Eleven years ago, on this day, November 12, 2012, the Queensland Resources Council got their retaliation in first…
Greenpeace hysteria threatens communities
Nov 12 2012
An internationally-funded campaign to shut down Queensland’s export coal industry was relying on exaggeration and misrepresentation in a bid to undermine regional communities, the Queensland Resources Council (QRC) told a conference in Brisbane today.
https://www.qrc.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=3185
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 394ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Queensland Resources Council members knew that there was lots of money to be made in digging up and exporting stuff. And they didn’t like Greenpeace getting between them and their profits. And rather than argue the facts or talk about what the economy of the 21st century would need to be they decided – inevitably – to smear Greenpeace and use the lovely code word “hysterical,” which is always very gendered. Men don’t get called hysterical or possibly only homosexual men. And what they’re trying to do here is say that extractivism is man’s work.
What I think we can learn from this
The gender aspect of this stuff (framing opponents as ‘hysterical) is worth considering (Cara Daggett etc).
What happened next
The attacks on environmentalists continued and escalated. Even WWF was in the firing line soon enough. And of course, the Queensland Government sat there and facilitated evermore mining. Of course it did.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.