Category: Activism

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Activism Event Report

Getting to the NEB of the issue: The National Emergency Briefing and what is to be done.

Last November eight experts made short presentations to hundreds of people gathered in Westminster Hall, London.

The topic? The climate and biodiversity emergencies that have been unfolding for decades now (the biodiversity crisis for centuries, tbf).

It was the National Emergency Briefing on climate & nature.

Well, now that has been turned into a documentary, with film showings in Europe and the rest of the world being encouraged. I went to a film showing last week in Adelaide.

In this short (ymmv) blog post I am going to talk about the film and what is missing from it, and what needs to be done now, (without holding out more than net zero hope that it will be).

What is good in the film

One is that it is short – 50 minutes is a nice round number.

All of the presentations are good (several are better than good). The presenters don’t waffle, they don’t batter people over the head with jargon.

What is cringe

NB I am not the target demographic, but the ‘Gogglebox’ side of things (cutting away to reaction shots, ‘chummy’ conversations on sofas with performative swearing was …. cringe. A mix of celebs (Deborah Meaden, Jennifer Saunders) and Joe and Jane Punter (mercifully not all white home counties). I understand why they did it, and maybe it is landing with other people. What the hell do I know.

What is ‘bad’/problematic in the film

I don’t know the order of the presentations, I suspect it more or less followed what appears in the film. The first five are ‘here is the nature of the shit we are in’. The last two are much more ‘but things are being done/can be done’. I TOTALLY get that you need to have some kind of arc, some kind of call to action. But you also need to remind people of the scale of the challenge and the need for much much more action at all levels of society. My fear is that those last two presentations will allow people to tick the box marked ‘I at least informed myself and anyway, things could get better.’ I wish there had been some sort of acknowledgement of this dynamic (which has played out repeatedly already).  Which brings us to

What is missing

Fifty minutes is not long, and if you’re trying to give all the speakers a fair shake, then, understandably you are going to end up with a certain “present-ism.”


But we really need to step back and see three things.


First, that the biodiversity crisis has been going on for a very very long time (hundreds of years). I may be wrong, but I didn’t hear anyone say ‘Sixth Extinction’.

Second, we should remember that Thatcher was told about carbon dioxide build-up repeatedly, from 1979 (that’s not a typo) onwards until finally making her pivotal speech in September 1988, and that until very recently there was an all-party consensus on the need for ‘urgent’ climate action.  And that there really wasn’t, once you take out the accounting tricks, much real UK action (Prof Kevin Anderson – a friend – nailed this, as he always does). So, it’s not as if our Lords and Masters weren’t dimly aware (and some of them are very dim) of the issue. It may be that information is not the actual problem here. 

Third that there have been repeated spasms (or, if you’re being less pejorative and more shiny happy) “waves” of concern about environmental matters.  The first big one was in the late 1960s through to the early 1970s.  Then another one between 1988 to 1992, then another from 2006 to 2009, and then one from 2018 to about 2020, when Covid came along and fried everyone’s brain. Alongside this we have seen states learn how to insulate themselves from public pressures. 


I have written about this a lot.  The two pieces I wish folks would read were these

There’s a third article I think is okay – Dear New Climate Activist (written 2018). And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole there are these about XR’s moment of maximum danger and a debate about whether it has (well, had) the right tactics. 

The point is, that social movements really struggle to sustain themselves, but withOUT an energised and engaged civil society, then governments and corporations do business as usual. The same business as usual that is wiping us out. See this from BHP, the world’s biggest mining corporation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/25/bhp-files-internal-memo-revealed

George Monbiot’s latest column (May 27) is about the current government insulating itself from all critiques, all civil society input. It’s a good column but it too (for the same reasons as the film, mostly) also neglects to join the historical dots. There 

So, two final things.

The film calls on people to do three things

1.Spread the word

2. Join a group near you

3. Keep the pressure on the government


Hmmm.  That number two is – for a whole host of reasons – really really difficult. Groups fall apart, fingers and hearts get burned, and not in a ‘phoenix will rise’ kinda way, but in a ‘where shall we spread the ashes while singing a dirge?’ kinda way. If we are not honest abou t


The idea of film showings is great, but I have real concerns about how well this is executed.

The film showings MUST be short (intro, 50 minutes and then at most 40 minutes of other people, including a well-facilitated Q&A that is not (I repeat, NOT) dominated by speeches-’disguised’-as-questions from the usual suspects.

There are some really simple facilitation/meeting design techniques that can help with this, but I don’t see them being used anywhere, and I have my own reasons for believing it won’t happen (call me a cynic).

From 2014 – Meetings are institutionally sexist

From 2017 – We’ve got to stop meeting like this.

In their absence, new people will not get a word in edgeways, and the whole thing will be dominated by the usual suspects with – likely – the usual results.

(See also the aftermath of “The Age of Stupid” in 2008, “This Changes Everything” in 2014, Don’t Look Up etc etc (there have been some so bad I have tried to expunge them from my memory, a la Men In Black and the memory wand thing). There is an article to be written – “Documentary films/satires as tools of social change? Well, they could be, but not on their own…”)

Further reading

Interview with Abi Perrin: “academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire”

Does anyone want me to do a seven minute “presentation I would have given at the NEB if they had asked me” post? If so, I will. If not, I am not sure I can be bothered (yes, I know I should use better bait when fishing for affirmation).

Categories
Activism Australia

“Bravadic hope” – the emotacycle, the 585 dead trees, and what next.

The “Stop the Chop” rally last night on the steps of Parliament House, on North Terrace, was at least as large as the one nine days earlier, before 585 trees got chopped down.

I have no doubt that many (most) who attended went feeling happy, energized (though how long that persists, we will come back to). Me, I came away with a very different set of emotions, ranging roughly from despondency to despair (I have learned not to bother, in these instances, with anger (1)).

The song remained, as I thought it would, very much the same.  I wrote this (DO Mourn, then Organise) about the dangers in not facing up to facts about where things were at, and I don’t intend to recap at any length.  The blog quotes Baldwin and Chomsky and is – but I would say this – worth your time.

Instead, I am going to talk about the likely consequences of this missed opportunity to engage people in granular involvement, rather than ‘mass’ engagement.

And I am going to introduce, of course, yet another made up word – this time, an adjective.

[FWIW – I am grappling with ideas about how we think about (collective) emotions in “social movements” and I’d be very happy to hear from people who are thinking about this too, whether they agree or disagree.  I will not engage with trolls, or with smug gaslighters who try to tell me that things happened at the rally that didn’t, in fact, happen.]

What happened?

About 2000 people (and around the same number as last time) gathered on the steps of Parliament House.  There was a better sound system and they heard various speeches telling them things they already knew.

There was no serious acknowledgement of the emotional toll that losing the battle for 585 trees would have had.

There were no concrete specific actions for people to take beyond “sign a petition” (because apparently “they can’t ignore us” except they have) and to turn up either the following morning at some random thing (too short notice) or else on Saturday June 6th in Victoria Park to tie some yellow ribbons around threatened trees.

