A child born today is already in debt.

By Anjali Sharma

Not only have young people been left to face the existential threat of climate disaster, but according to new research, they’ll be expected to shoulder the bill too. Years of government inaction has led to this fate, but it’s not too late for our leaders to make a change, writes Duty of Care campaigner Anjali Sharma.

---

Photo by Ella Ivanescu on Unsplash

Pieces like this one are free to read. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber so Cheek can continue paying writers for their insight and expertise.

---

From the moment that a child enters the world, they’re told to work hard, to save, to invest in its future. Young people are sold a narrative of a fair and just society, where we get what we work for. Where our efforts will be rewarded with security.

But a child born today, no matter their family’s socio-economic standing, is born into debt. A recent Deloitte report shows that future Australians will cop the cost of climate inaction - and hard - with the average 16–year-old facing a $185,000 bill over their lifetime. That’s enough for a house deposit, several times over.

Our government’s chosen excuse to drown out accusations of climate delay is the cost of acting. An appeal to the short term, the taxpayer’s hip pocket. And in the midst of global instability and a backslide towards right-wing populism, we can see how this has happened.

But we have always known the truth: the cost of inaction is greater. We have posed the question: if the role of supposedly progressive government, especially one elected on a historic majority, is not to look to the long term, to calmly steer the ship, to guide us towards a future better than our present realities, then what is it?

It was in 2019 that a report first found that today’s youth were on track to become the first generation in living memory to be worse off than our parents. That’s seven years ago now that the alarm was first sounded: our policies were not sufficiently addressing the problems facing our world, our leaders were not thinking long term, and young people were at a real risk of a life with lower living standards than those that have come before. Seven years ago, our leaders were given a clear ultimatum: act now. Instead, every single one of those seven years has been among the hottest years on record globally.

As a young person, I can’t help but get sucked into the sentimentality of it all. After all, in 2019, I was in year 9. Morning radio would alternate between news about Brexit negotiations and Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road.’ In 2019, our lives were unmarred by the tragedies that would go on to be some of the most defining in our country’s history, all attributable to the increasing frequency and severity of climate disasters. Life felt, if not simple, then at least stable.

But this illusion didn’t last. In fact, it was that very summer, fires burnt over 24 million hectares of our beautiful land, an area roughly the size of Victoria, taking the lives of 33 people and destroying homes and properties across the country. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 we all played witness to “once-in-a-century” floods that displaced thousands of people and uprooted families from their communities.

Seven years later, young people are being told not only that more climate disasters loom large in our future, but that they come with a hefty price tag too. A double whammy; an added insult. Our governments have failed to act, so not only do we suffer, but we pay to do so.

This $185,000 debt is not one we have accrued. It is not a result of what we have done, but what our leaders haven’t. The cost of choosing comfort over courage. With the privilege of hindsight, I find myself longing for the VSCO-filtered stupor of 2019. Not just for another chance to get the Renegade ‘TikTok’ dance right, but because it was nice to be a child who thought the adults in charge were doing their jobs.

But that’s probably just my 2019 naivety. Because in 2026, despite a warming climate threatening so much we hold dear, our government continues to approve extensions to coal and gas projects, including Australia’s largest gas development all the way to 2070.

While some of these costs are already locked in, the report shows that with decisive action we could cut these costs nearly in half. We’ve had the solutions for years. For instance, legislating a Duty of Care in 2019 would have ensured every decision made on climate would have prioritised the health and wellbeing of young people and future generations. Seven years of better decisions could have left a smaller bill, one that might not feel so impossible to bear. Instead, we’re left paying for time we can’t get back.

Every year we delay, the bill grows. Every decision that prioritises the short term locks in greater expenses for the long term.

Legislating a Duty of Care now is not just about preventing harm, but about ensuring that an entire generation’s financial future is not condemned before it even begins. Because a child born today is born into debt, and not through any fault of their own.

We cannot undo the past seven years. But we can decide what the next chapter for this child looks like, and whether we keep adding to the bill, or finally start paying it down.

---

About the author

Anjali Sharma (she/her)

Anjali is 21 years old. At 16, she became the lead litigant of Sharma vs Environment Minister, a class action legal case which argued that the Environment Minister owes all young people a duty of care to protect them from the impacts of climate change. She now campaigns for this duty to be legislated through Parliament, campaigning for parliamentary accountability for the disproportionate impacts of climate change in relation to young people and future generations.

About the Duty of Care campaign

The Duty of Care campaign revolves around one core belief: if we, as a society, know that it is young people and future generations who will be worst affected by climate change, then this must be reflected in legislation.

We’re campaigning for a Duty of Care - a legislated requirement for government decision-makers to hold the health and wellbeing of young people and future generations as a paramount consideration when making decisions that will worsen climate change.

Our campaign goes back to 2020, to the court case of Sharma v Minister for the Environment. Eight young people, led by our founder Anjali Sharma, took the former Federal Environment Minister to court, arguing that she owed them a duty of care to protect them in the face of climate change. Initially, this argument was successful. Later on, it was overturned on appeal. However, when overturning the decision to impose this duty of care, the Federal Court said explicitly that they weren’t necessarily doing so because such a duty didn’t exist, but because if it did exist, it was the job of parliament to legislate it. And that’s how our campaign came to be.

In 2023, Anjali Sharma worked with ACT Independent Senator David Pocock to launch a bill in the Senate to legislate a Duty of Care. Despite this bill receiving the support of major medical organisations around Australia, businesses, unions, former high-profile politicians, activists and young people, the government has, thus far, refused their support.