In 2019, over 300,000 Australian students took to the streets in climate strikes. This movement “mainstream[ed] climate action as a personal issue that all of us had a stake in,” according to Dr Rachel Morgain, a University of Melbourne researcher whose interdisciplinary work explores how knowledge systems shape the living worlds. Since then, coal mines are being approved and natural disasters are increasing in frequency. Where did this movement go?

Climate consciousness peaked in 2019, driven by global climate strikes. Since the pandemic, this urgency has all but evaporated. Anjali Sharma, a strong advocate for climate action, says “people can now mobilise very quickly, and they also disengage very quickly”. She points to pro-Palestine protests, which surge in numbers after something has “caught the media’s eye”. The public attributes this phenomenon to shrinking attention spans, which can make it seem like “the climate issue has come and gone”. However, Sharma says it is not that people care less, but climate activism simply looks different in 2026.

Anjali Sharma was lead litigant in Sharma vs. Minister for the Environment in 2020, a Federal Court case where eight students argued that the environment minister had a duty of care to protect Australian children from climate change. Despite the duty of care being eventually overturned, the justices acknowledged a “catastrophic” climate risk and potential for harm.

Prior to the case, Sharma spoke at Melbourne’s 2019 climate strike. In her conversations with fellow ex-organisers, Sharma has found a sentiment of being “unable to shift the needle at all”. She said, “we had three clear demands: net zero by 2050, no public funding for fossil fuels and a just transition for fossil fuel workers. With the amount of work we did, and the success we got, we still had absolutely no engagement from politicians.” For Sharma, the implications are stark: it was “a democracy that has told young people that their voices don’t matter: one of the biggest failures of our system.”

The climate movement has moved from streets in 2019 to courts in 2020, and it continues to evolve into initiatives such as Sharma and Senator David Pocock’s Climate Duty of Care bill—although it has so far struggled to gain major-party approval. Sharma says that she “didn’t anticipate how much of a battle it was going to be to be heard,” in Parliament, but once she was, “it was very meaningful to see the change that [can be] created”. Pocock and Sharma’s open letter to the PM calling for a duty of care has over 27,000 signatures at the time of writing. Dr Morgain told Farrago that “social movements come and go, even while the underlying issues remain […] we shouldn’t see the student climate movement as having disappeared, rather it changed shape. Student leaders became adult actors.”

Challenges to the climate movement have also changed—the 2019 movement had a clear villain: then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who famously brought coal into Parliament. His government was brought down in part due to the “resource, climate and energy wars”, as were most PMs since the 1990s, Dr Morgain says. Political values have shifted since then; Dr Morgain argues we no longer see “utter inaction in the face of need […] it’s partial and desperately slow action, with more palpable and crisis-driven impacts.” In short, there is no longer a single person or group that can be blamed for climate inaction.

The independent, Climate 200-funded candidates emerged from the “climate election” in 2022 and have upended Australian electoral politics. Labor’s 94 seats in Parliament are seen by many as a mandate for strong climate action. However, Sharma is critical, stating that “with a monumental majority, the government is really not using it the way that they should be. We’re wasting this time and kicking the can down the road.”

The Albanese government has spruiked its environmental credentials since its election in 2022, passing reforms in late 2025 including a national Environmental Protection Agency and environmental standards. This was a balancing act of being perceived as taking climate action while economically focused. Environment Minister Murray Watt said, “these reforms will […] inject $7 billion into our economy”. However, since May 2022, the environment minister has approved 12 new coal mines, raising questions about the government’s commitment to environmental protection.

The Australia Institute says voters understand the relationship between cost of living and climate. Dr Morgain agrees and points out that prices are climbing due to natural disasters and once this happens, they “rarely return to their former low point”. These issues are politically intertwined too, though Sharma suggests politicians would rather ignore it. “We haven’t seen it mentioned or acknowledged because for both major parties at the moment, it’s easier to not talk about it.” She explains how climate change is directly impacting cost of living. “It’s not fair for politicians to gloss over the fact that long term policy decisions are imperative in making sure that the cost-of-living relief isn’t just a band-aid solution.” Indeed, public appetite for climate action remains strong. An August 2025 poll found that 77 per cent of people want climate policy to limit risks from extreme weather events.

People are being forced to make sustainable choices with the current economic pressure. Sharma argues rising fuel costs mean “people are being forced into consuming less”. Voluntary actions are just as widespread; Dr Morgain argues that collective action for the environment will help restore the “coolness” of climate action as “businesses and economic models will follow where communities, social movements and cultural influencers lead”.

Both Sharma and Dr Morgain are optimistic about the future of the climate movement. Dr Morgain says the way to get “‘underneath’ seemingly conflicting priorities” is to link movements around ecosystem risk, land rights, opposing militarism and more. “There is every chance that a new generation could take up this challenge,” she says, “it will mean taking courageous action to ally across social movements […] rather than seeing each of these as unrelated crises”.

Image Source: Bridie Golding