Climate News 25:08
The recent court win of Parents for Climate over Energy Australia for misleading advertising was more than a legal win. It also highlights an emerging sector of the climate movement that is often overlooked.
A 2024 review of parents as climate activists found that this part of the climate movement was not always front and centre of action, but is growing in number, has considerable advocacy heft, is often comprised of strong social networks and offers a different perspective on responding to climate change. Whereas much climate action takes place within a justice framework, parental climate groups coalesce around the notion of care, both immediately and for future generations. This is not to say that one is better than the other, more that both offer different engagement points. For local government practitioners, parents can be viewed as a difficult audience to reach. They are time poor and may not be in a financial position to invest in the sorts of technologies we’d like to see them adopt. But maybe that’s not their role right now. An approach to climate action based on care may lend itself more to advocacy or local resilience actions rather than technology replacement, which tends to focus on benefits for the individual. That’s also a challenge to a one-size-fits-all approach to community-based climate action. Rather, we need to align our engagement with what’s going to work for this particular audience and also be flexible enough to recognise that parenthood changes in nature over time.
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