There was repeated chanting of ‘stop the chop’ (From a biased psychoanalytic perspective it was as if people were willing the past week not to have happened, pretending it hadn’t. Wanting to disappear into a fugue state.

There was repeated claims that the “movement” was growing. The only evidence adduced for this that I heard was that 47000 people had signed a petition (there was, apparently though, a problem with this petition, because a different one – it was not clear for what – was being set up – and people could sign it on the six clipboards circulating).

This put me very much in mind of that line from Casablanca “You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.”

Watch the clip here.

For me, it all comes back, as it did a month ago, when the Australian Conservation Foundation and Conservation Foundation of South Australia co-hosted a shamefully bad event, to the question of what do you think a movement is? To quote myself:

It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.  

If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.

If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.

What was the broader context

The defeat of the “left” and the progressive (NOT the same thing) ecological forces over the last 60 years.  The inability to democratize the state and to stop its total (rather than partial) capture by corporate and technocratic interests, especially in response to the public pressure upsurges of the 1960s and 1970s.

There are lots of factors here. One is the ‘professionalisation’ of campaigning groups and ‘Non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs), so that they become captured by middle-class/tertiary-educated people and  – crucially – the perspectives of those people.  It was fascinating that the “Conservation Council of South Australia” didn’t even bother to send out an email in advance of the rally. They are ducking and covering.


What was the specific context

In 2023 the Malinauskas government passed some absurdly repressive laws (mentioned – and booed – last night) raising the maximum fine for various forms of protest (e.g. trespass) from $750 to $50,000. Well, it worked. As nobody at the rally mentioned, the Australian Energy Producers had just held a conference on North Terrace and bar a few Extinction Rebellion people, nada.

There is a growing sense of loneliness, atomization, despair in the air, and people are quite understandably desperate to congregate with other people who think and feel like them, even if it is only briefly, only futile. It’s apparently ‘better than nothing’.

What do we learn?

Here’s the promised neologisim.  Are you ready?  Bravadic.

Bravado is the noun – meaning blustering swaggering conduct. 

Well, last night felt very much like a display of ‘bravadic hope’, of people gathered, like all the animals of Animal Farm (except the pigs and dogs) to sing ‘Beasts of England’ as a way of soothing themselves. (see here for the Animal Farm quote, and a bonus snark about a terrible student meeting).

Why is this so?  It’s partly because (thanks to fifty plus years of losing) we don’t have expectations or norms about how leaders need to nurture actual movement-building techniques in social movement organisations, during campaigns. It’s always possible to rabble (a)rouse, without helping people develop the tools, spaces, language to cope with inevitable setbacks. Instead, we allow a silence to cover (in the short term) those wounds. (I will write more on this soon, and link to it). We come to think of a campaign as a series of Big Events, rather than granular slogs.  I coined the term emotacycle for just these purposes. What we are seeing here, I reckon, is the peak of an emotacycle. 

What do I think will happen next (NB it’s the future, so wtaf do I know?).

  • The anger and energy on display over the last week will dissipate. Not among everyone, but among enough people to make a serious difference at the level of a ‘movement’. The Saturday June 6th event will be significantly smaller (harder to get to, people have other responsibilities that don’t impinge on a Weds/Friday evening for an hour, people don’t see the point).
  • A feeling of ‘well, I’ll get involved again if I have to closer to the time of the Next Big Threat’ will kick in.
  • The opportunity to do something different, something that actually counts as movement-building, will be (further) squandered.

What needed to happen

There were two thousand people present. I already have written two speeches about what needed to be done. You can read them here and here.

Basically, the expectation needed to be created that those present would not simply go home, but they would get together with people they knew, and think hard about all the things that they could do with existing skills and knowledge, and the other tasks that needed doing, but for which skills and knowledge might be in short supply.  People needed to be told that turning up at a rally now and then, supplemented by signing a petition and being chronically online battling trolls in a Facebook group, Is. Not. Enough.

Footnotes

(1) This not because I have become a more mature or calmer person, but because I have at least managed to massage my expectations down down down).

Categories
Activism Australia

*DO* Mourn, and then Organise

“Don’t mourn, organise”

Joe Hill (of the International Workers of the World)

[Update – speech I won’t give at the bottom of this post]

The American novelist, thinker and civil rights activist James Baldwin wrote, in January 1962, that  “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Ahead of another rally on the steps of Parliament House on Friday 22nd May (5.30 to 6.30), I think we need to face a few facts (as I see them – your mileage may vary).

  1. (It seems to me that ) Malinauskas is in a much stronger position than he was a week ago.

First and foremost, he has completed the chopping down of the trees – there is no physical thing to defend anymore. [update – there may be some remnants, but the major job of work has been done, I think.]

Second, with the help of the Advertiser (of which more in a separate blog post) and all mass media he has painted his opponents as ‘extremists’ and smeared the lot of them (1).  Sure, it won’t have worked as a smear on everyone, but it will have made some people reluctant to engage with future campaigns (the point of it is, after all, to raise the costs of ‘recruitment’ and ‘retention’). This is not new. See this below from 1970, with NSW Premier Robin Askin talking about ‘professional agitators’.

  1. A significant number of people will be (understandably!) demoralised, disenchanted.  This will especially be the case if the rally on Friday is smaller than the 2,000 is who turned up last Wednesday. 

I just read this on Facebook, and I think it is accurate (emphasis added) –

 I know yesterday was disappointing, honestly, the past week has been tough. A lot of us are feeling depleted, angry, depressed.. Just tonight I even ate half a tub of ice cream trying to cope 😬

The point is that those people who were previously engaged in “activism”, or have strong existing sympathetic networks will be better able to deal with those feelings, but those who are – for whatever reason – more isolated, will be having a really really tough time of it.  Grief can easily curdle into cynicism and disengagement.

  1. If Malinauskas is stronger (some will dispute this) and ‘we’ are weaker (some will dispute this) then this makes the campaigns to come (MotoGP, Fracking moratorium) more difficult. Momentum counts for a lot.

Crucially, then, the same mistakes must not be committed.

For me, the rally on Wednesday May 13 was a seriously missed opportunity to get those who attended (and those who didn’t) energised, connected and inspired.  There were very very few concrete and engaging actions being suggested. It was (and I was listening closely) mostly about what other people (politicians) were already doing, and a petition to sign).


I wrote a blog about this, and suggested that the number 585 could have been used. Here is the end of a ‘speech I would have given’

This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough.  We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..

We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser.  Sorry- I was just playing with you.  We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have. 

Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time?  Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

  • Talk to five people
  • Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP 
  • Come up with a list of five things to do.

If you pledge it, then on three, 585!

(hopefully people chant 585)

What is to be done

The American linguist Noam Chomsky once wrote

“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.” 

It is not clear to me that the organisations trying, valiantly, to defend the parklands are able to do this – time will tell, she usually does (1). 

We have to face facts (which doesn’t guarantee that we will ultimately change them).

The parklands are under siege. They have been before. This below is from 1984.

We have to develop skills, knowledge, relationships. We have to spot where we have absolute lacks or single-points of failures in our organisations and networks. That takes time, effort and does not come with any endorphins.

