I’m scrolling on TikTok after work when I get a text that would have sent 12-year-old Anjali into a spiral, a frenzy of extreme climate anxiety. The text is from a friend letting me know that it’s official – 2024 is the hottest year on record. Not just that, it’s the first year to exceed 1.5C of warming over preindustrial levels.

The news comes as my entire feed is flooded with images of an inferno of flames ripping through neighbourhoods in LA, in winter.

I feel not anxiety but disbelief. Disbelief that the lives of young people and future generations are being shaped by decisions being made today, and yet we must still beg and plead to have our health and wellbeing protected by legislation in the face of destructive climate pollution.

As we come to the end of the 10 hottest years our world has documented, there is still no legislation in Australia that acknowledges the disproportionate impact that climate change will have on children and future generations.

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As health crises rise, caused by climate pollution, I can’t believe that climate impacts are causing destruction right now and yet our government continues to approve coal and gas projects that threaten to send our future up in smoke.

The Earth is burning. As young people everywhere rage against short-termism and demand their politicians consider their long-term needs, only to be ignored, I feel angry.

More than 50 high-profile individuals and organisations have now signed an open letter, written by myself and three of my friends, to demand that the government legislate a duty of care bill.

This proposal, now a private bill tabled by Senator David Pocock, seeks to establish a duty owed by governments to young people to protect our health and wellbeing in the face of climate change. It would mean that, for example, if a project posed a tangible risk to the health and wellbeing of young people, it would not be allowed to go ahead It seeks to legislate for the future rather than the three-year electoral cycle.

Despite the growing outcry and the support of influential voices, the bill has been met with indifference. The disconnect between youth voices and policy developments reveals the deep fracture between the federal government’s promises and its actions – or lack thereof. And it is within this fracture that my disbelief is rooted, as we continue to fight not only for a livable future but for the right to be heard in the conversation about it.