Sixteen years ago, on this day, July 13th, 2008 some nice direct action (albeit symbolic) took place.
July 13 & 14, 2008: Newcastle, NSW, Australia Climate Camp stops coal trains at worlds’ largest coal export port
On July 13, 2008 approximately 1000 activists stopped three trains bound for export at the Carrington Coal Terminal for almost six hours. Dozens of protesters were able to board and chain themselves to the trains while others lay across the tracks. Hundreds were held back by mounted police. Police arrested 57.[19] Sunday 13th July 2008: 1000 people gathered at Islington Park in Newcastle for a rally and march to the Carrington Coal Terminal. It was a colourful and eclectic crowd of local residents, parents and children, percussionists, clowns, students, and concerned citizens from every state in Australia. Their message was simple and clear: let’s see renewables instead of more new coal.
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/community-protest-stops-coal-trains-all-day 2008 Climate Camp Australia demo
Climate Camp Australia 2008
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that Newcastle is the biggest export terminal for Australian coal mined in the Hunter Valley. It had been growing and growing all through the 90s and noughties because Australia was selling more and more coal and screw the planet who cares. And I remember seeing just how long those cold frames were, filled to the brim. Anyway, this was the first Australian climate camp inspired by English Climate Camp in summer of 2006. Some people got arrested, some people got injured. The issue got flagged, some code was delayed.
What we learn is that putting your bodies in the gears of the machine is very painful. And really fruit to work. You’d need a bigger boat load of people.As per Chief Brody, “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
What happened next? It’s a repertoire that the Australian coal protesters have returned to again, because it gets news coverage because it reminds them of their own power because it’s the right thing to do. But I refer you to yesterday’s rant about how doomed we are…
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.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, July 12th,2009 there was a spat that Al Gore was expected to referee.
WHEN climate change guru Al Gore arrives in Melbourne today, he will find a conservation movement in vitriolic disagreement with itself.
A split has developed between the country’s preeminent environmental organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), and a bloc of other green lobbyists over the foundation’s public support for the Rudd Government’s carbon trading scheme.
Bachelard, M. 2009. Feuding climate camps seek Gore blessing. Sunday Age, 12 July , p.8
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Rudd Government had been trying to get support for its ridiculous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And they’d found it at least with the so-called Southern Crust coalition, led by the ACTU, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. But all the other green groups thought that this was an outrageous sell out. Ambition was too low. And that Rudd should be resisted. It was your fairly standard. NGO fight between people who are determined to keep their place in the room where the decisions are made, and are willing to carry water and get out and defend the indefensible versus those who weren’t in the inside of the room or didn’t want to be on the inside of the room, or were willing to be on the inside of the room as long as they weren’t being used as fig leaves. It’s a pattern you see over and over again. Anyway, apparently, Al Gore was being expected to resolve the dispute. I don’t know if he did.
What we learn from this is that the same patterns over and over again, for understandable reasons. It’s mildly entertaining that Gore should be regarded as a fair actor. I guess he had prestige. And he didn’t have skin in the game instantly. But to expect Gore to come on down on the side of people pushing for higher ambition or maybe. I mean, this was only three years after An Inconvenient Truth, after all.
What happened next? Rudd’s legislation was introduced for a second time in November 2009. It fell thanks to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and the Greens possibly in that order, and then had to be introduced again in 2011 by Julia Gillard, the far superior parliamentarian but everything was in pieces and it all went tits up. Not that it would have mattered, I guess, really? I mean, we’re doomed. We have been doomed for a long time. It’s just taking us a while to catch up with that fact.
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.
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, July 12th, 1996, COP2
GENEVA, July 12 (Reuter) – Top specialists on the effects of global warming on human health on Friday accused energy corporations of working to undermine international efforts to halt climate change.
The attack came amid growing controversy at a two-week United Nations conference on how far to limit “greenhouse gas” emissions, mainly from burning of oil and coal, blamed by key scientists for rising world temperatures.
“The fossil fuel lobby is beginning to behave like the tobacco industry did 30 years ago, as adverse health effects of smoking first emerged,” Anthony McMichael of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said.
“It is using a typical rearguard action, through attempts at distortion, delaying tactics and making enough noise to drown out the arguments for strong moves by the world’s political leaders to cut emissions,” he told a news conference.
1996 – Evans, R. 1996 Doctors hit energy groups over global warming. Reuters News 12th July
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 363ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that COP1 had finished with the so-called Berlin Mandate, which meant rich nations were going to have to come to Kyoto with an agreement to reduce their emissions. The new federal government in Australia was distinctly unimpressed. And so was industry, which had seen off a domestic carbon tax and had it replaced with a meaningless Greenhouse Challenge probably saw no reason why that same victory couldn’t be repeated on the international stage. Yes, you’d have to ignore brown people living in low lying countries and islands. But that was hardly difficult.