We have to give guidance, encouragement and support (emotional, intellectual etc) to people who are new, who have limited time, who are despairing

We have to acknowledge that there are risks in despair leading people into de-activation or into (more) conspiracy theories, or into smugness and dismissal of posts (like my last one and this one too presumably) that try to raise questions of efficacy.

Friday’s rally will – I presume – predominantly be attended by a subset of those who were there last Wednesday. The mood will be angry, sombre. There will probably be some recriminations, some hopelessness.  I don’t think the ‘stop the chop’ chant will work in the same way.

All this is an enormous challenge for the speakers, for the strategists.

Not an insurmountable one, but enormous. A bit like the polycrisis we face – of a collapsing biosphere, hollowed-out democracy, accelerating wealth inequality, and AI-enshittification.

Happy times. 

Footnotes

  1. I’d like to believe that nobody could be stupid enough to have tried to doxx Malinauskas, that it must have been a ‘false flag’. But I also know that – sadly – it is entirely possible that it was simply an own goal by people unable to think through the likely consequences of their actions.  
  2. Time doesn’t always tell– see Nigel Balchin’s novel The Small Back Room.

Four minute speech I won’t give at the rally on Friday May 23

I want to take you to a bad place. Then, we come back, and we start walking, together, to a better place.

Let’s remember the last week. The trees being chopped down, the possums and birds fleeing. The naked contempt that the Premier has for democratic norms, for heritage, for Mij Tanith and the others who put their bodies in the way of his ego.

Just for a few seconds stand in your anger, your despair, your sense of hopelessness.

It’s horrible, isn’t it? Not a place to stay, not a place to return to.

We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it.  We have to go through it.

We have to go through it, together, helping each other as we walk.

If we want to be in better shape a year from today, we have to walk together, we have to grow, learn, organise and perhaps win.

We have to grow, as individuals and groups. We have to grow our skills. So many, but a key one is to become good at having conversations with people who don’t know what is going on, or are too busy to be involved, or have swallowed the lies and the smears.

We have to grow the size of our groups, by making it easier for busy people, unconfident people, to be meaningfully involved without coming to endless meetings, or being online 24/7.

We have to learn – the history of our state – and it didn’t begin in 1836. The politics and economics of the moment. We have to learn how social movements work. We have to learn from our past successes and mistakes. We have to learn how protest movements grow and win or lose, how they get distracted, divided, repressed.

We have to organise – along our streets, our places of work and worship, among our friends and acquaintances. And today’s stranger is tomorrow’s acquaintance may well be next year’s firm friend. By organise I do not mean everyone joins a party and takes orders from on high. I mean we share skills and knowledge, we learn from others, we strengthen the ties of those all around us to form networks, overlapping, stronger here than there, so that w.

Not everyone has to become expert at everything, but all of us can – and must – get better at something. All of us can – and must – contribute to growing, learning, organising. 

Over a hundred years ago, a real labour leader – as opposed to Malinauskus – Joe Hill, was executed.  Famously, he said  ‘don’t mourn, organise.’

Nine days ago we stood here, chanting “stop the chop.” Today we are chanting “stop the chop – never again”. 

Today  I say to you,  do mourn, but then organise. Grow, learn, organise, and, a year from now, we can be winning. 

Categories
Activism Australia Event Report

Superior belling of the cat – but still leaves the “who is gonna DO it?” question.

Last night the Nelson Mandela lecture “Strengthening our Democracy – Valuing Our Diversity – Building Our Future” was delivered by Thomas Mayo, who is “an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, assistant National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and author of seven books about First Nations history and justice.”

It was held at the Hawke Centre (more of that later) on North Terrace. Last time I was here was for a pre-Voice referendum event which left me disconsolate for its lack of strategic focus, and fearful for what was to come(1).  Last night I left with more ‘hope’, but still uneasy.

This was a night of three parts (four if you count the book signing afterwards, I guess).

First up there was an excellent “welcome to country.” These can vary in quality of course, but this one was done with empathy, honesty, clarity and good humour (especially the line about normally asking people to stand up, but given the tiered theatre and the audience demographics switching to plan B).  The woman welcoming us was of the Kaurna peoples, and also a member of the Pirltawardli Collective, trying to defend trees and animals from the State Government’s chainsaws. I didn’t catch her name, but will add it as soon as I can.

Second up there was a very good lecture by Thomas Mayo.  

The man knows how to grab an audience.  The anecdote about his Bob Marley fixation being joined by a love for Lucky Dube was great.

Mayo has a lovely voice, a lovely manner and – crucially – an actual working-class perspective to put.  It is all too rare to hear a full-throated defence of unions in public life.

In a paragraph – there are a series of pillars of Australian democracy (among these trades unions, recognition of First Nations, access to information, the right to protest), all of which have been under very deliberate sustained attack for decades. Mayo explained why each was important, what was being done to it and what needed to be done to defend the pillar/undo the damage.

Mayo also had useful things to say about Artificial Intelligence – and the need for a Universal Basic Income, and much else.

It was entirely competent, occasionally lyrical, but – back to that sense of unease – very much left me with ‘who will bell the cat?’ vibes. (This is from one of Aesop’s fables). The point is – there are all these good policies we are expecting ‘government’ to enact, but who is going to force the government to do the right things, when it is so obviously a plaything of the economic elites? “Braver mice” was the answer of someone earwigging my explanation to a friend. Braver mice sure, but who is brave, under what circumstances, for how long, to what purpose?

Anyway, that asides, Mayo’s speech was excellent and watching the video recording would be a good use of your time, whether you’re interested in defending (Australian) democracy, or learning how to structure a speech or to deliver it. Or something else.

As soon as the Hawke Centre people put up the recording, I’ll post it here and also blog it again.


The final portion was however, frankly painful, through no fault of Mayo. There were no questions from the audience, but rather Mayo was ‘in conversation’ with Peter Geste. This can work, but if the questioner is bold, engaging and bringing their A-game.  Not tonight; it was a polite/liberal avatar of Andrew Bolt in the room. Geste, presumably needing to defend his journalistic persona as ‘neutral,’ (2) was flipping through all the right-wing/nut-job (the Venn Diagram merges year after year) talking points. Doubtless among the thousand people joining the meeting via Zoom were some Murdoch hacks looking for a cheap headline about “ABC journo in soft-balling [insert dogwhistle adjective] activist.” Rather than asking any interesting questions, getting Mayo to expand on his arguments, Geste forced Mayo onto the back foot. It was frustrating and literally unedifying.  Geste is a man of undoubted courage and intelligence and this was all quite bewildering.

This could have been prevented if the Hawke Centre either

  1. Had a different interlocutor (Marcia Langton was in the room, for instance)
  2. Had had the guts to go to the floor for questions instead (though this comes with its own risks, of course).

Random reflections

  1. It is easy to give a list (litany) of what has been going wrong, and Mayo did it very well.


It is less easy to explore the underlying motivations/causes of what has been going wrong, and Mayo, in the margins, tackled this.


