Photo credit for image above: Jo Yeldham
Anna Rose is an Australian author, community organiser and campaigner who works on a number of strategic initiatives to help Australia make progress tackling the climate crisis. She works with a small team of people to help ordinary people use their time, talent and treasure in the most strategic way possible as part of the grassroots climate movement. She is also co-founder with her friends Clare and Arielle of Australia’s first climate advocacy-focused giving circle, Groundswell.
Anna comes from a long line of farmers from the Hunter Valley, Liverpool Plains and North West Slopes of NSW, and is currently a board Director with Farmers for Climate Action. Farmers for Climate Action is building a movement of farmers to take climate action behind and beyond the farm gate – putting those on the front lines of the climate crisis at the front and centre of the solutions. You can support their work here.
Previously she was National Manager for Earth Hour with WWF-Australia, where she developed public-facing climate change campaigns including ‘Lights Out for the Reef’ and ‘Appetite for Change’ in the lead up to the 2015 U.N. climate talks in Paris. Anna remains involved with WWF as a Governor.
Anna’s climate change journey began in high school and continued at University, where she co-founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and was National Co-Director for five years. After ‘retiring’ from AYCC, Anna co-starred in the ABC documentary ‘I Can Change Your Mind on Climate Change’ and authored the book ‘Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic’ (MUP, 2012).
Anna previously convened the Vice-Chancellor’s course in Leadership & Influence at the Australian National University. She is a former Churchill Fellow and a recipient of the Sierra Club’s Earthcare award for her services to international environmental protection. She was the Australian Geographic Society’s Conservationist of the Year 2015 and was a finalist in the Australian of the Year Awards (A.C.T.) the same year. She was a Myer Foundation Innovation Fellow in 2016-17. She was named one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 ‘Women of Influence’ for 2019.
As the daughter of an English teacher, Anna is passionate about the power of writing to change hearts and minds. She has written for all major Australian newspapers and covered the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in 2012 as a journalist for online news outlet Crikey . More recently she has been a contributor to the book ‘The Motherhood’ (Penguin, 2018) and the magazine Dumbo Feather.
Anna is an advisory board member of the Australian Geographic Society and the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute. She is a former Director of Solar Citizens, the Aussie Farmers Foundation and Green Music Australia. Anna is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Climate Change Centre and an Associate of Melbourne University Sustainable Society Institute. Anna lives in Sydney with her husband Simon and their four-year old son.
Anna Rose 
Just saw you on QandA … U totally rock! Do you have a twitter account to follow? I am sure you would get a lot of followers…
I watch Q&A every week and can I just say you were a real stand out, it was great to see someone give such well-articulated responses and I became an immediate fan of you. Have been looking at your work and your commitment to the climate change debate and am really impressed. Keep up the good work
Great Blog Anna- great to see all the things you are doing cheers Grant
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Hey Anna saw you on Q and A! Keep forging ahead you seem quite inspirational.
If you feel there are some gaps in your knowledge about climate change, I recommend Mike Hulme’s ‘Why We Disagree About Climate Change’ (a guest featured on I Can Change Your Mind on Climate), Sean Esbjörn-Hargens ‘An Integral Overview of Climate Change: Why Truth is not Enough’ & ‘An Ontology of Climate Change: Integral Pluralism and the Enactment of Multiple Objects,’ Karen O’Brien’s ‘Responding to Climate Change: The Need for an Integral Approach’, Karen O’Brien & Gail Hochachka’s ‘Integral Adaptation to Climate Change’, Chris Riedy’s ‘Futures of the Climate Action Movement: Insights from an Integral Futures Approach’, Roy Bhaskar & Associates’ ‘Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change: Transforming Knowledge and Practice for Our Global Future’, Richard Slaughter’s ‘The Biggest Wake Up Call In History’, Micheal E Zimmerman’s ‘Including and Differentiating among Perspectives: An Integral Approach to Climate Change’ & ‘Changing the Conversation: Rethinking the Climate Change Debate from an Integral Perspective’, and Barrett Brown’s ‘Conscious Leadership for Sustainability: How Leaders with a Late-Stage Action Logic Design and Engage in Sustainability Initiatives’.
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Wikipedia states that you graduated from Merewether High School in 2011…curious I say!
You’re fantastic, Anna. Keep up the good work. I saw you on Q&A last night and was very impressed.
P.S. … here is my 2c worth, which you can put on your website or not…
In order to–not–believe in the high probability of AGW, one is forced to cook up some kind of convoluted conspiracy theories in order to write-off virtually every expert worth listening to on the entire planet; then very selectively cherry-pick and engross them-selves in the highly contentious theories of a select few. That’s crap.
For us laymen, the question is not “what to believe”, the question is, “-who- to believe”. What’s the best bet? Some unqualified bloggers? The one scientists out of fifty that reckons it’s not happening? Some guy posting on an internet forum? The guy with the tinfoil hat who says it’s a global Communist conspiracy?
… or maybe NASA, the US Navy and every national academy of sciences on the planet, all combined?
There’s only one sensisble, rational answer to that question. Climate denial is a mug’s game (meaning, it’s a very bad wager).
Very impressive on Q and A and the preceding documentary. Thanks for your efforts.
Well done on Q and A, you were an absolute stand out and made Clive look silly.
I am on Nicks side but I believe the most constuctive discussion held on this subject was that conducted by you and Nic.You are both class acts in constuctive communication on the subject.Well done!
Ron
Your conviction about the climate change is contagious. Saw you on Q&A. Very impresive.
Keep up the good work Anna.
Your way of putting your convictions ahead, gently yet firmly, is absolutely amazing. Really well done.
Just watched the documentary. You were amazing and we definitely need more people like you out there in the community raising awareness. Keep up the good work!
Anna,
I think the compromise that you and Nick eventually worked out was excellent. I hope you both continue to correspond and cooperate. I don’t think the journey you two made was at all wasted, I found the entire doco highly educational, fascinating and it should be made freely available on the ABC website. I am just commencing my BA in Sustainable Development at Curtin Uni, at the age of 49, becuase I think one of the solutions to peak everything and CC is that we need to do everything more sustainably (the throw away society has to end now!). I have a seven yr old daughter who I love dearly and you yourself are still a young woman who will outlive me. I just want to do what I can to contribute my ideas. I will have to read your book now! You have a (not so) secret admirer now!.
Anna, aside from your considerable and commendable efforts for such a worthwhile cause – your public demeanor, well-weighted intelligence and sincerity is astounding; you simply come across brilliantly. As a father of two young daughters you are honestly the first person in public life who has struck me as an ideal role model.
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