really optimistic. And I was just completely floored by that because this is a man of science who knows the reality, is an advocate. I would consider him an advocate for climate solutions. And I thought, wow, he's feeling

really positive about this. This is new. So just looking into it made me realise there are lots of positive tipping points happening all over the place, but you'll only see them if you're prepared to go looking for them. And there's lots of ways you can look for signs of progress that can keep you motivated to take action because we're talking about systems here and there's no silver bullet, right, on climate change. When I was looking up how silver bullets came about as a concept, it's about killing werewolves or something, but from storytelling of years ago.

But I found it really interesting that the Lone Ranger used silver bullets and I was like, oh, that's so funny. Let's leave aside the dodginess of the Lone Ranger as a concept. But the Lone Ranger was by himself on his horse, also called Silver, firing silver bullets. And I'm like, right. So it's kind of this kind of emblematic thing about people working in isolation to get the one key solution, whereas we need to work collectively on creating the conditions to influence systems to tip in the right direction because when we're all working on those small things,

they add up to bigger things and then you'll see the system tip. And the only other thing I learned about tipping points, which is super relevant, is that you don't see them until they've happened. I kind of think we're in a tipping point. We're in climate action in this country and I think we might look back in a couple of years and go, oh, well, there was this policy change that happened

that was really transformational or, you know, we finally got a whole lot of electric vehicles in and that started shifting things. But you don't see them when you're in them. You only see them when you look back. So don't worry if you're not kind of seeing all the absolute evidence that we're making all the progress that we need to, because you probably won't see a lot of that in the news, actually. You'll see all the news about the latest shock thing that's happening or the latest prediction

or the latest extinction. And all of that work is important to document. It shows up the problem and it also keeps our decision makers accountable. But you have to be, yeah, it sells a lot of newspapers and I used to be a journalist. I totally get it. But yeah, I think we need to be intentional about looking for signs of progress so that we can feel confident that we are acting in ways that help influence those systems to tip. And what is it that we actually need to do? Like in an ideal world, well, hopefully, where do we need to go? What do we need to do before things become very scary? We need to rapidly decarbonise.

And that means getting our, for Australia to play its fair share in emissions reduction, we need to get to net zero emissions by 2030 and zero by 2035, according to the Climate Council. That's a massive lift given that we're not there yet. And the current target the government's just passed in the parliament was 43% emissions reduction by 2030. So it's not enough. Everyone knows it's not enough, but I feel encouraged because we'll probably beat the target, I think, now that we've got the appetite to do it. We just saw in Victoria last week that their

emissions reduction targets, they've doubled the target. They've got 30% reduction as a result when they had 15% as the target. So really great progress is being made. But yeah, rapid decarbonisation is what is required. But that's really overwhelming because it's like everything. Yeah. It's like moving away from fossil fuels. It's making everything renewable energies, right? Yeah, pretty much. And we need to make sure that we've got no new coal, oil or gas projects. The International Energy Agency says there is no place for any new projects. And there are projects all over Australia on gas and coal. Are there over 100 in the pipeline? I still cannot wrap my head around how that is possible. Yeah, it's that, well, it's possible because of the way that our political decision makers are not being held to account enough by the people they're accountable to, which is us.

So, you know, my view, I want everybody to feel like they have agency and can claim their agency and be involved in taking climate action. That's what I'm really primarily hoping to achieve through the book. And there's a section in the back of the book called Climate Action Starts Here, where you can join a group and get involved in lots of different ways. But if you're really feeling passionate about getting systemic change happening fast, please go and visit your MP. And please go and visit your MP with somebody or a couple of people, particularly if you've got a bunch of networks. So I interviewed Linda Burney in the book, who is the MP for Coggery in New South Wales.