It is not easy at all to explore (in private and especially in public) the reasons why those wanting to make things worse for ordinary people and better for the big end of town have been winning, almost without pause, for a good 40 years.  That’s because speaking truth about power marks you out as a radical, and speaking truth about the failures of the forces trying to slow down/reverse the horrors will mark you out as a malcontent, who is ‘not constructive’ etc. Mayo did not attempt this at all, and while I totally understand (I think!) why he didn’t, it’s a pity, because if we don’t talk about the failures of the ‘progressive’ forces, the reasons for those failures, and what might be done to avoid history repeating itself again and again and AGAIN, well, history will probably repeat itself, with force.

As James Baldwin said – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

  1. One thing that makes it harder to defend democracy is the isolation and atomisation we all face. Part of this is to do with “technology,” part the sense of ‘speed up’ in our lives (real or imagined) and partly by the destruction of ‘third spaces’ where people can meet and be convivial and, well, civil.

The Hawke Centre COULD, if it wanted, take some really quick simple and no-financial cost actions around this. They COULD create a norm where every public lecture has a two or three minute ‘turn to someone you don’t know – probably someone sat behind or in front of you – and introduce yourselves’ at the beginning of their events, and similar before a Q&A.


I’ve written about the why and how of this, in case you’re interested

We’ve got to stop meeting like this

https://theconversation.com/weve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this-81615

“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)
“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)

I don’t expect it will happen, but then, speakers like Mayo could insist on it until it became a new ‘norm’ of meetings.  And then, in a town like Adelaide, the informal ‘weak ties’ would become more numerous, loose networks would spread, information, ideas and resources would flow more easily.  

  1. It was the Hawke government that ratted out the Aboriginal communities on a Treaty, after basking in the applause of saying they’d sort one, back in 1988. (Aye, Barunga).

But then it’s not polite to mention these things…

Footnotes

  1. And so it came to pass – the Murdoch media’s assault, and the decision of Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party to be the absolute worst version of themselves, meant that a tsunami of lies swept away the possibility of basic respect.  Had it not been for the events of October 7th, Australia’s international reputation would have taken a massive hit.
  1. Many books have been written about what ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ mean in journalism. I ain’t gonna recapitulate except with a quote and a reference.

The quote – “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” Desmond Tutu

The citation – 

Maxwell T Boykoff, Jules M Boykoff,

Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press,

Global Environmental Change,

Volume 14, Issue 2,

2004,

Pages 125-136,

ISSN 0959-3780,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378003000669)

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse. This failed discursive translation results from an accumulation of tactical media responses and practices guided by widely accepted journalistic norms. Through content analysis of US prestige press—meaning the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal—this paper focuses on the norm of balanced reporting, and shows that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.

Categories
Activism Australia biodiversity Event Report Fafocene

Event report: the Possum Park defence rally

Vibes aren’t going to cut it: What we (well, I) learn from the Possum rally

Last night I was at the rally on the steps of South Australian parliament protesting the cutting down of 585 mature trees in the North Parklands.


I should write something longer, coherent, but I don’t have time, energy (and perhaps talent). So instead, just a list of random observations. After that, the speech I would have liked to have given.

  1. From an emotional perspective, the whole thing was a success.  Those attending got their emotional needs met. Three obvious candidates here –
  • The cop who tried to push me onto the pavement instead of simply asking (did he get the uniform so he could literally push people around, or did he get the desire once he had the uniform? Chicken, meet Egg)
  • Some (#NotAllSpeakers) of the speakers, who were loving the attention (they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t). Special shout out to the person who read out a speech that had been written for a council meeting last night and almost lost the crowd (‘read the (lack of a) room’). You could have quickly pointed us to the video of that speech and said something else?
  • Those attending, who got to feel less lonely (that’s good) and more sane (it’s a crazy-making world). The repeated chants of ‘stop the chop’ are the progressive ‘left’s versions of the muscular bonding and chanting at sports events that hoi polloi get every weekend.
  1. Those attending (2000, according to the ABC, but we will come back to that) got some information they already knew, or could easily have found out. In terms of what to DO they got requests that amounted to (and did not go beyond) 
  • write to your MP
  • sign the petition 
  • get some stickers 
  • come to another rally on Sunday.

They were assured that the Federal Minister for the Environment had been written to. Well, that’ll show everyone. There were no calls on individuals who had turned up and were keen to know how they could contribute to 

  • Use and expand their skills
  • Use and expand their knowledge
  • Use and expand their relationships

Just people as an undifferentiated mass, a pulse of emotional energy, that will be gone like a fist when you open your palm.

We were told to ‘maintain our rage’, a cute line from someone who was not around when Whitlam said it.

  1.  Besides who WAS there (Kaurna spokespeople, Adelaide Parklands Association people, Adelaide City Council folks) there was one very very telling absence.

The Conservation Council of South Australia, the peak body for various green groups (the clue is in the name). Did they have any representation at the rally? Not that I saw. Certainly none of the speakers and their blog is entirely silent.

This is not surprising. The CCSA is dependent, financially, on the State Government, and knows it would not be forgiven for biting the hand that feeds it.  At this point it is simply a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Labor government.  This is a tragedy, but there you have it. 

UPDATE 15/7/2026. Last night (14/5/2026) CCSA sent around an email encouraging people to attend the next demo, on Sunday. Their website is still silent on the question. Make of this what you will.

4. The media coverage was hilarious and instructive. 

The 7pm ABC TV news of South Australia framed it as ‘no violence happened though police were present’ (yes, and if it meets the needs of the state for there to be violence, doubtless the police – in uniform or plain clothes – will be happy to provide it). There were two vox pops that focussed on the animal livelihoods aspect, not on the far more sinister State government powergrab aspect.   Meanwhile, the ‘Advertiser’ (Murdoch toilet paper, the only print paper in town) … pretended it had not happened. Not a single word, because their pet Malinauskus is doing what they like, generally. They had an ‘exclusive’ from him (presumably planned as a spoiler?) about overturning a fracking ban.  At this point the Advertiser should just rename as the Santos Sturmer.

Don’t get me wrong. Rallies matter.  Good signs are good signs.

But it is not enough. We have been here so many times. So so so many times. If we don’t use rallies for MORE than feeling good in the moment, for supplying ego-fodder and being ego-fodder, then more losses will pile up, while the pile of debris that gets called progress grows skyward. 

Maybe this campaign will win – it’s the future, so I don’t know.  But IF it wins, it hasn’t laid any ground work for future bigger campaigning sinews, relationships, skills, knowledge, expectations. And if it loses, then people will just have more grounds for despair.

Below is the three minute (ish) speech that could have been given. 

Hypothetical speech to Rally.

Thank you for coming. That you are here matters. But it doesn’t matter ENOUGH.

I want us to reflect on who we are, what are we even doing here, and what we must do in the coming days, weeks and months.

Who are we? 

Some of us here have ancestors who were here, on this land, thousands and thousands of years ago. (hopefully applause).
Some of us maybe trace our history with this land to 1836 or thereabouts, when South Australia was ‘settled’.  (pause) . South Australia was not settled. South Australia was invaded. And sovereignty was never ceded.