What we learn is that fossil fuel interests had had successes domestically, and had every confidence that they could repeat that internationally. And it turns out, sadly, for our species, and all the other species on this beautiful planet, that their confidence was well-founded. They managed to gut the ambition and the Kyoto Protocol. And they’ve managed to keep winning. Now, they were joined in this by inertia, complacency, neoliberalism, whatever set of explanations, nouns you want to use. But they were a key factor in making sure nothing significant got done. And they were very, very good at doing that.
What happened next? Australia carved out an incredibly generous deal at Kyoto in 1997. And then, still refused to ratify. When they finally did in 2007 it was a meaningless gesture. The sort of thing that Kevin Rudd excelled at. Actually doing policy and implementation, he found somewhat more challenging.
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.
Thirty years ago, on this day, July 11th, 1994, it turns out promises are easier than delivery
Environment Minister John Faulkner says the Federal Government won’t be able to tell if it can meet its targets on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until August….
On Monday’s ABC Lateline program, Senator Faulkner said the government will have a better idea when statistics on levels of greenhouse gas emissions are released in August.
Anon. 1994. Greenhouse performance uncertain. Green Week, July 15, p.5. [Lateline show will have been Monday 11th July]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Faulkner hadn’t been in his post long. And Australian climate policy was a complete freaking mess. Anyway, there wasn’t one, except for the meaningless National Greenhouse Response Strategy, which was a watered down consolation prize for the Ecologically Sustainable Development process.
What we learn is that even on the most important issue of all time, there was an incredibly lackadaisical “yeah, whatever doesn’t matter” attitude. And this really is the fault of Paul Keating. As prime minister, that’s where the buck stops.
What happened next is when the first emissions report did come out, it showed that surprise, surprise, emissions had not gone down, but continued to go up. And this was a problem both for the Rio stabilisation target of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. But also, there was still supposed to be the “minus 20% by 2005” of the Toronto target, agreed in October 1990. Faulkner, then, proposed a carbon tax which was defeated.
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.
And, in the long list of more vivid and salient problems around water, oil, species loss etc etc, there was this –
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that various scientists had been getting worried about carbon dioxide build-up. There wasn’t really an “epistemic community” about it yet (though that would come, soon enough). But they were getting it onto the agendas, and into the reports of various three and four letter acronym bodies, both UN and ICSU. And, at that time, of course, the US of A, before it went apeshit on these isssues, from the early 1980s onwards.
What we learn
We knew enough to be worried, two generations ago.
What happened next:
In December 1968 the UN General Assembly agreed to Sweden’s proposal for a conference on the Human Environment. It was held in June 1972. It would take another 16 years for climate change to actually get the attention it deserved. All that wasted time, in which not only was more carbon dioxide poured into the sewer we call an atmosphere, but – crucially – infrastructure and momentum to suicide were built. And here we are.
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, July 10th, 1996, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story about the NGAP report, saying it had ignored the tricky issue of climate change.
The day before, the Australian had had this –
FUEL and power subsidies, poor planning and political inaction have slowed Australia’s drive to cut its greenhouse emissions, a government advisory panel has warned.
The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, representing industry, conservation, science and community sectors, has advised the Federal and State governments to consider imposing firm targets for greenhouse reductions in the manufacturing, agriculture, transport and household sectors.
It has urged governments to start planning for the effects of higher temperatures and rising sea levels caused by global warming next century.
NGAP’s chairman, Professor Paul Greenfield of the University of Queensland, yesterday said the panel’s two-year review of Australia’s official greenhouse policy had identified “shortfalls”. “There needs to be a bit of revitalisation in the response,” he told The Australian, on the eve of United Nations negotiations in Geneva for a new climate change treaty.
“I think it has slowed down a bit. It’s not that it’s all been totally a disaster, but it’s fair to say not a lot has happened.”
Statistics due to be released today show that Australia’s greenhouse emissions rose 3 per cent last year – in breach of an international target to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to 1990 levels by 2000.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the NGAP was set up in June 1994, when Labor Environment Minister John Faulkner was trying to show he ‘got it’ and gave a damn. The Howard Government had come in, in March, and had taken a chainsaw with it to COP-2 in Switzerland and the National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, which, to be fair, was merely advisory, not statutory and so could be (and was) easily ignored.
What we learn is that there’s a real risk to you if you get involved in these advisory panels that you’ll be used as a fig leaf and then presented with a choice of “shut up and be still be in the room with the big powerful people, but lose all credibility beyond” or “walk and be accused of spitting the dummy and not understanding how politics is done,” when in actual fact you understand all too well; you have the brains but not the stomach for the lies and evasions and bullshit.