She's a Wiradjuri woman as well, actually. And she is now the Indigenous Affairs Minister. And she said to me, and I've had many MPs say this to me, people don't realise that you can access your local member of parliament at any time. I love that you're right. They're actually just a person. They're just people. And like some of them are really skilled, you know, technocrats and scientists and doctors and engineers and academics, and some of them are not. They're just people and their job is to be accountable to you and your concerns as a constituent in your community. That's actually their job. And that's

what we've seen, you know, with all of those new independents be elected, you know, on a climate integrity and, you know, women's agenda. People backed that agenda, and they built community campaigns around that agenda that people supported, they're going to be accountable to that community and delivering on those things. But you can influence your MP, but you really influence them if you bring people who are in your community, who have local networks, because they'll always be thinking,

how many people could this person influence? Yeah. And I loved how you said tag in Instagram or whatever your MP, if you're campaigning, people love to share a thing. That's how I felt like I was, well, I've shared the thing about the climate emergency, so that's fine. Move on. You tag your MP in it. That's something small, right? Yeah. And also the other thing to remember that politicians don't, or like they respond to pressure, but they also respond to love. They're just people, remember? So if they do something good, telling them how good that

thing was that they did, and particularly doing it on social media and tagging them on that as well is really important. So yeah, recognising good work done. You know, it's like when your kid comes back from school and they've got a good report or they've got an award, you go, you've done a really great job. And then if they haven't, you know, taken the recycling out again, you say, can you please, and you give them feedback. So it's just, politicians are just humans and they'll respond in human ways. Yeah. Here's a question, a book not related. As a woman working in this space, I know obviously gender is a spectrum, but do you think women work differently in a way? It's actually interesting when you think about forms of collaborative leadership

and I don't think that's captive necessarily to a particular gender. I don't know how much it's nature, nurture or just the way society's been structured so women are supported to have more caring roles and that kind of influences the form of leadership that seems to come more easily to women or certainly women that I've worked with and collaborated with. I've also seen really great collaborative men working in this space. But I do wonder about the kind of gendered kind of way our society is structured around being top-down, hierarchical, command and control, technocratic. Whereas, you know, I think the kind of society we're going to need if we're going to face some of the consequences of climate change and come up with solutions is inherently, you know, all of those things about recognising your emotions, being collaborative, coming up with

collaborative community-based solutions, restructuring some parts of the economy so they serve more people, creating more circular economies. And caring to displaced people too, because that's going to be a reality. Yeah, yeah. But I question the origins of why we've got those kinds of, you know, systems in our society that don't serve, ultimately don't serve people and the environment and what we'll need. And it's interesting to consider the kind of ways that intersects with, you know, traditional male, white male, patriarchal systems and more feminist, collaborative, you know, supportive systems. So yeah, I do see a correlation and probably some

causation for the mess that we're in, but I don't think that should limit women or men for how they might engage in these types of practices that are more emotional and more collaborative that helps us, you know, find solutions together. I think there's plenty of scope to restructure the way we approach our interactions with each other, our forms of leadership and the way that we engage. Yeah, for sure. Where do you get your gift for speaking to people

from all belief systems and all walks of life and that passion you have for social justice and community cohesion. Where does that come from? So there's an origin story a little bit. So my grandmother, my mum's mum, her name was Doris Brower and she was always, she had seven children, really devoutly Catholic, always involved in local civic activity, like always like on the local progress committee. She was also a really huge pro-life campaigner.

So like she was the vice president of pro-life New South Wales at one point, so really full-on anti-abortion campaigner. When I was a baby, my photo was on some of their advertising materials in the 70s and stuff like that. So she was a huge figure in our life, big matriarchal figure. I lived with her for the first year that I moved to Sydney for university because I grew up in Newcastle, just north of Sydney. And I lived with her for this first year and we'd have these enormous fights about the issues because I just didn't line up with her on a lot of her views and I, you know, wasn't terribly religious.

And when she died about, I don't know, eight or nine years later, she said to me from her deathbed, I got up on my soapbox, you got up on yours, but at least you got up. Oh, what a life. I know. So it's kind of seeing the way that she was making change in her local community and the way that she was so passionate about the issues she cared about was a huge influence on my life.

I think how I've chosen to practice that has taken many different shapes and forms on different issues. But I also think the core skills of being able to do effective campaigning, strategy, advocacy is all about good organising skills. And when we say community organising skills or organising skills, it's actually about listening to people. And there's been too much shouting on climate change. Listening to people, listening to coal communities and the concerns that they've got.

