What happened to the promises for action on climate change?

The young people I talk to still want to see Australia lead the world on climate change, but they are so sick of the debate that they’ve disengaged. Instead of switching off, we should be using this time to try and change the debate.

We all know that transitioning our economy will be hard, but we also know that making big changes early will be easier, and cheaper. We should be using every tool we can to send the message that today’s discourse isn’t good enough.

Send an angry email every day. Use your Twitter and Facebook pages to let people know what you think. If you can, donate your money or time to big climate action campaign. Most importantly, you should be harassing your local MP about this issue at every event you can get to.

If one young person in each electorate agreed to adopt their local MP, we might be able to remind our representatives of the promises they made for action three years ago.

We may not yield the same influence as the lobby groups.

We may not succeed in getting the major parties to raise their targets.

But if we can annoy them half as much as the words “great big new tax” have annoyed us, it will be worth it.