I
t’s easy to be captivated by Anna
Rose’s beautiful smile and infectious
laugh but it’s her climate-change
activism that’s brought us together
today to chat. Any time spent with this
charming woman leaves you in no doubt
that she is a force to be reckoned with.
Anna has just relocated to Sydney
from Canberra with her husband Simon
Sheikh — former head of GetUp! turned
co-founder of Future Super — and their
three-year-old son Robbie.
The climate-change crusader has
achieved more than you’d expect for someone
who’s made only 36 laps around the Sun. She
is the strategic projects director with Farmers
for Climate Action, an advisory board
member of the University of Queensland’s
Global Change Institute and, when she was
at university, she co-founded the Australian
Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC).
She penned the book Madlands: A Journey
to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic,
co-starred in the ABC documentary I Can
Change Your Mind on Climate Change and was
the national manager of Earth Hour with
WWF-Australia from 2013 to 2015.
But it doesn’t stop there. Anna was
awarded the Australian Geographic
Conservationist of the Year award in 2014
and is a former board director of Solar
Citizens, Green Music Australia and the
Bob Brown Foundation. Did I mention
she’s an all-round legend?Building a movement
Anna was born in Newcastle with farming
roots in the Hunter Valley and northwest
NSW. This upbringing no doubt influenced
her strong connection to nature. “That’s
really why I became passionate about the
environment,” she explains, “because I got
to spend so much time on the land as a kid.”
Anna’s journey with activism began as
a teenager, setting up an environmental
group at school when she was 14. “I had
fantastic mentors,” she reflects. Fast-
forward to university, where she formed
the AYCC. “We had a lot of energy but
we weren’t your typical leaders of an
environment organisation.
“Amanda [McKenzie, who now runs the
Climate Council] and I who were running it
together used to go to the CEO meetings forthe environment movement and sometimes
we were the only women and also the only
people under 30.”
When asked to recall how she ensured
her voice was heard, Anna replies, “The
AYCC quickly grew to have such a huge,
powerful and active base that when we
were in those rooms it wasn’t just about our
personal voices being heard, it was about
the movement we were building.”
“I guess when you’re young you’re pretty
confident anyway,” she says with a laugh.
“We didn’t ever stop to look at the reasons
why we shouldn’t be doing it; we just had
to focus on why we had to do it. We had so
much confidence we were like, ‘Yeah! We’re
going to build the biggest climate-change
organisation in Australia.’ Which it is now.”Changing minds
Anna wrote Madlands, her book on
changing the mind of a climate-change
sceptic, when she was entering an exciting
new chapter of her life: marriage.
“I wrote the book on our honeymoon,”
she confirms with a laugh. “Madlands feels
like a million years ago now,” she continues,
referring to her journey with former finance
minister Nick Minchin who had been “one of
the big blockers in terms of why we hadn’t
taken action on climate change in Australia”.
“I didn’t feel like there was an Australian
book written in a way that could reach out to
people who hadn’t accepted the science yet,
so I wrote that book for people who wanted
to learn a bit more,” Anna explains.
In the book, Anna ponders how much
things will change in 20 years’ time. I ask
her to share how things have changed since
she finished writing it.
“We’ve seen a lot more climate-change
impacts — in particular, the devastating
floods in Townsville, the fires in Tassie. I’m
hearing a lot of first-hand stories about the
drought [from farmers] and I think the impact
is being felt even more quickly than scientists
predicted, which is terrifying,” she says.
“And the response from government has
been so underwhelming. We only have
a limited period to do anything about it.”The political and the personal
When pressed as to what she does on any
given day to live sustainably, Anna says thatit starts within the four walls of her humble
abode, cooking her son free-range eggs for
breakfast — “with some broccoli, organic”,
she adds. “I try to support organic and
regenerative farmers wherever I can,” she
continues and says she and her husband
then walk Robbie to daycare before her
husband catches the train to work.
“So that’s my morning; it’s nothing
particularly spectacular. Probably the most
effective thing I did for climate change this
morning was the work I did before Robbie
woke up with Farmers for Climate Action,”
she laughs. “It’s a mix of the political and
the personal.”
Anna doesn’t shy away from
acknowledging the difficulties of modern-
day parenting. “It’s a challenge raising kids
in cities where everyone’s under so much
time pressure. And I’m certainly not the
perfect parent; he still has screen time when
we need to cook dinner but we try and make
sure he spends as much time in nature
as possible, especially the bush near our
house. I get him involved in things like our
composting, gardening and recycling.”
Anna’s adoration for the great outdoors
is already trickling down to her offspring.
“Robbie loves getting very dirty and muddy,”
she says. “It’s a big priority for us, making
sure Robbie grows up really loving nature.”The stretch zone
On the topic of courage Anna says,
“Courage is actually something I’m trying
to write a book about at the moment. [The
book is] about having courage in the face
of climate change and why we need to take
risks. A lot of people used to be dismissive
of climate science and now people do
accept the science ... But we’re starting
to see alarming trends where people are
going straight into despair and this feeling
of overwhelm, that it’s too late.
“Courage comes from this French word,
le cœur — ‘heart’ — which is just what we
have to bring to the world at this time if
we’re going to solve this challenge. And
courage is not about not being scared or not
being fearful, but it’s choosing to act anyway.
“We’re not going to know the impact of
our actions for decades or even after we’ve
passed away. So you just have to give it your
best efforts; be as brave as you can. AndAnna Rose: Brave heart
Climate-change campaigner Anna Rose has been making waves in the sustainability sector since
she was a young girl. The author, campaigner and all-round legend is on a mission to inspire every
Australian to take one courageous step at a time to save our precious planet.Wo rds ALLY MCMANUSthinkers & doers
ANNA ROSE56 | wellbeing.com.au