Tag: Climate Strike

• Greenwashing Our Drowning Futures: A Call to Action from the South to the North

  October 27, 2022 10:34 am Comments Off on Greenwashing Our Drowning Futures: A Call to Action from the South to the North

  We are not facing a climate crisis that is imminent in the distant future. But we are in the middle of a climate catastrophe as we speak. While here in Australia, much as in the rest of the Global North, we convene in siloed conferences and policy forums; discuss climate resilience and mitigation in hallowed halls and ivory towers; deliberate on what the future may hold in a still distant 2050 – a future with a projected global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius – for millions of people across the world, 2050 is already upon them.
  One-third of Pakistan has been submerged in the recent catastrophic floods. Between June to August this year, Pakistan’s southernmost provinces faced a 400 percent increase in their average monsoon rainfall. In addition to this, Pakistan is home to 7200 glaciers, the largest number in the world outside of the polar regions. Rising temperatures due to global warming are accelerating the Himalayan glacial melt in Pakistan at a much faster rate than previously anticipated by scientists.
  Just in the recent catastrophe alone, 33 million lives were affected – more than the total population of Australia. This includes 16 million children, and 650,000 pregnant women without access to proper health services, with much of the infrastructure devastated. Four million acres of farmland has been destroyed, causing an acute crisis of food insecurity, and large swathes of the country are still underwater. While it has been estimated that the waters will take six more months to recede, the flood-ravaged lands are becoming breeding grounds for water-borne diseases – cholera, malaria, dengue – while experts warn the coming of a “second wave of death and destruction.”

  Pakistan merits our attention for the sheer injustice of its people facing the worst brunt of climate catastrophe, while the country’s global share of carbon emissions is only less than 1 percent. An injustice that is compounded by a severe debt burden of $130 billion and crippling International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities, including taxes on oil and electricity, at a time of an unprecedented disaster. Or the entrenched effects of colonial and imperial entanglements that relegate the country to a ‘no man’s land’ – whose worth is dictated merely by imperial interests and ‘strategic’ relevance to the Global North; and whose calls for immediate debt relief, as demanded by the Pakistani activist community, are drowned out by racialised tropes of ‘violence’ and ‘danger’.  But Pakistan is also a glimpse into our collective future – a symbolic front for our advocacy as a country that is already ‘ground zero’ for the climate catastrophe and exhibiting the impact of the dreaded mark of 1.5 degree Celsius.
  In this context, we are fast approaching the 27th Annual UN Climate Change Conference of Parties, or COP27. Previous conferences settled upon emissions reduction agreements as outlined in the Kyoto protocols or the Paris Agreement. Not only have these agreements been inadequate but they have also allowed governments to perpetuate climate vandalism through an ostensible facade of seeking climate solutions. Greta Thunberg called last year’s COP26 conference in Glasgow more of the same “blah blah blah”. She called for protests around the conference to reject the same old greenwashing, saying that “our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.” The nature of the current climate catastrophes, if anything, expose the hollowness of such initiatives. Even if governments fully adhered to their emissions reductions as agreed upon in the Paris Agreement, the world would still reach apocalyptic levels of climate catastrophe everywhere in the coming decades. A worsening of the disastrous effects is already being felt.  
  The upcoming conference is set to be held in Egypt this year, even as Egyptian climate activists are protesting this charade of greenwashing and demanding more. The Sisi dictatorship has enforced draconian laws to limit access to information, including their country’s net carbon emissions and is continuing to warehouse hundreds of political prisoners in state prison cells. Recently, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a high-profile democracy activist on a hunger strike, wrote a letter “about global warming because of the news from Pakistan” and raised concerns about the impending climate catastrophe that will reach us all. Highlighting the 33 million lives affected by the floods in Pakistan, he questioned the (in)adequacy of state responses as global warming continues. This letter, too, has been suppressed by the Egyptian authorities. Other democracy activists in Egypt have also called on climate activists around the world to not allow the Egyptian government to greenwash the dictatorship through the upcoming COP conference.
  In Australia, we have a particular responsibility to answer these calls of solidarity from Egypt and Pakistan. Australia is one of the largest contributors to global fossil fuel emissions per capita, particularly from coal export emissions. These emissions are conveniently not counted in the Australian Labor Party’s latest climate bill. Such creative elisions and the absence of any enforceable targets have allowed the Labor party to plan a significant escalation of fossil fuel emission exports, by greenlighting the opening up of 106 new coal and gas projects whilst posturing to address the issue of emission reductions.
  There is no lack of academic seminars on the impending climate crisis at the ANU. But beyond these siloed academic engagements, it is pertinent to ask where the university – as an institution – stands on climate change. It is imperative to move from knowledge production to action. The ANU itself has been the subject of a nearly decade-long divestment campaign. Students have overwhelmingly called for full divestment from fossil fuels in two referendums run by the student union ANUSA, first in 2014 and then again last year. The most recent data available to students indicates that our university still has large-scale investments in fossil fuel companies. There is also a shroud of opacity on the specificities of their investments. Without a clear breakdown of companies that ANU invests in, such as what they provided in 2016, we can’t be sure if ANU still invests in companies like Woodside Petroleum or big banks that finance coal projects as they did in that year. What we do know is that ANU’s infrastructure portfolio, which includes millions of dollars invested in the Kwinana gas-fired power station, actually increased its total carbon emissions by almost 23 percent last year. There are no enforceable targets in ANU’s investment portfolio as part of its ‘Below Zero’ campaign and its reports rely heavily on the discredited ESG exposure scores to demonstrate how environmentally sustainable they are. 
  That is why we have organised a speak-out for climate justice this Friday, the 28th of November to maintain the pressure. We cannot allow for the green-washing and climate vandalism carried out in our name. Or turn the demands for climate justice and debt relief from the Global South into “feel good” opportunities for the Global North to give paltry sums in “charity.” Despite the platitudes offered by elite institutions and state actors (be it ANU’s Socially Responsible Investment reporting, the Australian Labor Party, or those convening COP27) to set out tentative and non-enforceable targets, we are witnessing an unchecked expansion of fossil fuel extraction. Meanwhile millions of lives are already in the throes of disaster, their homes washed away, their farmlands and infrastructure devastated, with no return to normalcy in sight. This is only just the beginning. It is no longer tenable to discuss the climate crisis in terms of a projected future – when this future is already upon us.
  Heba is a Pakistani student at ANU and Nick is a member of Socialist Alternative.
  This article was written on the stolen land of the Ngunawal, Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. We pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty has not been ceded. There is no climate justice without Indigenous justice.