I talk about that in the book, about the role of the Hunter Jobs Alliance that chose to not, you know, the unions up there in the Hunter chose not to throw bombs into the culture wars. They decided to listen and start collaborating with the environmental groups in that area. And they've got a really thriving alliance going now. So the core skills is listening to people, listening to their story and valuing that person's experience. Everyone's experience is worthwhile and unique. So I don't call them ordinary Australians taking action on climate change. Everyone's experience is worthwhile and unique. So I don't call them

ordinary Australians taking action on climate change. It's everyday Australians, people like you and I, because I don't think any human is ordinary. I think the stories that people choose to share with you are gifts and holding them and respecting them and coming up with solutions together is the kind of work that nurtures me. But then, you know, I also don't like it when, you know, bad people and companies do terrible things and I think, you know, accountability and responsibility is important but fundamental is to the skill set of any good organiser or campaigner is to really listen and listen deeply.

What happens when you really deeply listen to someone? I think you empathise with them. I think you see the human experience is not so unique from one person to another that you can't find some kind of common ground immediately. And there's this conversation that I had in writing the book with Alastair MacLeod, who is Rupert Burdock's son-in-law. He was running News Limited in Australia when I was working for the Journalists' Union, organising journalists on the shop floor. And I was going into this conversation going, how am I going to have anything in common with this person? We have come from completely different universes. And within two minutes,

we were agreeing on a whole lot of things. He's a big regenerative farming proponent. He's on a mission for climate. He's using the skills, relationships and resources he has to start proving that agriculture in this country can be run at scale profitably using regenerative practices. And I was just amazed because that showed me that anyone has the potential to connect if they take a breath and pause and listen and look for common ground, look for connection and common purpose because it's everywhere. Can you explain the regenerative approach in that? Oh, yeah.

So regenerative agriculture, as I understand it, I am not the expert. Not Charles Massey? No, not Charles Massey, not Terry McCosker, even though I did interview Terry McCosker for this book. My understanding of regenerative agriculture is that it is trying to, for grazing, it's trying to mimic processes in nature that happened when, you know, mob of cattle were running across the savannah, you know, particularly in North America and Africa.

So it's trying to mimic those processes so you don't have cattle or sheep grazing on your land continually all year round and feeding artificial inputs. Instead, you're moving the mob of animals around more frequently onto different patches of grass, you know, pasture. See, I know nothing about farming. But, you know, you're moving them around so that the land has the potential to recover. You don't need to use as many inputs of fertilisers. You don't need to use as much pest control. You're allowing the soil to heal. And as the soil is healing, it is starting to

retain carbon and becoming the carbon sink it should be. And, you know, your animals are healthier. The humans are healthier working on the properties because they don't have to spend so much money on all of these inputs. And I wrote about the Wilmot Cattle Company that only uses pesticides to spray some of the blackberries on the corners of their properties. They've got three properties up in the New England area of New South Wales, and they've just landed a half a million dollar offset deal with Microsoft because they've been able to measure soil improvements, carbon improvements in soil over the last eight or nine years. So that's the kind of potential there is for this type of farming techniques. As I understand it, cropping is a bit

more challenging, but getting farmers to think about new practices of doing more complex plantings, more of this kind of rotational grazing practices and more mixed farming so that there's more sustainability for the business as much as there is for the people running them, as much as there is for the environments that they're working with. the people running them, as much as there is for the environments that they're working with. And if we've got more productive land that is drawing carbon out of the atmosphere, then it's doing two things at once. And I'm a gadget person. I like anything that does more than one thing at once. So rather than just doing plantings of trees to act as carbon sinks, which can often have dangers about planting monocultures.

