Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic

An idealistic twenty-something environmentalist.

A retired right-wing finance minister.

All their lives, they’ve happily ignored each other.

Until now.

Anna Rose, environmental crusader since the age of fourteen and co-founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, is on a mission. This is the story of her biggest challenge yet: a whirlwind journey around the world with conservative powerbroker and arch climate sceptic Nick Minchin. From a remote Hawaiian volcano to a cosmic ray laboratory in Geneva, Anna rolls out the biggest names in science to try and change Nick’s mind.

It’s a journey to tell the story of what’s happening to our climate-not just to one man, but to a nation divided on the biggest issue of our times. Nick and Anna challenge each other’s views, provoking each other to confront closely held assumptions and question our responsibilities as citizens living in uncertain times.

Anna Rose is co-founder and chair of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, a movement of over 70,000 young people working to solve climate change before it’s too late. She is the joint recipient of the 2009 Environment Minister’s Young Environmentalist of the Year Award and a Fellow of the International Youth Foundation.
Anna’s climate change work started with shovelling compost and emptying recycling bins in high school. She went on to work with the National Union of Students on dozens of campus clean energy victories, speak onstage with the Dalai Lama to an audience of 16,000, trudge through snow door-knocking in the United States for the Obama campaign, and spearhead Australia’s first climate torch relay in her former role as GetUp’s climate campaigner.
In 2011 Anna received a Churchill Fellowship to research youth peer-to-peer climate education. The Sydney Morning Herald named her one of Sydney’s most influential people (in 2009) and one of the top five most powerful grassroots organisers in New South Wales (in 2011). She lives in Sydney with her husband Simon and the occasional foster cat.