Words by Taran Anders

Illustrations by Fran Murphy

This story is brought to you by our partner Bank Australia

In 20 years' time, what advice will we want to give our former selves? Will we be satisfied with the changes we’ve made in our day-to-day choices, or will we urge our former selves to do more?

I’ve been thinking a lot about that meeting we went to, the summit on global heating. For you, it was just a couple of months ago, but for me it’s been over 20 years. The whole night was a mix of depressing and energising – there was talk of just how bad the climate crisis was getting, and how narrow our window was to do something about it.

Everyone was invited to make suggestions, and when the woman sitting across from you talked about cutting down plastics, making smart travel choices, minimising the use of electricity and petrol and choosing not to buy fast fashion, you almost wanted to cry. “We’re all already doing these things. It’s just not enough.” In 2019, it felt as though even if you did everything right as an individual, the bigger picture was just too daunting.

Take animal rights. What good is cutting down meat or adopting your cat from a shelter when live exports were sending thousands of animals to their deaths by heat stress?

What about keeping toxic substances out of nature? All those times you painstakingly drove spent batteries and cartridges to a safe disposal port, while elsewhere some of the world’s biggest businesses were investing in nuclear weaponry?

How about all those times you clicked “carbon offset” when booking a plane ticket? Or saved up for solar panels – only to hear about the Hazelwood mine fire in Victoria that burned for 45 days?

Making these choices was undoubtedly a good thing. And those choices were making a difference – just not enough of a difference. What we didn’t realise until 2019 is that we’ve been complicit in propping up harmful industries by investing money in banks and super funds that sponsor these industries. From tobacco to coal, we’ve been unwittingly funding things we disagree with, and ignoring the movement rising around us to proactively invest in ethical and sustainable projects.

I hope that when you read this, you'll sit down and take a look at the kinds of places your bank lends money to. It may come as something of a shock. Your bank could be using your money to invest in businesses that develop nuclear weapons, prop up the tobacco industry, take part in live animal export and contribute to carbon emissions through fossil fuels.

I hope you'll also realise that it's easy to change this – that around you, a movement is forming, dedicated to moving investments away from harmful industries and towards positive impact projects. You'll be empowered to put your money where you want it to go, harnessing the power of personal choice.

In 2019, it felt as though even if you did everything right as an individual, the bigger picture was just too daunting.

That movement that was just burgeoning in 2019 eventually became the norm (and is one of the reasons I’m still here to write to you). The concept of clean money became the logical conclusion of voting with your dollars – it built wind farms, got social housing projects off the ground and developed more accessible ways of living for people with disability. It breathed life into community organisations striving to do good. And crucially, it allowed us to cut off oxygen to those doing harm.

I don’t remember if you ended up seeing the film 2040, or if you did perhaps it seemed a bit too optimistic for you at the time. But here’s what I can say with the benefit of hindsight. In the end, it was money that moved the needle. When we started investing in projects that had the big picture in sight, things started to shift. The clean money movement set a new standard for the kind of world we wanted to live in and the rest followed.

I know it kind of feels like shouting into the abyss right now, but the thing to do is get involved in collective action. Educate yourself about how your individual choices can have a negative or positive impact and vote with your bank account. Things are better here in 2040 – the air’s a little clearer, the economy a little fairer. We’re thanking our past selves for springing to action and putting our money where our future is.

From,

2040

We’re proud to partner with Bank Australia who are leading the clean money movement in Australia. You can find out more about who they invest in and who they refuse to prop up HERE.

Join the global call to stop banks financing fossil fuels HERE.

Taran Anders is a writer and editor from Melbourne.