THE WORLD IS BURNING WHY AREN’T YOU?
You meet AJ Tennant on one of those days when apocalyptic climate change feels improbable.
It’s a mild February late afternoon, with a cool breeze wafting between the buildings of Sydney’s Martin Place. The sky – mostly a smoky haze through the summer of fire – is today a vibrant blue, a reminder of simpler times when our problems were our own. Trouble in love. Tension at work. A leaking roof. Things you could fix. Fix and forget.
Tennant is a fresh-faced 38-year-old who could pass as Seth Rogen’s better-looking kid brother. Until 18 months ago he was living life in the mainstream. The son of a doctor, raised on Sydney’s lower north shore, schooled at Sydney Grammar, he was a married and comfortable gun-for-hire copywriter. “I was playing ping pong in ad agencies and brainstorming marketing campaigns for soft drinks and banks,” says Tennant, who’s sitting on a public bench as the first wave of office workers surges towards home. “Most recently, I was putting on a smart outfit and going up 35 floors to work for the government in a sensible job.” And then, quite suddenly, “the fog lifted”.
An awakening? Nothing less. And it was a four-pronged cluster of events that brought it on. First, in October 2018, he perused the latest report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – not light bedtime reading but yet another warning to humanity to stop heating the planet or else. Second, he visited the Great Barrier Reef, where he saw first-hand how warming seawater is bleaching the life out of the most diverse ecosystem on the planet. Third, his wife told him they were having a baby. Finally, he watched the Leonardo DiCaprio-fronted documentary about global warming, . “Which is bleak,” says Tennant, revealing a flair