Some of us maybe trace our history to the last 50 or 20 years.  

But this is home. All of us here tonight, we know this land, this air, this water, these other creatures we share with, is precious. We know it is fragile, and that it must be protected from those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We know it must be protected from people who have no respect for nature, or for democracy, for anything than their wretched careers and bank accounts.

Do we know this?

(Hopefully everyone yells “yes”)

Do you – you, me, everyone –  want to protect this land, this air, the possums, the birds, the humans, the future generations?

(Hopefully everyone yells yes).

Okay. That was the easy part.

What are we even doing here?

I have bad news. Besides the trees being cut down, besides the naked powergrab by the State Government. The bad news is that while you being here now, today, is great – and thank you for coming – it is not enough.

Is it enough?

(Hopefully people shout ‘no’).

Can we do more?


Can we do more?

(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)

Will we do more?  Do you, as an individual, commit to doing more?

(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)

Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. I do NOT have a short list you can tick off. – “sign here, donate there. Tick that, next campaign.”  Sorry.

But I do have some pledges for you, me, all of us to make.  They want to destroy 585 trees, homes to birds, animals. 585.  So I am going to close out with three pledges.

Does each of you pledge to talk, in the coming days, with five people who don’t know about what is happening? To listen to them, to inform them, to help them take a stand. Five people. Do you pledge this?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)


We need Peter Malinauskus and the Labor Party more generally to know that they have made a mistake, but that it is not yet too late for them to do the right thing.

Eight sentences.  Do you pledge to write an eight sentence letter to Malinauskus, and send a copy to your MP -about this.  Not War and Peace; Just eight sentences, which maybe you show to those five people, to your local councillors and that you post online?

Do you pledge this?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough.  We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..

We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser.  Sorry- I was just playing with you.  We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have. 

Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time?  Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

  • Talk to five people
  • Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP 
  • Come up with a list of five things to do.

If you pledge it, then on three, 585!

(hopefully people chant 585)

Categories
Activism Australia Upcoming events

Upcoming event: May 20, “Climate Emergency” screening in Glenelg, Adelaide

This below is a cut and paste from here.

Laudato si’ Week Event: “The Climate Emergency: A Film Screening, Update and The Way Forward”

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 – 7pm – 9:30pm

St. Mary’s Hall, Glenelg Catholic Parish, Glenelg SA, Australia

Description

This event, based on science and inspired by faith, will be held in

Laudato si’ Week in the lead up to Pentecost, and will include:

  • a screening of the recently released UK film “National Emergency Briefing”
  • recent climate updates published by Australian scientists
  • a way forward out of our Climate and Nature Emergency through a rapid energy descent, simpler lifestyles and restored relationships with our planet and each other
  • opportunity for a group discussion

When: Wednesday 20 May, 2026

Where: St. Mary’s Hall, Glenelg Catholic Parish, High St, Glenelg

Time: 7pm-9:30pm

Interval: 20 mins with tea/coffee

Film information and trailer:

https://www.nebriefing.org

https://youtu.be/9tLUnWHkGG4

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

May 8, 1971 – FOE does/doesn’t bottle it.

Fifty five years ago, on this day, May 8th, 

But it was rather by luck than design that FoE’s first action, the return of bottles to Cadbury-Schweppes’ offices on Saturday 8 May 1971, achieved phenomenal publicity and launched FoE onto the public’s attention. As Weston remarked “The bottle dump event was really a media coup for FOE. That style of political activity had not been seen in Britain before and was, until then more associated with the American system of pressure group politics” (Weston 1989: 35).

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that concern about pollution, resources running out, overpopulation, etc, were all growing steadily in the late 1960s helped by the Torrey Canyon oil tanker disaster, and then the Santa Barbara oil spill, the Earthrise photo, etc, various pollution incidents.

The specific context was that in the UK, the main environment group at that time was the Conservation Society, but it was small-c conservative, and didn’t want to do eye-catching stunts. Therefore there was an ecological niche for other actors. And here we see Friends of the Earth doing a brilliant publicity stunt, leaving lots of empty bottles that would otherwise go to landfill en masse outside Downing Street. Very visual, very obvious. 

What I think we can learn from this is there is a time when these sorts of stunts will work. You have to look at what’s happening within the broader social system.

What happened next. These stunts have diminishing returns. “Hippies protest,” @man bites dog”, but as late as 2006 loads of coal were being dumped outside Downing Street by Greenpeace.

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.

Also on this day: 

May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London

May 8, 1980 – Nature article “CO2 could increase global tensions.” Exxon discussed underneath. Delicious ironies abound. – All Our Yesterdays

May 8, 1992 – UNFCCC text agreed. World basically doomed.

May 8, 2008 – Carbon Rationing Scrapped

May 8, 2013 – we pass 400 parts per million. Trouble ahead.

May 8, 2015 – denialist denies in delusional denialist newspaper

Categories
Activism Australia

The song remains the same: (they fap their meet)

I went to a student meeting. I am not a student. It was excruciating, obvs. Not because they were students, but because it could have been so much better but wasn’t, for the usual reasons. We are so doomed.

There’s a scene in George Orwell’s masterpiece (imo, ymmv) Animal Farm.  The animals – the chickens, cows, Boxer etc, have just received such a face slap that they can no longer lie to themselves about what has happened to “their” Farm and their beloved Revolution. They can no longer pretend to themselves that they have not exchanged the drunken boot of Mr Jones for the trotter and paws of the pigs and the dogs.  They walk down to a meadow and they start to sing what was the revolutionary song, Beasts of England.  This below is a very long quote, but I put it in because it captures what Orwell was aiming at so beautifully, and it is worth your time.

The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view–the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm–and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property–appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major’s speech. Instead–she did not know why–they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones’s gun. Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.

At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over–very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.

They had just finished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.

The animals were taken aback.

“Why?” cried Muriel.

“It’s no longer needed, comrade,” said Squealer stiffly. “Beasts of England was the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. The execution of the traitors this afternoon was the final act. The enemy both external and internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.”

Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad,” which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.

So Beasts of England was heard no more. 

[end of chapter 7, since you ask].

I think about that scene a lot, whenever I attend (okay, hate-attend) meetings of groups that say they are undertaking the difficult task of unfucking the world.  Last night I thought about that scene a lot.  “What’s my scene?” as the Hoodoo Gurus used to sing (probably still do?)

”I’m a betting man, but it’s getting damn lonely…”

The meeting started late. While we waited there was no invocation to “turn to someone you don’t know (well) – firm allies once didn’t know each other once, and we need to thicken the webs of loose (and close) ties, because you may have skills and resources that someone else could really use.” Or something warmer. Who cares. Something. Anything.

There was no gentle way to bring silence and commence the meeting. What happened to the chair raising their arms above their head and then other people following? XR used to do that and it was good – far better than tentative and then-more forceful/desperate announcements/shouts, which is what we got.

