They won the case. I was pleased.

I worked in public education for over 40 years. Every single parent and grandparent I met along that journey wanted the best for their children and their children's children.

They understood the notion that this generation has a duty of care to the next ... and the one after that.

The Minister obviously did not agree with me or them. She appealed against the decision, which was eventually overturned.

The appeal court found that it was not the place of the courts to enforce such a duty of care, but rather of the Parliament. That's a long way short of saying that there is no duty of care.

Earlier this month the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Swiss government had violated its citizens' human rights by not doing enough to fight climate change.

As a decision of a significant overseas court, this decision can be used as a precedent when similar legal action is taken in Australia, as it inevitably will, if governments do not do enough o achieve meaningful targets for reduction in carbon emissions.

The European case was brought not by children, but by a group of 2000 older women.

This should go a long way to combatting any misconceived notion that older people do not care.

The ranks of climate protests, forest blockades and other direct action against fossil fuel projects are well populated by people over 60 years of age.

They certainly feel a duty of care to future generations that Sussan Ley thought not to exist.

The young people who took Sussan Ley to court have moved on. They are now at university, TAFE or working.

But they have not gone away.

Taking the court's ruling that it is the role of Parliament to set any duty of care, they have, under the leadership of Anjali Sharma, who was the lead plaintiff in the earlier case, started a campaign to enact laws that would make it plain that Ministers, and governments do have a duty of care to future generations.

The young campaigners have worked with Senator David Pocock, Independent for the ACT, and his office to draft legislation. The bill has been introduced to the Parliament and is the subject of Senate hearings.

Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, there is some entrenched opposition from both sides of politics to the notion that politicians do not already take future impacts into account. They proclaim this position even as they bow to the interests of fossil fuel industry donors when making decisions. The point, as far as I am concerned, is that it is bleedingly obvious that, if they have, it has been only the shortest, most fleeting of considerations.

I saw a post on social media recently that spoke to this notion.

It suggested that we would live in a very different world if the concept of "ownership" was replaced by "guardianship".

Guardianship has at the core of its meaning that the resource should be managed and curated in a way that benefits those on whose behalf it is held.

In this sense politicians and governments should consider themselves the guardians of our resources including real, human, financial, environmental and cultural. If "guardianship" underpinned their thinking, then we would see very different decisions being made in the seats of power.