Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend. Today's is written by ACM national editorial trainer Saffron Howden.
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The job of all parents is to protect their children.
If they are troubled we want to soothe them and tell them: "Everything's going to be okay."
We say it when they're injured, have a fight with their friends, get sick with colds and flus, worry about their school work, break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, fret over their appearance, grapple with hormones, or simply feel hungry and tired.
But when my nine-year-old daughter asks about climate change and what it means for her future, as a mother I struggle to answer.
My instinct is to shield her from the harsh reality. But I cannot truthfully say that "everything's going to be okay".
Our climate future
When 13 young ACM journalists embarked on a three-month journey to explore the implications of climate change for regional Australia, it was with a sense of trepidation. Even foreboding.
These reporters - from across the country - all belong to the climate generation.
They've barely been on Earth 25 years. Yet they've lived through catastrophic bushfires, devastating floods, storm surges toppling homes into the sea, intense heat waves, energy uncertainty, prolonged droughts, and a rising threat to the very existence of unique wildlife we once took for granted.
"Climate change has taken something from us," Rosie Bensley, a 22-year-old journalist at the Illawarra Mercury in NSW, said.
This generation is scared - for themselves and the children they will one day raise.
Tough and resilient
But over dozens of hours of interviews, research and investigation, the Young and Regional: Our Climate Future team found something surprising: hope.
They uncovered other young people who, like them, were facing the reality of climate change head on and forging solutions.
Farmers, teachers, scientists, activists, traditional owners, entrepreneurs, small business owners, politicians, Indigenous academics, architects, psychologists, doctors, conservationists, students, and regular mums and dads - Australians from all walks of life are building a better future.
The climate generation may be staring down the barrel of the greatest threat to humanity but its members are tough.
They are resilient by necessity.
"There is hope," 27-year-old Western Australian reporter Samantha Ferguson said.
"And the hope is us."
You can read the full Young and Regional: Our Climate Future series here.
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