In 2019, I rode 190 kilometres down the New England Highway to call for better leadership in the New England electorate.

My first grandchild was born on the second night of the ride. 

For my three sons, my granddaughter and every other child yet to be born, I have searched for more than 25 years for honest political representation on climate change and a regenerative vision for taking care of our watersheds.

Instead, I’ve found politicians claiming to represent me who have been prepared to deny the reality of climate change, at any cost. Now those same politicians have voted to abandon their commitment to net zero.

In doing so, I have all the evidence I need that they do not represent me, nor the interests of my children and granddaughter – instead it is the special interests of the powerful and deep-pocketed fossil-fuel industry. That is who they represent.

Not me, not my family or our communities in regional Australia who will pay the highest price for this non-policy.

Certain politicians continue the lie that we can keep opening more coal mines and coal seam gas fields without totally destroying Australia’s climate and food and water security.

When they say they’re against “net zero”, what they really mean is that they’re willing to let their constituents continue to suffer record-breaking floods, droughts and heat. Because if we’re not willing to transition away from fossil fuels, that’s exactly the future scientific consensus has us hurtling toward.

There is nothing we need more for ensuring secure food and water supplies in Australia than a stable climate and a functioning water cycle.

When politicians expand mining or coal seam gas projects, they are damaging our water cycle.

Regional communities all across Australia deserve representatives who don’t play political games with the climate – the basis of our economy, water and food security.

For more than 35 years, I’ve been a stockman in the New England area and mustered a lot of properties, and I never saw the record heat or trees dying like there has been in recent years.

This is similar to what has happened to the world’s coral reefs. For decades, no one took notice of the bleaching events but now we stand to lose it all.

Unless things change quickly, the evidence suggests our forests and grasslands are headed the same way.

Climate change is starting to bite hard. We need solutions at every level – through renewable energy and regenerative agriculture (which I’ve practised for almost three decades) to grow healthy pastures – and by pressuring politicians to act.

Economists and scientists agree that the fastest and least expensive way to build the energy capacity we need is renewable energy backed by storage.

Unless we start to take care of our environment, unnatural disasters and extreme weather events like heatwaves, droughts, fires and floods will keep increasing in frequency and severity. The question we all need to be asking is – what will it take to turn this entire situation around?

We also need agriculture that enhances life, nutrition, water cycling, and climate and natural resource management that encourages the widespread enhancement of soils, forests, perennial pastures and watersheds.

Most of all, we need to elevate politicians into positions of influence who do not play political games with our grandchildren’s food and water security and future – the future of our farmland and our country.

It’s up to the public to ensure we get stronger action on climate change.

Regardless of any politician or political party, and the headlines and backflips on climate they make, we have to ask – what do we want regional Australia to look like?

For my granddaughter and yours, inaction on the climate crisis is not an option I’m willing to accept.

Glenn Morris is a regenerative cattle farmer in Inverell, NSW