  Nick Reich

• Radicalism and Excuses in the Climate Movement

  April 29, 2020 7:31 pm Comments Off on Radicalism and Excuses in the Climate Movement

  What is too often missed in the ‘climate debate’ is the peculiar fact that it is already settled. Just after the 2019 federal election, the Australia Talks national survey recorded the country’s views on climate policy. Even among coalition voters, support for government action was simply overwhelming.  75 percent wanted accelerated development of industries powered by renewable energy, 56 percent supported net zero emissions by 2050, while an impatient 47 percent were for net zero emissions by 2030.
  Australia, however, is still one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters. When the historic Paris agreement was signed in 2016, Australia’s CO2 emissions were greater than that of either the United Kingdom, Italy or France. If current policies continued, Australian emissions would well exceed the treaty’s requirements. 
  On the issue of climate policy, Australian governments have so far had more reasons to be afraid of established interests than they have had reasons to be afraid of their own constituents. The climate movement can only find success by reversing that relationship.
  Australia’s history with action on climate change is inseparable from the power and intervention of special interest groups. The three big climate policies Australian governments have wished to enact – Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), Gillard’s Clean Energy Act (Carbon Tax), and Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG) – all either won consensus or became enacted, before swiftly being rejected.
  Punishment for daring to take action was most severe following the Gillard government’s Clean Energy Act. Inspired by the 22-million-dollar anti-mining tax scheme that brought down Kevin Rudd, in 2011 an industry campaign was launched that would deride the Clean Energy Act as ‘the carbon tax’. The national rhetoric subsequently devolved into sexism and misinformation. On March 23 2011, in a moment that Julia Gillard later said “should have killed Tony Abbott’s career”, posters plastered with offensive slogans including “Ditch the Witch” and “Juliar… Bob…. Brown’s Bitch” were used as a backdrop to a speech Abbott gave at an anti-carbon tax rally.
  Radical socialists may be off-putting, but those on the other extreme are already in parliament.
  For both the ETS and NEG, bipartisan support was reached before the Liberal party would rearrange itself in favour of factions tilted against taking action. In 2009, after then leader of the opposition Malcolm Turnbull had agreed to the Rudd government’s ETS, a leadership spill was called that saw climate sceptic Tony Abbott take the reins. On his first day as leader of the Liberal party, Abbott had his party vote against the ETS in the senate causing the legislation to fail. When Malcolm Turnbull proposed the NEG in 2018, Coalition MPs who were threatening to cross the floor ignited the leadership spill that brought him down. This was at a time when 54 percent of Australians felt tackling climate change was justified even if it involved “significant costs”, while only nine percent were unsure if it really were a problem. Going into the 2019 election, Labor went so far as to adopt the NEG into its own energy policy.
  For the Liberal Party, avoiding action on climate change has caused immense internal instability while alienating most Australians. Despite this, the rewards to the party’s climate sceptic wing have been lucrative. Take the support of think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs. With its $2 million annual budget, it has “supported just about all” of the “serious sceptics in Australia”, according to its executive director John Roskam. Its funding doubled leading into the 2013 election where climate change was a key issue, and the organisation has received at least $4.5 million from Gina Rinehart, a mining magnate with $14.5 billion in assets. 
  This money translates to reach throughout the media. The IPA’s former chairman (as she prefers to be called) Janet Albrechtsen has a prominent column in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian. Sky News hosts, Murdoch columnists, and senior members of the Liberal party have been closely affiliated. Sky News host Paul Murray has used his show to call for joining the organisation, while fellow Sky News host, writer for the Herald Sun and breacher of the Racial Discrimination Act Andrew Bolt MC’d the organisation’s 70th anniversary.  It works to turn cold cash into political influence. Its publications muddy the waters around climate change, providing cover to the hard-line wings of the Liberal party.
