climate change
18 Jun 2009
Non-Violent But Determined
Local green groups reject violence, but are set to make life a lot harder for governments out of touch on climate change, writes Greenpeace's John Hepburn
The disturbing personal threat to the CEO of Australia's most polluting power station adds a new dimension to the increasingly intense debate about how to respond to climate change. Violence, or its threat, can never be condoned, but this episode does highlight the risk of growing social conflict as the gap between the reality of climate change and the inaction of our governments and corporate leaders continues to widen.
The attempt by Victorian Energy Minister, Peter Batchelor to link growing environmental protests with "eco-terrorism" is a snapshot of just how out of touch politicians are with community frustration over the failure of Australian governments to reign in the coal industry. The kind of cynical mud-slinging Batchelor is indulging in simply won't work because it is so far fetched. Everybody knows that the climate movement is as family-friendly as it gets. It's mums and dads, your sister and your brother, your neighbour and their kids, your doctor, your accountant. But increasingly this movement isn't content to be ignored.
Climate scientists are becoming increasingly panicked in their warnings. NASA's James Hansen has said that "coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet", and, along with Al Gore, has called for people to take direct action to stop new coal plants from being built. And this call is starting to resonate.
Last year, over 160 people were arrested in peaceful climate change protests around the country. A blockade of the world's biggest coal port in Newcastle last July resulted in over 60 people being charged with trespass on one day alone. These were not your average young wide-eyed hippies. The people that are increasingly protesting about climate change come from all walks of life and span the generations. For many it is the first time they have taken part in any kind of protest, let alone civil disobedience, but the urgency and seriousness of climate change is just too much to ignore.
At Greenpeace, we receive countless letters from members of the Australian community who are deeply concerned, even frightened about the future on a warming planet. We've had calls from parents and teachers asking how they can talk about climate change without paralysing children with fear. For some it is just too overwhelming a challenge, and despair or denial are the only viable responses. Others get angry. And not without justification. Governments have known about climate change since the 1950s. The science was crystal clear in the late 1980s and yet in 2009, emissions are still rising, new coal plants are still being built, and the big polluters continue to fight against change.
Scientists are warning that hundreds of millions of people will lose their homes and livelihoods as a result of climate change, and we are likely to wipe out up to half of all life on this planet. It is a deadly serious issue. The disconnect between these projections, increasing public concern, and continued inaction is a recipe for social conflict. Pent-up anger and frustration is bound to spill out in unpredictable ways and the personal threat made to the CEO of Hazelwood is an unfortunate expression of this.
Writing polite submissions to government just doesn't cut it any more. The incrementalism that has dominated environmental politics for the past 30 years is no longer good enough — not that it ever was. People increasingly understand this and are demanding more. The challenge facing our community is to channel anger and frustration over government and corporate inaction into creating peaceful and effective change.
Throughout history, social movements have transformed society through the moral power of peaceful direct action and civil disobedience. Like the relentless drip of water wearing away stone, Ghandi and the Indian independence movement slowly but surely won their freedom from British rule. Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement overturned racist laws and set in motion the wheels that led to Barack Obama being the first African American elected as President of the United States. We owe weekends and the 40-hour week to the protests of the labour movement. Women wouldn't have the right to vote if it weren't for the protests of the Suffragettes.
The same will be true of climate change. In the face of polluters who are putting our future at risk, and a government too weak to act, people are increasingly standing up for what they believe in and using peaceful civil disobedience to try create a better world. We aren't left with much choice. Our generation is the last one that can prevent a climate catastrophe. Can you imagine the conversation with your grandkids when they are asking you how you could let it happen? If you're anything like me you'd be feeling pretty stupid if all you could say is, "We asked our politicians nicely but they just wouldn't listen ..."
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If the future of the planet requires the removal of psychopathic corporatists, then I believe the moral code changes. It would be nice to think that our abusive culture can transform itself from mass murderer into lover of wild nature voluntarily, but this seems like wishful thinking – a corollary of aggregate-growth economics. All of our systems are set up to exploit and destroy. This is why the Dja Dja Wurrung no longer live in these parts from where I write. There are no documents showing that the crown owns this land, yet Coca Cola and Cadbury Schweppes are here every day pumping Dja Dja Wurrung groundwater to fill plastic water bottles for city folk who rely upon the transportation of all indigenous resources.
Industrialised cities, that rely upon the importation of stolen indigenous resources, can never be sustainable – socially, environmentally, economically. If environmentalists still believe our ecologically disembodied culture can be changed non-violently, then they belong to the same fantasy that they attempt to mitigate. It’s time for Australians to take a moral stance against corporatist pop-fascism any way possible. This is not advocating for gratuitous violence that only mirrors the dominant culture, rather I’m suggesting not ruling out violence if abusers continue to abuse. If our governments protect abusers, then what choice are we given?