What happened next? The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel was killed off a few years later and was not mourned or missed.
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.
Twenty years ago, on this day, July 9th, 2004, popular conservationist David Bellamy made a complete fool of himself.
David Bellamy – Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we’ve had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere – and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist – will blame the weather on global warming. (Daily Mail, 9 July 2004)
Gavin et al.: Climate change, flooding and the media in Britain Public Understand. Sci. 20(3) (2011) 422–438
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that David Bellamy was suffering a certain amount of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. His star had waned since the 1980s. And along with a lot of other curmudgeonly old white men, he couldn’t bring himself to see that because fossil fuels have given us such power they’re also deadly. One of the ironies is that Bellamy pops up in a 1984 documentary called “What to do about CO2?”, directed by Russell Porter. And a mere 90 seconds into that, he gives a concise and compelling summary of… the greenhouse effect.
What we learn is that just because someone’s on television, banging on about nature doesn’t actually mean they’re capable of seeing the really Big Picture. They, like everyone else, have their blind spots, because they’re human.
What happened next? Shortly after (in April 2005) Bellamy made a tragic miscalculation about ice glacier melt. George Monbiot, eviscerated him and basically ended his career, something he was bitter about, till he died.
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.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, July 8th, 1970, a crucial new US state organisation came into existence.
Environmental Protection Agency formed. President Nixon works with Congress to establish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a new Federal agency primarily responsible for United States environmental policy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Nixon at the beginning of 1970, had signed the Environmental Protection Act. Democrats had been pushing for this for years. That hadn’t happened under Lyndon Johnson. He was too busy fighting the Vietnam War and then trying to extricate himself and so, it happened on Nixon’s watch, and people around Nixon are happy for him to take the credit. But he doesn’t deserve any. Nixon had looked at environmental issues as a chance to distract attention from that war in Vietnam. See his early 1969 speech for the North Atlantic Council, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memos and so forth, none of which had entirely convinced West Germany. And the British had probably thought to themselves, “are they trying to play Athens to their own Sparta?”
What we learn is that politicians are cynical bastards. I hope you were sitting down when you read that.
What happened next? The EPA is still with us, despite the efforts of Republicans to kill it off, especially in the early 80s, when they went too hard and in public and basically stepped on a rake. Slow defunding, and stripping of its powers is a more clever way of doing it. Leave the husk there. That doesn’t satisfy the real culture wars lunatics who need a bloody corpse.
EPA should be included as a page in the list of organisations, of course it should. Other Greatest Hits as it tried to say that under Bush Jr. had tried to save the carbon dioxide wasn’t a pollutant. And then it was 2003. And then in 2007, the Supreme Court had said you don’t get away with that. But I think it was Massachusetts under Mitt Romney, who had forced that case there.
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.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, July 7th, 1969, Newsweek was pointing to the environmental problems humans had created. Including CO2 build-up.
The article, the Good Earth, by John G. Mitchell, is based in part on a UNESCO conference and statement in May of the same year.
“Transparent to sunlight but opaque to the earth’s radiation, a blanket of moisture and carbon dioxide could conceivably raise the surface temperatures of the earth enough to melt the polar icepacks and raise sea levels 300 feet. Even 200 feet would inundate New York, Boston and most of Florida.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the environment movement, and Malthusian moment had begun. You can say January 28 1969, when the Santa Barbara oil spill happened. Then a couple of months later People’s Park had kicked off in Berkeley. And so newspapers could and magazines could fill up on hand wringing pearl clutching surveys like this one. And they could do if they so chose, illustrate it all with a picture of Earthrise. And throw in some guff about “our fragile planet” “our imperilled Earth”, whatever, this stuff writes itself.
What we learn is that by 1969, everyone who was reading this stuff was aware that CO2 was probably an issue whether they agreed with it or not.
What happened next? Newsweek and Time kept running the stuff. Senators started calling for it to be written into the record. In September of ‘69. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced Earth day. I think this was the brainchild of Dennis Hayes. Anyway, Hayes ran it. And everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya and achieved not very much. Or rather – some knew what was at stake and did their best, but “normal life” resumed….
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.
This rather brilliant post, by the newly-minted Dr Dena Arya, appeared on the website of the Political Studies Association. I have Dr Arya’s permission to repost it. Please read it. It eloquently raises many of the questions that face precarious ECRs.
12 June 2024
After six years of perseverance and determination, nourished by the love and support of my communities, I have completed my PhD. I must confess I have daydreamed about writing that post – the one where I tag my examiners, my supervisors, my mentors and bask for just a moment in the glory of ‘likes’, ‘shares’, and praises. A virtual homecoming where I can finally be recognised for my proverbial blood sweat and tears – having shared my ideas with the world ready to stand proud amongst my peers who made it over the finish line – to the land of early career researchers.
