Albury youth mayor Eli Davern seeks climate action from Sussan Ley

Eli Davern said the act was to highlight the government's failure to protect vulnerable ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef from the impacts of climate change.

"It's more just reminding her that her community are worried about it," he said.

"I did that on behalf of thousands of young people across the country who want to enjoy and share the Great Barrier Reef with the next generation."

Mr Davern referred to The Border mail's reader survey on issues for the upcoming federal election, which showed 3162 people ranked environment and climate change among their top three issues, more than 43 per cent of respondents.

Ms Ley wasn't at her office at the time, but Mr Davern said he'd given his contact information to Ms Ley's staff.

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"The idea of sending that coral over to Sussan as well as the latest IPCC report that was released was to highlight the urgency that I and many others across the country and the world deem that is the climate crisis," he said.

"Experts in the report have reinforced that they have very high confidence that we are going to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming in the near term, reaching that before 2040, which is 18 years or something away, so we're getting to the critical point.

"And once we do reach that 1.5 degree Celsius of global warming life on earth will be very hard to maintain, we'll have species not only endangered but completely extinct, it's no longer this mythical thing of climate change, it's actually reality that we're dealing with."

Mr Davern said young people were confused why there wasn't more climate action.

"I'm hearing concern, young people are constantly seeing on social media what's happening around the world from natural disasters," he said.

"Young people are seeing what's going on and they don't understand why nothing's being done on the issue, it's sort of a no brainer, you'd think, that governments would take an existential crisis and threat to humanity seriously, but they're not."

A spokesperson said Ms Ley appreciated Mr Davern's concerns but disagreed with claims the government was not working to combat the effect of climate change.

"We are already making huge investments in climate adaptation and resilience, which includes $4 billion in joint Commonwealth/State funding specifically for the Great Barrier Reef," they said.

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