  As young people, we are faced with a political system that is more scared of the few that stand to benefit than the many that stand to lose. Given the circumstances, we are forced to ask what we can do to try to make a difference.
  Firstly, we must realise the need to act has nothing to do with our like or dislike of some political group or philosophy. The need to act comes fully formed from our own self-interest, while the temptation to sit back comes either from a distrust in the scientific method or a disinterest in our own wellbeing. Asserting anything short of anthropogenic climate change causing a painful inconvenience to humanity for centuries to come would require proving a monumental conspiracy between all the world’s major scientific organisations. A conspiracy to stage the moon landings would be easier to pull off by a few orders of magnitude. On this issue, we are all united, whether we like each other or not.
  Action will involve coming together to find ways to make us, the constituents and members of this democracy, more frightening a force than the established interests that oppose us.
  Protests are critical as they put a physical presence behind the movement, eliciting wider sympathy. The more diverse and united a protest, the more identification and support from the public is obtained. Mass protests provide a means to counter the media advantage of established interests. Furthermore, protests make constituents more threatening by causing an honest inconvenience. Activities such as walking through city centres, blocking major roads and organising further action lays the groundwork for governments to pay more attention to the political views of their constituents.
  Alternatively, established interests can be weakened by using our time, talents and platforms to counter narratives targeting action on climate change. For progressives, this may mean aiming for internships at think tanks instead of big four corporations, researching the environmental records of companies that wish to present on campus, or creating concise pamphlets that explain scientific concepts such as the greenhouse effect. For conservatives, this may mean refusing to accept material that proliferates pseudoscience.
  The movement is not helped by suggesting inaction would cease if only someone had the bravery to present a ‘pragmatic’ solution. From Rudd’s ETS to Gillard’s Clean Energy Act to Turnbull’s NEG, Australia has had plenty of ‘pragmatic solutions’ to climate action fail, not due to lack of consensus, but often because of explicit involvement by groups tied to industry or purchased media.
  It does not help to believe in a supposed powerlessness that justifies inaction. If us university students posed no threat, there would be no need for organisations such as the IPA to run programs targeted at sowing doubt over climate action among young people. Free pamphlets, brochures, media contacts and organisational support through groups such as Generation Liberty would not be available if what happened on campus did not matter. As young people we form the next generation of leaders, and have the power to define what it means to be seen as visionary or future-focused.
  There is merit in saying that a coherent message from young people is prevented by a movement seen only as the radical ravings of revolutionary reds. The trope of the excessively bombastic and deficiently self-aware Marxist is nothing new. George Orwell, while advocating for socialism in The Road to Wigan Pier, described a stereotype of bearded, sandal-wearing, fruit juice-drinking, yoga-practicing, vegetarian, middle-class socialists “of the cocksure Marx quoting-type” being a major impediment to the movement gaining wider sympathy. Yet, he felt “for the present one must just set one’s teeth and ignore them” as “they will loom much smaller when the movement has been humanized.”
  The existence of fringe groups is not to blame for the lack of action on climate change. If the rest of us faced the alienating air of protests not with resignation, but perseverance, the problems presented by the fringes would disappear by dilution alone. It is not their radicalism, but the excuses of the rest of us that has allowed them to define the movement.
   