And, you know, there can be other unintended consequences. You can, the mission of regenerative farmers is to create sustainable businesses that allow for more profitability, more sustainability. More diversity. More diversity. Yeah. More resilience. And I love that line that you can draw to the concept of regeneration for the land and regenerative farming but also for us which i think is partly what nola was talking about

too oh totally paul hawken who's the founder of project drawdown said the most complex technologies we have at our disposable are our hearts our heads and our minds. Yeah. And, yeah, thinking about, but when you think about regenerative systems, we need to think about like us as a regenerative system, as having a holistic approach to our own health as much as our own families, our own communities, you know, you can think about systems differently and what it takes to play your role in helping them be regenerative. So maybe you're buying better meat or maybe you're, you know, learning, just learning about how some of these systems work can be empowering because then you can tell someone a positive story

about it and then that might trigger something else in somebody else. You can write a book. Maybe you write a book about it. Maybe you go and talk to people on a podcast about it. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to finish by talking about the word imagine, because you write about how that's one of the most powerful words we have in our arsenal, in our language. Why is that? Well, it's actually one of the core messages in a wonderful book by Robert Hopkins, who's the founder of the Transition Towns movement. His book is called From What Is to What If. And imagine is just a word that unlocks. It unlocks potential for us.

And one of the most fun things you can ever do is just do what, you know, one of those blue sky exercises where you start, you know, what if the world was different? What would it look like? What would that nirvana be for you? And just imagining, going through imagining processes can be quite liberating and exciting and it kind of activates different parts of our emotional being, I think.

So for me, I find blue sky processes really energising and I would encourage people to just do them. Like, what would it look like? You know, what would it look like for you? Oh, if you could just blue sky it, we're at the end. What would it look like for you? It's funny, isn't it? We don't think about what the world would look like after we've made this transition

very often at all. And I did do this exercise when we were running around the country some years back, telling lots of communities about the homegrown power plan. And it really didn't land for me until I could start thinking about, well, imagine what it would be if our air was cleaner inside our homes and, you know, didn't have gas in our homes. And what if we had cleaner air because particulate pollution is causing all kinds of health problems from our coal-fired power stations? Imagine how quiet our streets will be when we don't have combustion engines in all the

buses and trucks and cars. It's just going to make, when you actually think about what life would be like when we can just have organic food whenever we need it. When we can have affordable energy, we don't have to think about conserving energy so much because we'll be using less overall energy to get the same amount of electricity that we need. It's just there's lots of co-benefits that we don't think about. But I would actually think that my nirvana these days, or if I imagine my world, it would be really good health, really strong relationships, less busy, more presence.

Yeah. And more, well, maybe this is more for me personally at the moment, but just a bit more kind of quiet confidence that everything's going to be okay. Not so much freak out that everything's probably going to go to hell you know just a bit more kind of quiet confidence and just being confident that the role that we play is making a contribution and it is it absolutely is I mean I feel changed from reading this book amazing I really honestly do I'm gonna get teary now but I think it's such a huge thing to grapple with and for everyone, but when you have kids as well and what their future could look like

and just knowing that there's so many brave people in this book and joyful people doing so much. So thank you for the gift of this. I know I'm not the only one. I saw Yael Stone read this beautiful piece that she wrote for Vogue about your book. And I was there with her in every word because it really, I can tell I'm only at the very beginning of this journey for me, but I would encourage everyone who is listening to this to pick up a copy of Together We Can because together we can, right?

We absolutely can. Yeah. Yeah. So pick up the book. Don't leave it under the washing heap and, or, you know, chat to someone about what you're excited about. You know, it's, it's, there are signs everywhere if you choose to look for them. Yeah.

Yeah. It's hope seeding all over the place. And it's in the connection with ourselves and each other and our planet. I mean, what's better than that, putting our phones down and actually being with each other in this? Thank you so much, Clara Rourke. Thank you for having me on. You are so welcome.

All right. Okay. You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonte, and this week with the indomitable, very inspiring and lovely Claire O'Rourke. For more from Claire, you can head to her website, claireorourke.com, and you can buy Together We Can at all good independent bookstores or online at Booktopia and I totally recommend you do. I wanted to finish with a little snapshot of the very last chapter in her book which I'm kind of using to figure out what the hell I'm going to do now now that I've been kind of inspired by Claire's book. It's called Everything You Need to Get Moving and I'm just going to read a little excerpt for you. You're recycling your garbage and signing a petition or two, and that's great.

