Adam Gottschalk: a campaigner for climate action

Where did your passion for the environment first begin?

My parents were great at instilling a love of the outdoors and animals in me from a young age. I was fortunate enough to grow up in two beautiful cities: I was born in Cape Town, and I moved to Sydney when I was eight years old.

In terms of the political nature of my love for the environment, I would trace that to the end of high school, which coincided at a time when the School Strike 4 Climate was big and there was the 2019 election, which was disappointing from a climate perspective. That's where I started to get more interested in the political side of things, and I decided to study these issues at university.

Just a few weeks ago, I was spring cleaning in my childhood house, and I came across old exercise books that I'd written in primary school. I was reading them and discovered that even at 10 or 11 years old, I had a very environmentalist outlook. I had no idea my interest stretched back that far!

How has your passion for the environment changed over time?

Over my time at university studying politics, philosophy, economics and then also environmental studies, it became increasingly clear to me that I don't think as a contemporary society, we've reckoned enough with or really comprehend the extent to which environmental protection and promotion is not an option or a luxury. It’s essential. Everything that we care about is grounded in a healthy environment and climate, so there's very much this question of necessity.

Not to sound overly dramatic, but in some sense, I feel that it is a calling for me. It's also a question of value, not monetary value, but a more inherent value, in that I want to live in a country and a society where we accord value to the environment, and the beauty of that environment, and animals and plants. I don't want to live in a world that is degraded or diminished.

You mention urgency, which was also the main theme of your Sydney Morning Herald essay that came runner-up in its inaugural competition for young writers. Can you elaborate on the importance of urgency when it comes to climate change?

I do feel that as a young person, if we talk about urgency or our worry, people perceive that as histrionic or exaggerated.

It's difficult to talk honestly about the kind of world that we seem to be hurtling towards, or that science has told us for decades that we're creating. When I look ahead to making decisions about my career or where I want to live or whether I might have children one day, there’s a spectre of environmental doom looming over that, and so it feels very urgent.

I read the news every day with a climate focus, and almost every day, there's a new report or article about how this is a critical decade for climate action and we're not doing enough. There's a real disconnect between what I see happening around me and the urgency that I feel.

Do you think this urgency is explicitly being felt by younger people, or are older generations responding in the same way?

There are many, many people who are older and are doing incredible things for the environment. They are very much aware of these issues, and are trying to create a healthy and safe future for their grandchildren. I don’t think it’s a comparison, but it just feels more urgent and prescient for younger people, because we know that we’re going to have to live longer with the consequences.

The School Strike 4 Climate and its aftermath was a wake-up call for many people. Increased awareness is essential to climate action, but there are also strong forces working against positive action. It's therefore not just about awareness, it's also about vested interests and the power dimensions to that.

Even if more people – young and old – were aware of what's going on, that wouldn't necessarily translate to action unless that awareness then led to different leaders, diminished power of the fossil fuel lobby and those bigger changes.

How do you feel a sense of optimism working in this field when, as you say, there are such strong forces preventing important progress?

It's tough because on one level, hope or optimism waxes and wanes, and I'm sure that feeling is shared by many people.

I like to think about optimism and hope as essential. It’s not a passive hope, where we can just sit back and assume things will turn out fine, because I'm not convinced that's the case. For me, a more productive form of hope is a proactive hope where you recognise the agency in a situation, and you’re determined things can and will get better if you do something about it.

I'm very much energised by the work I do, the people I work with, and all the good things that I see and read about. That makes me hopeful, even though it can sometimes feel like that is dwarfed by all the bad stuff happening.

Do you have any advice for someone who may not be so hopeful?

Don’t suppress those feelings because they're very much justified, and I feel them too. Talking about them is important and when I’ve had those conversations, I've found them meaningful because you realise that other people feel the same way. That is a good foundation for stirring action.