  All opinions expressed above are the author’s own.

  Anonymous

• The Climate Strike Movement at ANU is in need of urgent reform

  April 1, 2020 6:29 pm Comments Off on The Climate Strike Movement at ANU is in need of urgent reform

  CONTENT WARNING: Climate Change
  Ever since Greta Thunberg famously sat outside the Swedish Parliament holding a protest sign in August 2018, the School Strike for Climate movement has positioned itself as the voice of young people around the world. Over the past eighteen months, millions of students globally have taken to the streets to speak out about the climate emergency and the unjust impacts it will have on current and future generations. University students have also jumped on board, with Uni Students for Climate Justice recently holding a climate strike at the ANU on March 13.
  However, even as a left-wing progressive who believes that the climate crisis is a real and imminent threat requiring immediate action, I question whether this student-led movement truly speaks for us.
  Having attended this most recent climate strike held at the ANU, I believe we need to seriously consider just how welcoming this movement is and what role it plays in mobilising and unifying young Australians.
  Those leading the climate strike movement, at least within the ANU, do not speak on behalf of the majority of Australian youth, but for the minority who believe in radical action such as ‘revolution’ and the total overhaul of Australia’s political system and societal structures in general. It is important that we have an honest and frank discussion about the future role of the climate strike movement in our democracy, and whether in its current form it can unite Australian public opinion in favour of climate action.
  A radical and discriminatory climate strike movement at the ANU that seeks to marginalise anyone who doesn’t think that full scale class warfare and revolution is the solution to this crisis is perhaps doing more to harm the push for climate action in this country than progress it.
  Like many Australians – and most young people – I am a pragmatist.  
  We need a solution that brings Australians together, rather than dividing a healing country recovering from a horrific summer of bushfires. To achieve this, we need a social movement that is equally unifying and welcomes all people from across the political spectrum. 
  After all, no matter whether you’re Liberal or Labor, conservative or progressive, we are all going to be impacted by the climate crisis, and we should all feel like we are accepted and included in the solution-building process.
  To solve climate change, we need to propose solutions that every Australian can get behind, not just those who see the radical overhaul of our entire political system as the sole option. The climate strike movement should be one that is welcoming of anyone and everyone who believes that the climate crisis is real and wants to see action.
  Beliefs relating to other social issues should not be brought into the picture. It is then that this movement becomes divisive and unhelpful, by moving the focus away from the true issue at stake: the climate emergency. At the climate strike on March 13, extremely tenuous links – and sometimes no links at all – were made between climate change and how Australia is inadequately equipped to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. I for one found it difficult to draw the connection between the need for climate action and how the Canberra Hospital ICU unit “only has 144 beds.”
  I generally consider myself to be left-wing on almost every single issue and support most of the policies of our progressive parties. But even I myself was alienated and disappointed by the fact that the rally on March 13 centred not around the climate crisis, but overthrowing the capitalist elite.
  Bringing other social issues into the mix is not the role of the climate strike movement. The leaders of the Uni Students for Climate Justice movement cannot expect to see public opinion shift in its favour when rallies that are purported as relating to climate action instead discuss radical revolution.
  Young people are not all socialists. We aren’t all radical idealists. The majority of us want to see progressive, yet pragmatic solutions, that are actually achievable within our current system.
  The climate strike movement is already one which many approach with a mixed sense of apprehension and tentativeness. March 13 was the first time I attended a climate rally and I was unsure what to expect. The event had been promoted by members of the Socialist Alternative (SAlt) group at the ANU, which made me hesitant to participate, but I decided that I had a responsibility to attend, as someone who is passionate about environmental issues and tackling climate change.
