I’m scrolling on TikTok after work when I get a text that would have sent 12-year-old Anjali into a spiral, a frenzy of extreme climate anxiety. The text is from a friend letting me know that it’s official – 2024 is the hottest year on record. Not just that, it’s the first year to exceed 1.5C of warming over preindustrial levels.

The news comes as my entire feed is flooded with images of an inferno of flames ripping through neighbourhoods in LA, in winter.

I feel not anxiety but disbelief. Disbelief that the lives of young people and future generations are being shaped by decisions being made today, and yet we must still beg and plead to have our health and wellbeing protected by legislation in the face of destructive climate pollution.

As we come to the end of the 10 hottest years our world has documented, there is still no legislation in Australia that acknowledges the disproportionate impact that climate change will have on children and future generations.

As health crises rise, caused by climate pollution, I can’t believe that climate impacts are causing destruction right now and yet our government continues to approve coal and gas projects that threaten to send our future up in smoke.

The Earth is burning. As young people everywhere rage against short-termism and demand their politicians consider their long-term needs, only to be ignored, I feel angry.

More than 50 high-profile individuals and organisations have now signed an open letter, written by myself and three of my friends, to demand that the government legislate a duty of care bill.

This proposal, now a private bill tabled by Senator David Pocock, seeks to establish a duty owed by governments to young people to protect our health and wellbeing in the face of climate change. It would mean that, for example, if a project posed a tangible risk to the health and wellbeing of young people, it would not be allowed to go ahead It seeks to legislate for the future rather than the three-year electoral cycle.

Despite the growing outcry and the support of influential voices, the bill has been met with indifference. The disconnect between youth voices and policy developments reveals the deep fracture between the federal government’s promises and its actions – or lack thereof. And it is within this fracture that my disbelief is rooted, as we continue to fight not only for a livable future but for the right to be heard in the conversation about it.

I’m not the only one. Your average young person can care deeply about issues including climate change, housing and the cost of living and yet not know the name of the local MP. This is symptomatic of a fraught relationship between young people and the electoral system, characterised by three aspects.

The first aspect is awareness and the access to knowledge our generation has. We have the ability to access the world’s news at the press of a button. We also have the knowledge that climate change is very real.

The second is cynicism – the feeling that politics isn’t for us, and that politicians don’t listen to us or care about us. The feeling that we’re watching the world burn and our futures with it yet nobody has bothered to ask for our input. Research from EveryGen found that 81% of Australians believe that politicians prioritise short-term decisions over a long-term view. Policy decisions over the last three years, including the suspension of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act reforms and the rejection of the duty of care bill, signal that this government doesn’t care about young people and their futures. Regardless of the intended meaning, this is the message received.

The third is disaffection, which can mean a refusal to engage with the news because it’s always depressing, or a refusal to engage with politics because it’s full of meaningless noise and people shouting at each other. I’ve seen disaffection take over the young people I used to know as the most politically engaged as, one by one, they tire of leaning their weight against an unjust system, spending hours unpaid calling for greater climate action, alongside school and work, and seeing almost nothing change.

This disaffection, this sense of futility, is the silent killer. It is the failure of democracy, the fact that young people feel trapped in a political system not built for them. And why wouldn’t we be disillusioned?

2025 is an election year. Some young people will be watching, some will not want to hear a word of what they believe are promises that will be broken, commitments that will be walked back. The only way to restore faith in democracy is engagement, and a commitment from leaders to listen, rather than a hardline agenda that ignores the perspectives of young people.

Maybe it could start with the duty of care bill?

• Anjali Sharma was the lead litigant in Sharma v environment minister, the landmark court case against the then federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, which called for a duty of care to protect children against the impacts of the climate crisis