There was no gentle welcome, asking us to centre ourselves, to think about our responsibilities to make a better movement, and the opportunities the meeting held for that. Instead we were told things we knew, with jargon that would almost certainly alienate a ‘newbie’. Then we had two Zoom connections from interstate. These were mercifully not as long as anticipated, but neither were they in any way surprising. What was astonishing (to me – I am clearly old and out of touch) was that people responded to a guy on zoom who wanted them to repeat the second half of a (carefully chosen to avoid further legal imbroglios) chant.  I did not know that was a thing, and – to quote another song – “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

He left us with the hope that he would see us at a ‘big mobilisation in the future.’  Everyone’s happy place, I guess.

Then – and this still staggers me – it was over to ‘debating’ two motions to some upcoming student congress or conference basically ‘demanding’ (yeah, good luck with that) the Australian Government do x or y that they were plainly, obviously, never going to do.  So, we were to debate things that 

  1. Nobody in the room was likely to have any disagreement with (certainly not one they show in public)
  2. Were never going to be enacted.

And this is how you build an empowered, strategic and competent movement.  Oh yes.

So, the speeches to the motion (nobody was asked to specify if they were speaking for or against – it was clear, man, that everyone was, you know, in favour) were all pure Dave Spart. As I said to a friend this morning, I had the fleeting thought that I was in some incredibly elaborate social psychology experiment where everyone else in the room was in on the gig – that this was playacting those scenes in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea you know, like, debate important motions about the Roman, you know, Empire, man.  There were, perhaps, people with clipboards and stop watches waiting to see how long I could stick it out (as per that early-ish episode of the TV show Community).

But no, it was all on the up and up.  “build a movement”, “class politics” “expose it as a system”  “full on orwellian um censorship.” “It’ really important, you know, strength of this movement”

It was mildly interesting that the entire first motion got ‘debated’ with only men delivering their pearls of wisdom. [Audience demographics – 50 people present, 45 under the age of 25, I’d guess. Male/female roughly 50/50. Overwhelmingly white] I wondered how long this would continue- the whole meeting?  But then in motion 2 some women piped up. Matters did not improve. Who knew that women could be just as jargon-y and dreary as the menfolk? It’s almost as if it’s the human condition.


We’re so toast. As per Frank Turner

Well it was bad enough the feeling, on the first time it hit,

When you realised that your parents had let the world all go to shit,

And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died

Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside.

But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left,

And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest –

By idiot fucking hippies in fifty different factions

Who are locked inside some kind of Sixties battle re-enactment.

So I hung up my banner in disgust and I head for the door.

Frank Turner – Love Ire & Song 

What could have been done differently

  • Start on time
  • Have a gentle way of starting, of centering people.
  • Design the meeting not around (non)violent agreement with two shitty motions (lobbying the Labor government is no more ‘radical’ than lobbying the Labor Party, my Dave Spartolescent friend) but around a set of questions that can be answered by a mix of on-paper answers (means good ideas don’t get discarded because they come from Miss Triggs) and small group discussions) around
  1. What are we doing that we need to do we need to more of and what skills/knowledge/relationships do we lack to do that?
  2. What are we NOT doing that would be good to do that we are not doing because we lack skills/knowledge/relationships – where do we get those?
  3. What are we doing that feels good, but actually doesn’t contribute to the likely success (or slower failure) of “our “movement” (‘man’) to like, you know, bring down, you know, the capitalist imperialist, you know, system, man.”

Shoot me. Shoot me now. NOW, dammit.

There is no hope

It won’t be done differently. We lack the absorptive capacity, the impetus to develop that. The incentive structures are all wrong.

These meetings are about managing our despair, about knowing that the pigs and their dogs have won, and that all we can do is soothe-sing to ourselves and each other. We sing Beasts of England. Some of the lyrics get banned, but the song remains the same.

We will never put ourselves under any pressure to innovate, because there is a stable system for the gaining of activist credibility tokens, and why upset it?

Meanwhile, the bodies pile up and the emissions pile up. I wonder what those in the majority world, on the receiving end of the slow violence and fast violence dished out by the Empire and its proxies would think of events like the one I went to last night. Nothing printable. “Building a movement” my very fat arse. No more hate-attending for me, methinks.

Categories
Activism Australia

Event report: “How to create a cooler, greener and wilder Unley” Monday 20 April 2026.

Over thirty people gathered on Monday night to hear from four highly-engaged (1) and deeply knowledgeable speakers on the question of what is being done/can be done on biodiversity in Adelaide in the era of accelerating climate change.

The event was organized (very capably indeed) by Unley Voices for Climate Action.

After a brief welcome to country (2) and scene-setting,  four speakers each had fifteen minutes to explain what is going on.

The first three were from Green Adelaide, a state government created and funded body which is “working towards a cooler, greener, wilder and climate-resilient Adelaide that celebrates our unique culture.”

 They were 

  • Sarah White, Regional Data Officer for Green Adelaide
  • Dr Sheryn Pitman, Urban Greening Lead
  • Natalya Giffney, Sustainable Urban Communities Officer

 They were followed by Di Salvi, the lead Climate and Sustainability officer from Unley Council, who gave an overview of what has been done/is planned locally.

 (I took copious notes, but have doubtless got things wrong/mangled them, and will update accordingly).

Ms White kicked things off with a numbers-heavy (because numbers is what she does!) presentation that highlighted the work that has been undertaken to map – down to a house level, where the trees are, what they are, and what benefits accrue (especially in terms of their cooling effect).

In the brief Q&A for her talk she expanded on this – the Green Adelaide survey also captures the understory coverage (which is particularly important for biodiversity).

She was asked how frequently the surveys were done. The work is very resource intensive, and – if I got this right – it has been at four year intervals, with another survey just completed. 

Dr Sheryn Pitman delved more into the overall strategies underlying the Green Adelaide effort, including the recently announced Urban Greening Strategy.  

Tree coverage varies widely in the 17 (or 18, depending on how you count) areas covered by Green Adelaide (the Adelaide Hills is not included), from 1.7percent in Seaford to 52% in Waterfall Gully.  There’s a target for 30% across the whole metropolitan area, but of course, they also have to look at species diversity for “future proofing” against disease etc (see my question at the end).

There are a plethora of three and four letter acronyms in all this, and a favourite is surely the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan, or GARP.  Surely we all remember John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp? And the film with Robin Williams, Glenn Close and John “bitten off in a Buick” Lithgow? No, is it just me? Sigh.

There are also BSUDs and WSUDs (biodiversity sensitive urban design and water sensitive urban design respectively). The former includes everything from wildlife corridors to bird-friendly window glass.

In the Q&A the thorny question of what actual powers Green Adelaide has at its disposal was raised, but deferred (see further down the blog post)…

The third presentation, from Nat Giffney, brought it to the nuts and bolts of what is being done and can be done by individuals and communities. Reflecting on the point that Adelaide was – before the settlers turned up – a particular biodiversity hotspot, with grassland, heathland, wetlands etc etc, Giffney said that “we need to use every little parcel of land. The starting (but not finishing) question was “what once grew where you live?”  She explained that the Green Adelaide website allows you to find out, but typing in “native plants.”

She pointed out that tree hollows, useful for possums and birds, take a very very long time to form, and bigged up the work of volunteers who spend many hours removing agapanthus, which overtakes native species.

