Many politicians this week have said we should not talk about climate change during the catastrophic fires across NSW and Queensland.
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UNE scientist Dr Mary McMillan disagrees. "The reality is we will face more of this, if we don't change the way we do things."
The present crisis, she believes, is a great time to talk about climate change - in a hopeful way.
The biologist will host a presentation on Thursday at NERAM at 6pm, inspired by two world authorities on climate advocacy.
"It will be a discussion about how we can change the outlook for our climate and environment through action," Dr McMillan said. "People may be inspired to take more action themselves - and to get our politicians to act as well."
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Her lecture is part of former US vice president Al Gore's 24 Hours of Reality, a worldwide broadcast about the climate crisis and its solutions with a presenter in every time zone.
Dr McMillan became part of Mr Gore's Climate Reality Project in June. The campaign trains people around the world to educate their communities about climate change, and counter denialism.
"Like most people," Dr McMillan said, "I had a growing awareness about the situation we were getting into with the environment; I wanted to learn more about what I could do."
Her trip to Antarctica at the start of the year with the Homeward Bound training program opened her eyes to the effect people have on the climate. Expedition leaders had seen ice recede hundreds of metres; weather patterns become more unstable; and penguin colonies disrupted.
The program was led by one of the designers of the 2015 Paris Agreement: Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Ms Figueres told the participants about her struggles to get the agreement signed.
Ms Figueres inspired the 80 women scientists on the program to ask what they could do for the planet, Dr McMillan said; a dozen Australians signed up for the Climate Reality Project workshop.
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The centrepiece of Dr McMillan's presentation is a collaborative art project. More than 50 people at last week's Black Gully Festival decorated squares of fabric with their vision for the future of the environment. Dr McMillan put those squares into a wall hanging, which will be revealed on Thursday night.
"There's a lot of hope and happiness in there, which is maybe a nice diversion from the less happy things happening," she said. "They see a greener future with a lot of trees."
For every attendee on Thursday night, Dr McMillan added, NGO One Tree Planted will live up to their name, helping to reforest Australia or the Amazon.
Despite all the doom and gloom, Dr McMillan believes, we have a lot of solutions already: alternative power, packaging, and products that don't involve fossil fuels, regenerative agriculture...
"What we need is our leaders putting policies in place that support those, instead of approving new mines," Dr McMillan said. "Let's put money into alternative energy. We have the solutions; we just need to back them."
More ordinary people - not just so-called crazy hippies - realise things need to change, Dr McMillan said, and are talking about the need for action. School students, for instance, will hold another strike on November 29.
The public, Dr McMillan said, need to make their vote count when they vote; write letters to the politicians; and push for action.
"If enough of us get together, we can make a change," she said - as when Armidale Council listened to its constituents and declared a climate emergency.
Dr McMillan encouraged everyday people to educate themselves about climate change: read The Guardian and The Conversation; talk to scientists; and come to presentations like hers.