We only have one planet and it’s being trashed by greed. To what point will inaction be tolerated?
http://gardenofselfdefence.blogspot.com/
a timely and thoughtful article, thank you John Hepworth of Greenpeace. there will be increasing resort to non-violent protest action, as there was over vietnam, old-growth forests, whaling, and abuse of human rights of refugees in detention centres. sadly, this will polarise society, and will from time to time lead to both extremist and repressive actions. but there seems no other way to break through to politicians’ consciousness that we are facing a climate change public emergency.
tony kevin
Mr Batchelor and Mr Brumby’s accusations against the Greens is typical of what is happening in Tasmania about the pulp mill. The pertpetrator of the threatening letter to the CEO is not helping the environmental cause at all, so one can only assume it was done for other reasons.
It reminds me of the heavy machinery that was burnt in Tas’s forests this year - first if was blamed on forest activists but then there was a rumour was that it was an insurance job. Since then, silence.
At the meeting between Fielding and the Chief Scientist and the Head of the ANU Climate Computer Group yesterday Fielding’s advisors were only allowed one single question each. So much for open and transparency about climate change. Ironically none of the questions were answered by either the Minister or her apparatchik scientists! Sort of says it all!
Climate change is just the new religion, where messiahs preach to the masses about doom and damnation to keep them under control. History just repeating itself :-) We humans really are broken aren’t we?
If you believe, James Hansen that "coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet", and, along with Al Gore, has called for people to take direct action to stop new coal plants from being built.
Greenpeace appear to agree that we have reached the point where direct action is what is needed.
What exactly does Greenpeace mean by Direct Action?
Here’s the Berkeley University definition of Direct Action. "A political tactic of confrontation and sometimes illegal disruption intended to attract and arouse public awareness and action.
Or is it the Wiktionary interpretation.
"Participants act directly, ignoring established political procedures. This is often (but not always) accomplished by means of strikes, workplace occupations, sabotage, sit-ins, squatting, revolutionary/guerrilla warfare, demonstrations, vandalism or graffiti."
Please explain.
Those who find themselves in fortunate and influential positions in any society have never given up their privileges willingly, even for noble causes (especially not for noble causes?). So if your fortune or livelihood depends on fossil fuels you are not going to renounce them when politely asked, you are going to fight with every tool at your disposal, including every trick in the PR book that we are seeing now.
This does not make these people evil. I think it is human nature to believe you are in the right, and have a right. That’s why we have science and reason, far from perfect but the most objective systems of informing humanity yet devised.
I think we may have been conned by those who claim that the transition to renewables will be exceptionally economically difficult. It looks like the evidence may not support this, and it seems a pity we are being lumbered with weak anti-carbon legislation when a more robust approach could have sped up the development of alternative energy production.
I think it is true that ordinary people are the ones with most to lose if the climate goes bad. Clearly the rich will have resources to ensure they themselves are mostly OK. I am not sure this fact has dawned on most people yet, but soon it will. Then they will realise that we are going to be the losers if effective action is not taken, not the big polluters and other powers that be who can afford themselves safe havens of one sort or another.
History certainly demonstrates that change for the benefit of ordinary people is hard-won, usually through direct action of some kind as long as the existing political and social structures are unresponsive. I agree this is the way things are looking now, which is disconcerting but the alternative of doing nothing and business as usual is even more so.
And there they were imagining it was the end of history. Let’s hope not.
“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison" - Thoreau
Seems aptly applied to the situation with Global Warming. If peaceful protestors are being arrested and stopped by the powers-that-be then surely more people have to go out and protest the government power that is stopping them? A true people’s movement that demands the rights they need - such as a clean environment and real protections for civil disobedience.
Great article, I enjoyed it a lot.
Powerful corporates buy science – eg Monsanto and Dow AgriSciences – where is the objectivity and reason in this? They pursue their own interests at the expense of others and the environment. Our universities are now totally bought out by corporate interests. In Vic the Brumby gov has just gone into a $230million partnership with US Dow Chemicals to build a commercialised science centre at LaTrobe Uni. No one can tell them that Peak Oil makes this sort of AgriBusiness ‘science’ redundant and anti-ecological because they are deaf to reason. The CSIRO has been totally bought out by corporate interests also. None of this is science, this is money and power masquerading as science.
I think it naive to think that big business CEOs and directors of boards are just people trying to get along. Take Jillian Broadbent for example: Coca-Cola director (plastic pollution, toxic drinks, bottled water), Reserve Bank director (power and influence), and until recently a 10 year director of Woodside Petroleum (toxic polluters). The activities of her day job are cheered up by being a major patron of the Arts and a top-end woman about town. This is akin to McDonalds, at the low-end, giving money to children’s cancer in exchange for a license to colonise children’s well-being with toxic food. Brumby would like to see big business such as McDonalds play a greater role in our public schools. This insanity is what we’re up against.