[Such is the history of introduced species – at this point I was put in mind of the wonderful concept of “biological cringe”, developed by environmental historian Tom Griffiths] See also here.

Biodiversity is, though we often fail to see it, is essential for the health of well, everything, and the ability to ‘bounce back’ (or to a different state) following floods, droughts etc. [see also though, ‘the great simplification’ and the Sixth Extinction].

So, we need plants at different heights and densities, lizard lounges, frog bogs and all the rest of it. The final plea was to make sure that bird baths are out of reach of predators, and cleaned regularly.  

Right, before we continue with the rest of the report, a request. If you are reading this, there is a non-trivial chance you were living in Adelaide in the 1970s, and active on environmental matters. If so – and especially if you were involved in the campaign to get a deposit scheme going for beverage containers – I would like to interview you.  ALSO, if anyone knows anything about M. Allen of Malvern, who wrote this letter to the Advertiser, published on December 14 1973, please get in touch.

Sir – One reads (“Advertiser,” 11/12/73) of the Australian Government’s interest in entering the car manufacturing industry of the Miners’ Federation move towards development of a national trade union policy to conserve energy resources, of the prediction of the British National Development Council that the energy crisis will probably halve the growth of world trade and the fear of the Member for Angas (Mr. Giles) that future petroleum shortages may affect all of us as private individuals and the business community. 

What none of these individuals or groups gives any consideration to is the fact that our past rapacious use of fossil fuels, both in industry and in the motor car, may well bring about changes in climate far more catastrophic to our way of life than shortage of fuel.

While conservation of energy resources is commendable, what is urgently needed is a complete reappraisal of our values and priorities and a thorough investigation of the long-term consequences of our actions in both the private and industrial sectors.

M. Allen

Malvern

Now, back to the report!!

Speaking last, Di Salvi of Unley Council had the hardest job – keeping the attention of the audience after a solid 50 minutes of very dense information. She managed it with aplomb, telling a compelling story about the Council’s efforts in creating more tree cover and wildlife cover (full disclosure, my late father, Mike Hudson, was a Councillor for many years, with an interest in ‘pocket parks’ before they were sexy).

Thermal sensors are available via the Unley Library catalogue, so you can take an inventory of your house and garden.

The Council did a “tree voucher lottery” skewed towards areas in Unley with less foliage, and this appears to have been a success, with fruit trees being particularly popular, and most of those planted still alive.

There are, of course, challenges

A micro-break to stretch legs and recombobulate from the large amount of information received was followed by a short and sweet Q and A.

The first question was “more of a comment” but – gasp, a short and pertinent one (it didn’t come from a man) – it was about the importance of night lighting and not making life hell for nocturnal creatures. The happy news is that not only is there a webinar on this (the webinar series “will beat Netflix”) but when Unley Council was replacing some lighting recently, they made sure the new stuff was wildlife friendly.

The second question was from me – I asked if thought had been given to the speed of climate change and what trees etc will survive the temperatures we are likely to be seeing in the year 2050 (which is only just around the corner). Pleasingly, the answer was an emphatic yes.

Treenet and 

Future Trees Report

“Are there priority species?” asked someone. Well, that’s complicated, because of course there is no one size fits all plan for such a wide variety of habitats. 

Someone gave a shout out to “GreyBox Day”, May 3rd.

The question of what actual power Green Adelaide had to enforce, rather than cajole, came up, and was fairly deftly dealt with (no legislative or budgetary power, but the kind of ‘soft power’ – data dependent – that can make some meaningful changes.) Until we institute the green eco-utopian government, that’s probably the best we can get? (as distinct from hope and plan for).

“What is being done about fake lawns?” asked someone. It turns out that some councils have banned them, and Sarah White pointed out that the data that Green Adelaide is able to provide about the cooling function of real lawns helps policymakers see the light.

An expert on climate extremes suggested that Green Adelaide run an educational campaign to inform people that the time to water their gardens is BEFORE the heatwave starts (once it has started your efforts will be pretty futile) and this was received with great enthusiasm by the Green Adelaide representatives.

 And then, very shortly after 9pm, the event was brought to a close.  Nicely done!

Dates for your diary

Btw – You can email the Unley folks on – uvforca@gmail.com

 May 3rd GreyBox Day

 May 18 – next meeting of the Unley for Climate Action crew.

Possibly June 1st for “virtual powerplants” meeting (about batteries alongside solar panels, and feeding back into the grid).

Random reflections

The event was urgently needed, for me at least. I needed something to restore my faith in “activism” – in the idea that people could put on an event that started on time, did what it said it would do and was generally efficiently and effectively run. (I won’t link to my rant about last Friday, but you can find it if you look)

What would I change? Very very little. Perhaps a ‘turn to a person you don’t know’ at the outset, and a ‘clap clinic’ style device for keeping people to time. If the speeches could have been recorded, that would be great for people who couldn’t attend (but this is labour intensive and the game may not be worth the candle!).  These are quibbles. It was a fine event, and lovely to see an all-female panel for once (fanel as opposed to manel?)

Footnotes

(1)     I would encourage everyone – but especially men writing about women – to avoid the word “passionate”. It is far too often code for “emotional/over-invested/unreliable” with shades of “hysterical.”  See also Malcolm X and the use of the word “articulate.” (And Chris Rock, for that matter).

(2)    It was a nice touch to flag that first nations people are reclaiming their language and fire practices and that “for 190 years they’ve put up with colonization.”

Update April 22.

Here are some links kindly sent through by the Green Adelaide folks

Local native plants | Green Adelaide

Green Adelaide Webinar recordings: Webinar – YouTube (this is where people can access ‘The colour of the night: wildlife sensitive lighting’, along with a lot of other topics).

Urban Heat and Tree Mapping Viewer Home

Urban Greening Strategy for Metro Adelaide | Green Adelaide

A guide for planting trees on small properties

Adelaide National Park City

Categories
Activism Australia

Event report/analysis: “It comes down to what your definition of ‘movement’ is”

The tl;dr – 

It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.  

If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.

If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.

That’s it. That’s the post.

Read on at your peril. 

First let”s say the good stuff (because one of the standard response-but-not-replies is that I “never say anything positive” (1)

  • The event, at the Jam Factory on North Terrace, had a fair number (150? 175?) of people present (certainly slightly more than at Thursday’s rally).
  • Most of those people (but not all) seemed to enjoy themselves, and get what they wanted (or at least expected?)
  • They heard from some voices that are too rarely platformed (i.e. First Nations people)
  • Er…
  • That’s it

Not much, is it? And absolutely not enough. It wasn’t enough forty years ago and it most definitely is not enough now.

Here’s what happened, from my perspective. On Thursday, there’d been a rally. It was held under time and place constraints. Here, on Friday, the organisers had more space and time to show what they could do.

There were people at the door to check that everyone had RSVPed, that their name was On The List.  This felt a little bit “off”, and I almost decided to test the idea that I wouldn’t be able to get in without giving a name and email. But then they found me on one of their sheets of paper (we will come back to this).