But I am yet to write that ‘glory tweet’. The next few paragraphs are not going to tell my personal story of academic success – rather I hope that this blog might be read by others who have lessons to share with me so that I can learn how to ‘do something’ about the predicament I find myself in.
Since September 2022, with the murder of Jina Amini which sparked the Zan Zendegi Azadi (Women Life Freedom) movement in Iran – the online space shifted for me. In the winter of ’22, as a member of the Iranian diaspora, and at the time teaching a module on the politics of youth resistance, suddenly online protest space was no longer something abstract, theoretical or removed. In real time I began to watch the bravery of young people back home risking their lives and standing up for each other – many lost their lives dreaming of a better tomorrow. For months my research, my thesis, my PhD seemed futile, I felt purposeless and all I could do was scroll as day turned to night and watch young people, often women, risk everything for a slither of possibility that their singing, dancing, hair, art, bodies could carry others beyond the brutality they faced.
After some months, I could no longer watch. I did what I could where I could, but nothing felt good enough. My contributions felt empty and the pain of watching too severe – so I stopped watching and went back to my theories, concepts and eventually the movement fell into a period of lull. A year went by and I submitted my thesis – and then came October 7th and the now eight months of catastrophe that people surviving in struggle in Palestine are living through.
This time, I could not watch. This horror is beyond my body’s capabilities to simply bear witness to. So, I do what I can where I can and I carry on living my life. A freedom that many surviving in struggle through the multiple monstruous genocides across the planet can only dream.
My life goes on and I pass my viva. I submit my corrections – I have spent six years reading, thinking, writing and exploring with young people the role of intersectional inequalities in their climate action. I publish papers, I attend talks, I experience, in my little world successes – I am the first person in my family to get a doctorate. My father who dedicated his life to nourishing my critical mind is proud of me. This is a reason to celebrate.
But how do we celebrate success in the face of horror as early career researchers?
And so what of our role is as academics, researchers, scholars, intellectuals (whatever term floats your boat) In the commodified academy where you can be as justice orientated and radically left as you like as long as you bring in the REF scores? How do we ensure that we don’t become the ‘left wing intelligencia’ that simply critiques horror from the side lines? How do we ‘do the doing’ of scholar activism in an academy that was never meant to be a place where political community, social movements, resistance or change happened? How do we subvert power in a thought factory that benefits from our labour?
Then I remember that, in spite of the very nature of the academy, when people come together and break out of their atomisation there is possibility. I suppose Foucault might have called that ‘power to/power with’.
I think about what I have learnt from great thinkers and political creators like hooks, Freire, Fanon, Davis and Truth. I think about the encampments in support of Palestine where students and academics across the world area standing together and risking their bodies, their livelihoods and their careers to stand up for those who are not able to stand up for themselves in the face of megaton bombs, warheads and fighter jets. And I ask myself – what is my role? How can I contribute from within the academy?
We all know that early career researchers occupy second class citizen status in academia – then there are those who are racially minoritised, working class, differently abled, or gender oppressed. We take short term precarious contracts anywhere we can, jump for joy at opportunities which promise to elevate our status but which in reality are free labour – all the while we sit alone at our desks wondering how to jump through the next hoop.
In no way of course am I insinuating that the experiences of ECRs, many of whom live in the relative safety of Global Minority locales, can be compared to the immeasurable pain and suffering that exists globally as a result of the mechanisms of a global hegemony that prides itself of racialised patriarchal capitalism that exploits people and planet for profit.
But, whilst I count up my successes and wonder how to share them, I also reflect on how we within academies across the world are supposed to make sense of our purpose. I left grassroots organising and community engagement to try and be a more useful member of the collective struggle – hoping that I could find it in academia.
I have indeed found communities of care, people who are willing to stand up and speak out: dedicators, strugglers, fighters and dreamers. In and amongst the conveyer belt of commodification of intellectualism there is a beautiful thread that ties so many of us together that I like to see as a shared experience of injustice and a striving for transformation – from the minute to the mountainous.
Thinking, understanding, participating in collective and self-education – developing our critical consciousness is dangerous to the system. If it wasn’t so dangerous I suppose Gramsci would have been allowed access to a pen in the first years of his solitary confinement in prison.
So perhaps with that in mind, and in honouring the innumerable students across the world from Palestine, the Congo, Sudan, Ukraine who no longer have universities within which to complete their PhD’s, I owe it to them to celebrate my success – as all of our wins belong to each other and are for each other’s tomorrow.
Author Biography:
Dr Dena Arya, Nottingham Trent University and the PSA’s Young People’s Politics Specialist Group Convenor, is an expert in conducting focus groups on climate change issues and who has worked with Professor Henn on recent projects for the Nottingham City Council.