Commercialised science has brought us every modern pathology known. Obesity is just a corollary of industrialised agriculture The Green Revolution in agriculture should now be called the Brown Revolution. Commercial science is not reason, it’s insanity and it’s driven by a handful of elites who are protected by governments. How long should we wait for governments to act responsibly on our behalf? 6 months, a year, two years? We have to stop waiting, stop hoping!
Ecologically embedded models of existence are already here. Ecological-economics (‘steady-state economics’) as a future model is ready to go. Aggregate-growth economics has killed one species, one child too many. It’s time to change our systems, starting in our gardens and community gardens.
Permaculture! Our children’s well-being and future are dependent on us now.
Compost the old school!
http://gardenofselfdefence.blogspot.com/
I agree with Greenpeace. The time for pussy-footing around with foot-dragging Governments and Big Business has passed. Rudd and Co. have shown by now that they do not intend to do anything constructive, they are OWNED by Big Business.
However, I am bit surprised that Greenpeace is talking tough all of a sudden. I was under the impression that Greenpeace had moved into the Boardrooms of Big Business, to ‘work from within’. Is it that this tactic has proved futile?
Once we had Unions such as the Builders Laborers Federation who would have acted against the big polluters, but now the Unions and their Executive are far too much up the Labour rectum to be worth a sav. and the Howard/Rudd/Gillard Workplace Laws will ensure that any Unionist goes to gaol for any action departing from very basic workplace rights.
Rudd/Gillard have ensured that any action as was done by the old BLF is now ILLEGAL, punishable by big fines and imprisonment! Shows whose rectum they are up, hey!
They also see their future in the sinecure of a Labour Parliamentary seat, as a reward for their cowardly co-operation with Rudd and Co. (and in Queensland, with Bligh and Co.)
We, The People have to act to save our planet. The people making money out of pollution and the degradation of our one and only home-place are NOT going to be in the forefront of change, their rich shareholders and extremely well paid Executives will make sure of that, even though they are best set up to survive change. Dazza.
I agree with Greenpeace. The time for pussy-footing around with foot-dragging Governments and Big Business has passed. Rudd and Co. have shown by now that they do not intend to do anything constructive, they are OWNED by Big Business.
However, I am bit surprised that Greenpeace is talking tough all of a sudden. I was under the impression that Greenpeace had moved into the Boardrooms of Big Business, to ‘work from within’. Is it that this tactic has proved futile?
Once we had Unions such as the Builders Laborers Federation who would have acted against the big polluters, but now the Unions and their Executive are far too much up the Labour rectum to be worth a sav. and the Howard/Rudd/Gillard Workplace Laws will ensure that any Unionist goes to gaol for any action departing from very basic workplace rights.
Rudd/Gillard have ensured that any action as was done by the old BLF is now ILLEGAL, punishable by big fines and imprisonment! Shows whose rectum they are up, hey!
They also see their future in the sinecure of a Labour Parliamentary seat, as a reward for their cowardly co-operation with Rudd and Co. (and in Queensland, with Bligh and Co.)
We, The People have to act to save our planet. The people making money out of pollution and the degradation of our one and only home-place are NOT going to be in the forefront of change, their rich shareholders and extremely well paid Executives will make sure of that, even though they are best set up to survive change. Dazza.
I’m with the activists - we just have to realise that the powerful are capable of self delusion to the level of pathology. They are ill and they will kill us all and be deeply hurt when we don’t appreciate it. The entire model of the last few thousand years of colonialism - ie where the biggest bastards get whatever they want - is either over or we are in for a serious disaster.
The big bastards have only got whatever they wanted until the little bastards stood up to them in one way or another. That is the story of humanity throughout history.
Roger B Just read on line that the NSW govt. are giving Coal companies $20 MILLION over 2 years to help them to keep polluting???? Why is the govt giving our money to people with coal shares ????? The poor wont work out that when the sh@t hits the fan the rich will leave to a safer and higher place.Like shell, they will kill anybody that gets in the way of their profits.
guywire
The Article is great. It wasn’t long ago when our elected leaders in opposition were calling for action on climate change by the skeptics in government. Now of course we are in our second year of missed opportunity to make some inroads into climate change. Scientists say Australia will feel the brunt of change more than other nations. So we should act first especially since the Labor Party had a mandate to do just that. The farce playing out in parliament proves that our ‘Democracy’ isnt enough anymore.
Watching our elected leaders after promising action on climate change is like watching the paint dry on a conference centre built to discuss which abbatoir will get the contract for butchering the last cow on earth. But I would rather watch paint dry than see another ‘democratic’ betrayal of popular aspirations on such critical issues.
And by the way I prefer Wiktionary’s definition of Direct Action. Cant wait for the Colonic Irrigation. Guy