At 2pm on Tuesday, I sat in my office, eyes fixed on a YouTube livestream as Justice Wigney delivered the Federal Court’s ruling in the Torres Strait climate case. Outside, the sky was calm. My home, nestled on a hill, was warm and safe. But internally, I felt the floodwaters rise.
The court acknowledged that the Torres Strait is being “ravaged by human-induced climate change.” That the Australian Government’s actions pose an “existential threat to the whole of humanity.”
And yet, it concluded there was no legal duty to protect the people whose homes, culture, and future hang in the balance. I felt so pissed off. I felt their heartbreak, the hours of work, the fear and the insult – the lack of care.
But there was something else in the mix: the embodied realisation that having material security, a safe home, a calm day, does not mean being truly safe from harm, instability, or future threat.
What happens in the Torres Strait is a warning to each of us who think we’re immune in our secure jobs and privileged lives
The court’s reasoning was clear. While the Australian Government may know its actions contribute to climate harm, the law, as it stands, does not compel it to protect those in its path.
For those of us who work in positions of influence, in business, in media, in leadership, I see this as an invitation.
As Isabelle Reinecke, Executive Director of Grata Fund, wrote in the wake of the decision: “When we lose, they lose. When we win, they will win too.”
This is a cultural test. Will we let this moment drift into abstraction, or will we allow it to sharpen our sense of responsibility, to each other, to future generations, and to the ecosystems that sustain us?
While I wholeheartedly believe we need political action to embed responsibility, we don’t actually need a legal mandate to do what’s right.
In fact, waiting for the law to catch up to the truth is a luxury none of us can longer afford. The Climate Case ruling makes one thing starkly clear: the systems we rely on to protect life will not always rise to the occasion.
That’s why it falls to each of us to step up as leaders in our respective professional domains because what we do at work matters. Our 9-5 is where we can exercise influence in how our workplaces step up to the responsibility.
This moment asks us to move beyond optics and into everyday climate leadership
The 2017 floods brought everything closer to home. A friend became a climate refugee overnight. Her home, business, and livelihood were ravaged by flood waters. She moved into our spare room, and suddenly the crisis wasn’t abstract. It was in our kitchen.
Before I moved from Melbourne to the Northern Rivers nine years ago, climate disaster felt distant, bushfires on the news, floods in far-off places. I hadn’t seen what it meant to walk into someone’s home and step across the threshold into their grief.
But in the years since, I’ve carried sodden wedding dresses and treasured children’s art to the curb. I’ve listened to strangers describe the stories behind photo albums we had to throw away. I’ve scrubbed toxic mud from the floors, roofs and walls, cooked meals for families who had nothing left, and delivered food drops by foot where roads had collapsed. I’ve coordinated PR for vets desperately seeking funding to chopper drowning horses and cattle. I’ve managed campaigns for organisations protecting endangered species.
In 2022, when the floods returned, they came harder. For days, we had no phones, fuel, food, or power. We waited for a coordinated government response that didn’t arrive until nearly a week later. In the meantime, it was our community that mobilised: rescuing people from rooftops, feeding entire towns, and doing the unthinkable clean-up.
That week stripped away any illusions I still had about climate safety
While our community and those of the Torres Strait grapple with these increasingly regular climate events, the climate crisis isn’t a distant threat for our metro dwelling friends.
It’s a force already destabilising supply chains, displacing communities, and reshaping our economies. Our food systems are particularly vulnerable.
According to the IPCC, climate change is disrupting every pillar of food security: availability, access, utilisation, and stability. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and more frequent extreme events are damaging crops, driving up prices, and putting the most vulnerable at even greater risk.
But despite promises to do better, last week, a report from the climate consultancy group Pollination revealed what many of us have suspected: there’s a “significant gap” between the climate commitments of Australia’s biggest companies and how they actually invest their capital.
Analysts examined disclosures from major corporations like AGL, Woolworths, and BHP and found that most were not aligning their investment decisions with their net zero promises. Only one company demonstrated strong alignment across more than half the criteria.
As Richard Proudlove of the Investor Group on Climate Change put it, this was the first deep dive into whether companies are “actually backing their net zero commitments with real investment.”
If we say climate matters, our budgets, boards, and actions must reflect it.
Business can be both responsible and regenerative.
For those of us with influence, whether we lead teams, run organisations, or shape strategy and manage budgets, this is a moral responsibility and one we must hold our colleagues and leaders, clients and collaborators to account on.
It’s time to slow down, with reciprocity as a core KPI
Beyond financial risk and reputation lies a simple answer and an ancient invitation: to adopt what many Indigenous cultures have long practised, Seven Generation thinking, guided by reciprocity. To act not only for today’s margins, but for the wellbeing of those who’ll inherit what we leave behind, for many generations to come.
I know this goes against what’s taught in business degrees and reinforced in many workplaces. We’re encouraged to think in short term cycles, move fast, break things, optimise, scale, and grow. To do more, reach more, sell more. Slowing down or doing less can feel naive, risky, even irresponsible.
But what if growth isn’t always the answer?
Around the world, a growing movement of economists, designers, and community leaders are exploring models of degrowth, as a shift toward doing better with less.
Degrowth asks us to design within limits, not extract beyond them. To measure success in wellbeing, care, and repair, not just in profit.
That shift begins with what we choose to measure. We can broaden our focus to include KPIs that track staff wellbeing, environmental repair, and cultural contribution, alongside revenue.
What if the most courageous thing a leader could do right now is pause, and choose what truly matters?
So where do we begin?
We begin by doing less, but with more care, more clarity, and awareness of our consequences.
Here’s what that can look like in practice:
Redesign your KPIs
- Integrate wellbeing, environmental repair, and cultural contribution into your success metrics, not just profit.
Embed climate accountability into every decision
- From procurement and packaging to marketing and media spend, ask how each choice contributes to or mitigates harm.
Audit your impact, not just your operations
- Consider: What are you funding, promoting, normalising? What assumptions are your campaigns reinforcing?
Retire harmful norms
- Move away from messaging that glorifies overconsumption, or perfection. Champion narratives of sufficiency, reciprocity, and collective care.
Reimagine leadership as stewardship
- Use your influence to shape what society values and protects, for this generation and the next seven.
Uncle Pabai and Uncle Paul stood in court and asked for protection. While the court may not yet recognise a legal duty of care, we can choose to recognise a moral one.
Each of us holds decision making power, a lever, a chance to reshape how we live, how we care for one another, and how we protect what’s most vulnerable. It’s also a chance to design a life of greater beauty, meaning, and responsibility for ourselves.
Feature image: Paul Kabai and Pabai Pabai. Photo credit: Talei Elu.