The event was billed to start at 5pm but it was quarter past when we were called to order (we will come back to this). People were mostly sat on the chairs, talking to people they knew. There were empty seats, but also people standing at the back and the side. Perhaps 150 people?

The event started with a lovely coming-onto-the-stage led by Uncle Jack and his fellow panellists, and a welcome to country. After that, I gotta write, it was mostly downhill.

Kirsty Bevan of the Conservation Council of South Australia got things under way. The transcript could be submitted to the “I” column of UK satirical publication Private Eye. She also said that us gathering there in the evening was an “action”? Really?  Are we emptying the term “action” so far as to include these sorts of meetings?  A rally outside an AGM would, in some people’s minds, be a borderline example of an ‘action’, but a meeting counts as an action now? If the rest of the event had been good, I wouldn’t be “nit-picking” (2), but it wasn’t.

The standard line appears to be that the Santos business model is causing climate change. This is indisputable, but the question is then, how do we stop it? (3) 


Next up, Adam Bandt, formerly a Greens MP. – “together we are going to build a movement.” Again, it comes down to what you think a movement is. In my view there was basically no “movement-building” going on.

Bandt also flipped through the stump speech memes he had deployed at the rally.  “Governments don’t go to war over the sun and wind…”)  “There’s more of us than there are of them.”  And then, cringe, “Remember the Franklin Dam campaign.”  Well, about half the audience were 60 or more, and CAN remember it (it culminated in a 1983 High Court decision saying that the Hawke Federal government DID in fact have the power to over-rule the Tasmanian government on the question of a hydro-electric dam).  But maybe the example of a ‘victory’ you are pointing to is … (checks notes) … FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO then maybe – just maybe – you’re doing something wrong?

Bandt then held out the promise of the audience being able to “take a couple of actions” and that he would tell people what they were (we will come back to this).

Then, the bombshell.

Bandt quickly and casually announced that the event – which had been advertised as a Q&A would not, in fact, have q and a,  because there wasn’t enough time

This was astonishing, and absolutely – in my opinion – deadly for the credibility of ACF and CCSA as campaigning organisations.

They had advertised it as such. They had the venue for two hours. They started fifteen minutes late for no apparent reason. Nothing was stopping them holding the advertised Q&A.

This was a brazen bait-and-switch

Either they never intended to do a Q&A, or they did but some OTHER reason stopped them and they were too scared/embarrassed to say what that was. So they came out with the “lack of time” excuse instead and relied on everyone being too polite to make a big deal of this.

Why am I making a big deal of this?

Because “we” are supposed to be better than the lying conniving exploitative extractive assholes who are trashing the planet

“We” are supposed to be honest, competent etc

Either they never intended to do it, or “something came up.” I am not sure which is worse. It simply cannot have been a lack of time. That is a brazen lie and it is shameful that Bandt had such a low opinion of the audience that he thought it would fly. The only thing more shameful is that the audience went along with this. So much for their self-respect.

Then followed the speeches from the First Nations representatives, which almost redeemed the whole sorry show. Almost, but not quite.

For me, the key call was from Kara Kinchella.  “We have to do better than we’re doing.”

Quite.


But on the evidence of this awful event, which was pure ego-fodder, we are NOT doing better, and we seem not to know or care.

Bandt then did a “conversation” style thing with the three speakers, making sure to interject favoured campaign factoids (Santos has had sales of $47bn over the last ten years, and paid zero company tax.”

At just after six pm (with the venue available for another hour!) Krsty Bevan drew the formal event to a close.  Almost. There was still time for Bandt to claim that there were “a few hundred of us here tonight” (nope).  And that we should all sign a petition and saying “I look forward to seeing you at the next rally.”

It was (to me) fascinating that the impending (mid-May) Australian Energy Providers annual conference was NOT mentioned. Could it be that ACF and the CCSA are afraid of bad publicity because of those “bomb-throwers” of Extinction Rebellion? 

The final, inevitable, invocation was to stay, listen to some music and buy a beer “talk to each other” – having done precisely nothing to design the meeting around making it easier for people who came not knowing anyone to talk to strangers.

Some people did stick around, but I was not the only one heading for the door. And at the tram stop I met someone who’d been at the same event and we compared notes, agreeing that it had been intensely top-down, designed it seemed to us mostly about gratifying the egos of the comperes (this is distinct from the panellists) and harvesting contact data for future use. 

I will write again about all this, but I have a couple of (well, four) closing thoughts to share.

First, there was a kind of ‘love-bombing’ going on (so much so that it gave me flashbacks to a late 1980s ‘Festival of Light’ meeting I went to(4). Repeated effusive (fulsome, in the original sense) thanks for attending, but without any attempt to say thank you in a meaningful way (i.e. by enabling people to form or strengthen the kind of weak ties (as per Granovetter) that make a movement.

Second – some of those people present – especially ones who are already plugged into networks –  DID have a good time, did have a kind of bonding/re-charging of their batteries.  But so what? that’s not enough, and certainly not enough compared to what could have been done. It all has a vibe of the animals singing Beasts of England to soothe themselves after the latest evidence of their defeat at the hands of the pigs and the dogs. (That’s an Animal Farm reference)

Third – if people who attended are turned into ego-fodder, if they leave without new connections, new ideas, then whatever hopium the organisers have ‘inserted’ into them fades and they have to come back for more, or they just to give up. 

Fourth – there is an irony in all this. We (the good people) are opposed to Evil Organisations who disregard the skills and lived experiences of local people, who see those people only as in the way or simply usable as resources. But when the same dynamic – top down, extractive, is used by nominally different campaigning organisations, we are so colonised, so desperate to believe in a Brighter Future, that we don’t even see the dynamic.

So what happened and why does it keep happening?

So why did I write this?

 For the shiggles. Because a couple of people said they were curious. Because I am not writing enough.

What response do I expect?

For the most part, absolute silence.

For the next part, indifference, derision and ad hominems.

For the next smallest part, willful incomprehension and counter-“attacks” that set up various strawmen and knock them down.

So, WHY did I write this?

I don’t know. Habit? Despair?

Other posts on the same theme

Footnotes 

  1. There is a limit to how much ‘defensive writing’ you can do, in order to try to maintain a conversation with people who are – in my experience – absolutely determined NOT to have a conversation about these issues (namely the ongoing failures of ‘big’ green organisations).  The more you try to anticipate their responses (again, not replies) and neutralise them, the more time and energy you waste, the more reader(s?)-bandwidth you take up, the more you allow low-rent people to live rent-free in your head. And for what?  So, foregrounding the ‘good’ stuff (which ain’t that good) is my only conscious attempt to frame this in ways ‘acceptable’ to the ‘right’ people. They’re not reading, and if they’re reading they’re not taking it in, and if they’re taking it in then they’ve not been doing anything, and will continue not to. What was that about ‘rent-free”? Sigh.
  2. Words matter. And they reveal how we conceptualise the world, and our actions. Gathering for a meeting as “action” my very fat arse.
  3. Also, if you’re doing housekeeping, perhaps actually ask someone from the venue where the toilets are?
  4. Don’t ask.