If fossil fuel dependency is a global addiction, climate activists are prophets trying to save us from our stupor

Tim Winton

Legions of young people are getting organised, skilling up, raising their voices and placing their bodies in the path of those who profit from our addiction

Sat 26 Oct 2024 15.00 EDT

Not long before the Nazis murdered him, the Lutheran pastor and resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that "the ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children".

That moral challenge is timeless. But with the climate emergency upon us, it has an unsettling new edge, and with that in mind, I've been preoccupied lately by the under-appreciated power of solidarity.

Because the chances that a child in the next century will feel gentle sunlight against her skin, or hear birdsong, or see native animals in the wild, or even live some part of the year outside of a storm shelter, will depend on the degree to which we can manifest fellow feeling for her now.

To be a moral society, we need to rediscover and restore solidarity - with our Earth, and with its creatures and peoples.

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