It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the Children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the World as we know it gone as well. The physical environment will be harsher, far more extreme and devastatingly brutal when angry. As for the human experience – quality of life, opportunities to partake in nature’s treasures, the capacity to grow and prosper – all will be greatly diminished. Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain. None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next. [Sharma v Minister for the Environment]

Justice Mordecai Bromberg

2 Comments

  • R. N. Mason says:

    It is of course not only the lives and prospects of the Children of Australia that are at hazard, nor even those of all the Children of humankind. No, for we are witness to irrevocable change, and diminution of prospects, for nearly all life, for as far into the future as anyone can foresee. The world is changing, and that which departs, departs forever. We must bid what we knew goodbye, in the best heart we can muster, and gird ourselves for stern challenges that lie directly ahead.

    We may well echo King Theoden as he asks, “How did it come to this?”

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