It’s important to embrace those feelings without letting them overwhelm you, and then focus on things that you can do. When people think about climate change and climate action, the instinct is to think in terms of individual responsibility. That's a product of a very successful effort on the part of the fossil fuel industry, as well as other factors, to try and shift the focus of climate action away from corporations and collectives and onto individuals.

One of the most important things you can do, besides talking to other people, is to use your democratic power to vote for people who say they'll do good things about climate change, and then actually engage with them and hold them to account when they don't do those things.

It’s interesting that you mention individual responsibility, because my mates and I often laugh about how many council rubbish bins we have in our homes. We’ve become forensic experts dividing up waste to protect our environment!

Exactly! I think it's amazing that you're doing that, but it really shouldn't be your responsibility to separate your rubbish. It should be the responsibility of government cleanup services and the corporations that are producing that waste in the first place.

Caring about climate change is not about sorting rubbish, eating vegetables and cycling to work – it’s about telling politicians what you want and then holding them to account when they don't deliver.

You’ve worked in environmental-focused positions across government, non-profit and education sectors, and are now an Anne Kantor Fellow at The Australia Institute. How did this position come about and what does it involve?

The Australia Institute is an independent think tank based in Canberra. It conducts very diverse work across a range of social issues, from climate and energy to democracy and accountability, and international affairs and economics.

The fellowship program started a few years ago – the purpose is to take on a few people for one year, train them up and give them exposure to different research and advocacy work. I was aware of The Australia Institute throughout my degree because they're prominent in the climate space, and it was on my radar as something that I would love to do after finishing up my studies.

I mainly work on climate and environment projects, but not exclusively. I'm currently working on their long-running annual research project, Climate of the Nation, polling a few thousand Australians on the environment to determine how our society thinks and feels about climate change and policy. Other work a fellow might do is writing parliamentary submissions, organising open letters, writing op-eds, or learning through observation.

Has the fellowship helped to narrow your focus for your career moving forward?

It’s still open-ended in terms of what I want to do next. I've always been interested in journalism. I love writing, and so even if I don't go into journalism, I'd love writing to be a part of what I do next. I'm interested in environmental law, and I see a lot of good work done in that space, so that's also a possibility. This role has definitely opened me up to a range of possibilities and given me an insight into how research can be impact-driven and achieve good things in the policy space.

What are some of the biggest environmental challenges facing Australia today?

No one wants to have a fight with the fossil fuel lobby because it's very powerful, but the influence of that industry is evident in many decisions that the government makes.

One of the clearest examples of this was at the end of last year, when the government passed this bill called the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment Bill, which superficially looked as if it was designed to make Australia compliant with an international convention on oceanic waste, but in reality, it was designed to make it easier for fossil fuel projects to be approved, including a specific gas project in the Northern Territory. This is one example among very many of the fossil fuel industry's success in getting governments to work in their interests.

There are lots of myths that we tell ourselves or that have been told to us, which we now think are true, about fossil fuels being the backbone of the Australian economy and essential for jobs – the economic data and the facts just don't stack up to that.

The fossil fuel industry has a stranglehold over Australian culture in a deep way. Undoing its influence will free up space to do all kinds of good things when it comes to the environment.

How does your Jewish identity fit with your passion for the environment?

My family is not religious, but our Jewish identity has always been very important to us and still is, from a cultural and historical standpoint.

One of the things that has always been an essential part of my upbringing is the importance of family and community. I try to bring that perspective into the work that I do, because working in the environmental space, a lot of it does come down to care and community, and where you direct your attention.

To take what I've learned about the importance of family and extend that outward to the world, that’s a result of my upbringing and those values that are very important to Jewish culture.

What does social justice mean to you?

For me, in the work that I do, social and environmental or ecological justice are very much linked, they are one and the same. It’s about showing care and an attentiveness to inequalities facing the environment, animals and non-humans. It’s about being aware of the injustices and the privilege that we have to do something about the state of our world, and the potential for us to have a good impact and redress some of that inequality.