Tony Abbott has bet me $100 that in 10 years’ time the climate will not have changed.

When I found myself in a Manly coffee shop last week being offered the bet, I was incredulous. Abbott was smiling, charmingly dismissive. This person with the power to help steer the world away from anthropogenic disaster wasn’t having a bar of my concerns about climate change. He wasn’t going to help; he was going to wield his status and wealth to show how confident he was in his position of not doing anything.

He was going to prove he disagreed with climate science, with the majority of Australian voters and with the mother of a six-year-old who had just literally begged him to take the climate emergency seriously, with a jocular bet. No doubt he expected me to laugh and back down.

And maybe I should have, amazed and insulted beyond belief. Maybe I should have said instead (as my husband suggested when I got home) “I’m not going to bet $100. Bet me something substantial, like your electorate, or all your power, so that you’ll actually be motivated to work to save the climate.”

But all I could think of at the time was that Abbott was eager to go on record as a) completely ignorant of climate science and b) completely dismissive of a parent and her concerns for her child’s future.

I agreed to the bet.

The bet made between Tony Abbott and Cassie and witnessed by Blair Hickey.

The bet had come about when I went to meet my Sydney cousin at a coffee shop where I discovered that Abbott had chosen the same place to have lunch. Children striking for climate action, inspired by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, were wrapping up a protest outside his office round the corner.

Meanwhile, my cousin texted to say she was running late. Very late. I realised I was now faced with the prospect of waiting alone for her in a very small space, metres away from Abbott, whose views on the need for urgent climate action are diametrically opposed to my own.

The tension (on my part) was excruciating. Abbott and the friend he was with, on the other hand, appeared relaxed, and I was even able to discover that the famous “ha-ha-ha!” laugh is not an affectation for the media.

I considered leaving, but then realised I had the opportunity to speak personally to Abbott as an Australian voter.

But what to say? I didn’t want to lecture him and then go back and sit down. I didn’t think I could say anything that would cut through his loyalty to the coal industry and his reluctance to take the threat of climate change seriously, so I decided just to speak to him and put myself on the record as having registered a protest against his inaction.

I went over to his table and said, “Hi, excuse me for interrupting your lunch.”

Abbott and his associate were gracious, until I began, “I have a six-year-old daughter.”

Abbott’s smile stiffened a little and his face closed slightly.

I said, “The IPCC report tells us that we have 12 years to deal with climate change. In 12 years’ time she’ll be 18. I had to speak to you on her behalf and beg you to take climate change and her future seriously.”

Abbott launched into a well-rehearsed rebuff about how my daughter and I wouldn’t be very well off in the future if I lost my job and our industries closed down. While I responded internally about a just transition from coal to renewables, he was adding something about trying for a balance – which seemed a new, somewhat less hardline approach than his previous utter denial of the need for change, and indeed, of climate change itself.

Could the massive worldwide push for climate action and the approaching election be persuading him at least to pay lip service to the concept of tackling climate change?

But I continued, making a gesture showing a severely unbalanced scale pointing straight down. “It seems to me things are already very unbalanced, with the scales weighing towards a complete emergency,” I said.

Abbott said “I disagree” and went on to say a bit more about how other countries weren’t doing their bit. I interrupted him and said, “I know you disagree. I just wanted to go on record as having asked you to take climate change seriously. I want to be able to tell my daughter in the future that I took a shot when I had the chance.”

At this point, the encounter took a turn for the bizarre.

He offered to bet me $100 the climate would not change in 10 years and I accepted.

There was some debate about the wording. I said “the climate won’t change” was extremely broad. Abbott suggested “we won’t all be frying” (I’m from South Australia and having survived multiple heatwaves this summer, including a record-breaking 46.7C day, I beg to differ). Showing an outrageous ignorance of climate science for someone in his position, Abbott mused, “Maybe it will have gone up by about half a degree ... ”

“Half a degree is huge!” I countered, horrified.

In the end the broad wording of “the climate won’t change in 10 years” was agreed on.

We shook hands. Abbott’s associate wrote it down and witnessed it and we both signed.

Afterwards I donated $100 to the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. I gave away my winnings 10 years in advance because I knew I’d won this ridiculous, offensive bet as soon as it was made.

Even if Abbott and the Liberal party do a 180-degree turn away from supporting coal, even if they embrace renewables tomorrow, the debt from fossil fuels previously released into the atmosphere will be paid in increased warming for decades to come, let alone 10 years.

And if they do as Abbott’s bet predicts, which is exactly nothing, because they don’t understand or they don’t care that the climate is in freefall, and they tell everyone that they plan to do nothing, while smiling and joking, then surely, surely, the Australian public will do something on 18 May.

Of course, I’ll be back to collect my winnings in 2029. My daughter will be 16 then, the same age as Greta Thunberg is today. I hope she’ll join me.

Cassie Flanagan Willanski is an Australian writer and the author of short story collection Here Where We Live