  Yet, I did not decide to attend an anti-capitalist, ‘anti-anyonewho’snotasocialist’ rally that claimed the climate crisis was about “class interests” and that we should “burn bosses, not coal,” as was stated on a sign placed directly beneath where the speakers stood on March 13. This suggested that the slogan was clearly endorsed by leadership, including the ANUSA Environment Officer who was MC for the event.
  If the solution is going to be inclusive, so should the movement. The climate strike movement will not build support and traction through making people feel uncomfortable and excluded. It should welcome people of all beliefs, united under a common goal of achieving climate action. Radicalism is not going to bring people together from all sides of politics, nor will it solve a problem that is already politicised and divisive enough as it is.
  Although many in the climate strike movement suggest that politics should be taken out of this issue and the government should simply act, its leaders at the ANU continue to promote a partisan fight between the far-left and the rest.
  One speaker at the event on March 13 stated that “the climate change movement needs to stand in solidarity.”
  Solidarity is a term that refers to ‘unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest.’
  By this definition, what those leading the climate strike movement at the ANU want is far from solidarity. The movement they have created is staggeringly partisan, exclusive and divisive, not to mention downright aggressive. Even as a progressive myself, I felt like an outsider who could not engage with the content of the event.
  It is not solidarity if people who share your interests and goals, yet don’t want a revolution, are not made to feel welcome at your events. The climate change movement will not stand in solidarity until people who are conservatives, yet care about environmental issues (people with similar ideology to MP Zali Steggall, for example), people who are progressives but not socialists, and those who are wary supporters of the movement yet have fears about how economical the transition to renewables will be, for example, are made to feel a part of the process and a part of the solution.
  I have friends who are members of the Liberal Party who want to see their government do more on climate change. These are people who share the same goal as those within the climate strike movement, yet would never attend a rally themselves due to their partisan and unwelcoming nature. I have other friends who share similar progressive and left-wing views to myself who wanted to attend, but were put off by the fact that it was promoted by SAlt.
  Anti-Labor and anti-Liberal tirades put the majority of university students offside, as does vague and irrelevant talk of class consciousness and overthrowing capitalism, and members of SAlt handing out their brochures during the rally. Climate rallies are not the place for promoting a socialist agenda.
  The leaders of the climate strikers at the ANU are not helping themselves by creating such an aggressive and narrow-minded movement. They have made themselves an easy target for criticism, and can be simply dismissed as radicals and socialists on the fringe of society rather than an integral part of the climate change discussion.
  The best way to influence others is by making them feel comfortable, valued, welcome and included. A group dominated by radical ‘Fuck ScoMo’ t-shirt wearing socialists cannot do this. This movement necessitates welcoming people from all sides of Parliament. To truly influence the national political discourse, conservatives and progressives alike who believe in climate action should be brought into the picture.
  On March 13, after listening to the speeches, I decided not to march into the city.
  The ANUSA Environment Officer has an important role to play in ensuring climate change is not a divisive issue, but one that all ANU students can engage with. 
  Yes, the majority of people want climate action.
  But the majority of us are not socialists.
  We do not believe in a revolution.
  The climate strike movement at the ANU is radically political, and should prioritise bringing more people into the conversation rather than cancelling them out.
  And if this movement does not reform into one that is unifying, accepting and inclusive, soon, we will lose belief in the power of activism to bring people together to create real change in this nation.
   

  Anonymous