Thinking it's time to level up? Here's how you can help get Australia's emissions down in this critical decade. Remember, it's okay to change things up if you're involved in something that's not the right match for you. Every action we take makes a difference. So for an updated list and more tips, articles, and inspiration, you can head to climateactionstartshere.com. And that to me feels really achievable. I might have five minutes at the end of the day after work and the kids go to bed, or I can just do a bit of Google work and click it around. So I'm starting there. Some of the recommendations Claire talked about today that I actually am going to look at are as follows, and there's more links and I'll put them in the show notes. So don't worry if you're going for a walk and you think, ah, I don't have a pen. Don't worry. They'll be in the show notes, the wonderful Collings, and I have to thank

him for editing this week's episode. As always, we'll do that for us. So thank you, Collings. So the first thing I'm going to look at is the switch out. And this is looking at where your money goes. So in your superannuation and in your service providers, that's like your electricity and your gas and how they're contributing to the planet basically into global warming. And when you leave, if you do leave, if you can leave, if you have time to do this research, as Claire mentions,

it's really important to tell them why you're leaving. And that to me is key. Tell them why you are going, not just that you are leaving, because we want them to get an impression of what really matters to consumers. So that to me is where I'm starting. Greenpeace's Green Electricity Guide is a really good place to start as well. So that's online and you can find out more about super funds at marketforces.org.au forward slash super funds. And you can also find about campaigns that are working on Australian banks to improve their environmental record and to stop them lending to fossil fuel projects at 350.org.au. All right. So that's the switch out. There's also solidarity now, which is about being a good ally to Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander peoples and projects. So you can head to indigenouspeoplesorg.com.au. And there's loads of other websites as well that Claire mentions. And all of these organisations are working to support First Nations peoples, which I hadn't realised was a big component of also working to combat climate change and global warming. So that's something that I think feels doable. Even just a little bit of research or listening to where we're at, I think is really important. So that's something that we can do. And other than those two things, from a really concrete perspective, I'm going to be looking at the drafts in my house and the insulation. So apparently fixing up and plugging

up the drafts in your house is one of the cheapest and most effective things we can do right now to reduce our emissions. So a lot of our Australian homes are super drafty. And so even if you're in a rental, there are things that you can do to help A, keep your energy costs down and B, reduce your emissions. So don't you want to save a little bit of money? So that's somewhere that I'm going to actually figure out how to do. I think I'm going to find someone to come in and do it for me because I'm very challenged in that area. But I know there's lots of things online as well that could help you. If you have someone handy in your life, that might be a really cool place to start. And as Claire said, and this has made me feel hopeful too, one of the things you can do is just share how you're feeling about climate change with someone else in your life.

And if that means like you could share this episode with them and then talk about it or share an article or literally turn to them while you're having a coffee and be like, are you worried about this? Because I'm worried about this and this is how I'm feeling about it. And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's the only place we need to start, just opening up conversation. That, I feel, is achievable. And then we can start thinking about who's arriving in our garden, not people,

but creatures and plants and animals and all of those things and just noticing. So that's where I'm at. Connecting, noticing, maybe doing some Google work and I'll let you know how I go. Okay. I was so grateful for this chat. As always, i'm so grateful to raw collings for editing our podcast and also to maizey for running our socials you can follow tons pod at tons pod on instagram you can follow me where i like to tell stories on instagram at claire tonte or on my website claire tonte.com and if you like this podcast subscribe rate and review and share with a friend that would be so wonderful. And I also do another podcast called Suggestible that comes out every Thursday where I recommend

you things to watch, read and listen to with my husband, James Clement, otherwise known as Mr. Sunday Movies. We argue a lot about the differences in our opinions over the content we bring. Sometimes it's recipes, sometimes it's things we're watching on Netflix, sometimes it's books, sometimes it's good vibes. Anyway, if you need some respite and relief from some of the things going on over there, we have some suggestions as well for that. So that comes out every Thursday and taunts it out every Friday. Have a wonderful week. Sending you so much love and thank you if you got to the end of this episode. I really, really appreciate you.

And maybe that's enough for now. Hey, go gently. Be kind to yourself. And I'm going to say it again because I know it's really corny, but I really believe it. Together we can. Okay. Talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you.