About this Event

"People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction" was the warning from 16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg this week. How to address and describe climate change are questions of existential and urgent concern. Annually, ANU Learning Communities has been engaging in these discussions through the Great Green Debate. This year we ask: 'Should Australia Declare a Climate Emergency?'

Tackling this question we will be joined by:

• Dr Liz Hanna - Chair, Environmental Health Working Group; World Federation of Public Health Associations
• Dr John Hewson AM - former leader of the Federal opposition, economist for the Australian Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund and advisor to two successive Federal Treasurers and the Prime Minister
• Honorary Associate Professor Imran Ahmad - Founding Director of Future Earth Australia, WWF-Australia Governor, former Director of East-Asia and Pacific at the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)
• Minister Shane Rattenbury - ACT Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability

Chairing the debate we are thrilled to have:

• Sharon Bessell - a Professor at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy. She is the ANU lead on the Individual Deprivation Measure Project, the Director of the Children's Policy Centre, Editor of Policy Forum's Poverty: In Focus section, and presenter of the Policy Forum Podcast series. She was recently named as one of the Australian Financial Review's Women of Influence 2019.
• Martyn Pearce - the Editor of Policy Forum, producer and presenter of Policy Forum Pod and the Democracy Sausage podcast, and Crawford School's Communications & Engagement Manager.

Following the debate, we will be joined by various student groups over drinks, who will share the diverse and interdisciplinary ways they are engaging with climate change.