Category: Australia

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
anti-reflexivity Australia

 May 23, 2000 – Industry versus greenhouse trigger

Twenty six years ago, on this day, May 23rd, 

Federal Cabinet faces a showdown over greenhouse environmental issues after ministers yesterday heard alarming predictions that meeting Australia’s emission targets could significantly cut economic growth and boost fuel prices.

The Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill, and the Minister for Industry, Senator Nick Minchin, both entered Cabinet yesterday armed with new evidence about the extent of Australia’s greenhouse problems.

Economic research commissioned by Senator Minchin found that forcing industry to meet Australia’s targets under the Kyoto international greenhouse agreement could reduce gross national product by up to 1.4 per cent in 2010.

Taylor, L. and Skulley, M. 2000. Cabinet clash on greenhouse. The Australian Financial Review, 24 May, p1.

And 

Industry started a strong campaign against the Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill’s, proposed greenhouse trigger yesterday. This follows a fiery Cabinet discussion on Tuesday [23rd] over new greenhouse measures proposed by the Senator.

The Federal Cabinet is understood to have reached a clear understanding on Tuesday that no extra greenhouse requirements should be imposed on the proposed $1billion Kogan Creek power station in Queensland.

It rejected a memo from Senator Hill that the project be forced to invest in greenhouse-abatement projects to offset its own emissions. However, a spokesman for the Environment Minister said the Cabinet had not made a final decision.

2000 Taylor, L. 2000. Industry adds its weight to oppose greenhouse move. The Australian Financial Review, May 25, p.7.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that Australian political elites and economic elites had decided to resist climate action. They made this decision not in a smoke-filled room, but sort of collectively in ‘91-92. And they continued to push against any action. Even very moderate action, like a small carbon tax in ‘94-95 set them frothing and foaming at the mouth. 

The specific context was that there was pressure on the Minister for the Environment for a so-called greenhouse trigger, so that big developments would get called in for a proper look and more-than-rubber-stamp approval. 

What I think we can learn from this. Again, industry wants rubber stamps for their big projects that are going to make the money. They don’t want the politicians “interfering,” and they don’t want the politicians to have power and to have democratic control. This is how the game is played. 

What happened next.  The trigger was defeated, and greenhouse triggers have been defeated ever since in Australia, which is essentially a quarry with a state attached. 

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 23, 1977 – President Carter announces Global 2000 report… or “Let’s all meet up in the Global2000”

May 23, 1980 – Aussie senator alerts colleagues to #climate threat. Shoulder shrugs all round. #auspol

May 23, 2000 – Deputy Prime Minister versus Greenhouse Trigger – All Our Yesterdays

May 23, 2006 – David Attenborough finally comes out on climate 

May 23, 2012 – wicked problems and super-wicked problems all around…

Categories
Australia Event Report

Event Report: Bob Hawke (and the things we don’t talk about often enough…)

When Bob Hawke became Prime Minister in March 1983, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels stood at 343ppm.

When he was unceremoniously dumped by the Labor Party in late 1991, after failing to effectively counter Liberal leader John Hewson’s Fightback! campaign, the level stood at 355ppm.

When he died in 2019, the atmospheric levels stood at 411ppm (they’re now pushing 430ppm).  I don’t intend to recap his climate mis-steps (see here) and missed opportunities (I did that already in this Conversation piece:  Bob Hawke, the environmental PM, bequeathed a huge ‘what if’ on climate change).  Nor do I intend to give a blow-by-blow account of who said what about what to whom tonight (a video was made and is already up – if you’re ‘into’ history, politics etc, it’s definitely worth your time.

What I intend to do is … serve up a few banalities and call it a day.

Banality one is that History is about what gets told and how. It’s also about what doesn’t get told (and how it is not talked about – usually by running out of time/focusing on something else.

Fortunately there wasn’t that much banality on display tonight at the Hawke (!) Centre on North Terrace. The event was to launch/publicise a new book ‘Gold Standard: Remembering the Hawke Government’.

It was ably compered (not facilitated!) by Misha Ketchell  of The Conversation, who had managed to tear himself away from The West Wing to serve up a series of more-than-perfunctory soft-ball questions to the three professional historians (and co-editors of the book). These were (drum roll please)

They covered a lot of ground, and wore their deep expertise lightly (this should of course, be the norm among academics, but trust me, it ain’t).

They (especially Holbrook) were good on the way the Hawke government came to loom large as a picture of stability after the 2007-2018 bloodbath of the Prime Ministers. (Fwiw I think the Hawke/Keating era looms large because it was ultimately the death of the Australian Settlement, something discussed at the end of the event by – iirc- Bongiorno).

They (especially Black) were good on the way that the media landscape (mass, social) has transformed out of all sight, and how much more difficult governance is now. There’s a story (not told tonight) of Julia Gillard pointing out that you could offer a huge detailed set of policy statements and the journos would be hungry again hours later. The beast is hungry hungry hungry, and that isn’t helping anyone. (Thomas Mayo covered some of this last week in his Nelson Mandela lecture at the same venue, btw, and it too is well worth your time) – here, inevitably, is my blogpost about that.

What they didn’t cover (at all, or in great depth for my monomania)

So, for me as a former Australian resident and occasional visitor (nearing the end of the latest visitation), a few trends/dilemmas strike me afresh every time I cross the girt sea. 

  • The flag-waving nationalism (see here for my reflections on that: Who stands for an anthem? Australia from the 1970s to the 2020s. There is also an excellent observation by would-be-host of tonight’s event, Hugh White, in a recent Quarterly Essay.)
  • The exquisite vulnerability to climate change (which is being accelerated by the relentless search for fossil fuels for export purposes:  The Australian Oil and Gas lobby has just finished its latest trade fair about 200m from the Hawke Centre. It faced only tiny protests, after State Premier Peter Malinauskas unleashed some nice authoritarian anti-protest laws in 2023).
  • The running sore of a lack of any real reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples (the acknowledgement of country at tonight’s event was pretty cursory, tbh). If October 7th hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then the heart-breaking vote against the Voice would have really damaged Australia’s international standing.
  • The increase in inequality and the visible rise of rough sleeping (which is the merest sliver of the tip of the iceberg of homelessness etc).  The ‘cost of living’ crisis is a permacrisis for many. It was not always this bad, at least in Australia…

Not all of this can be sheeted home to Hawke, but Hawke’s record especially on climate, the failure to keep the 1988 promise of a Treaty, and the failures around public housing (alluded to near the end), deserved, in my opinion, a bigger chunk of tonight’s assessment.  It’s one thing to say you want to avoid hagiography, it’s another to actually avoid it. That said, this was a very nicely done event, and they did, after all, only have an hour. The closest we got to a discussion of neoliberalism (a word mentioned once or twice, almost in passing, and called ‘economic rationalism’ back in the day – though there are ongoing debates about whether those two are the same thing), was Black talking about ‘civil erosion’ the (global) collapse in trade union membership and so on, and then another mention in the context of too-much hagiography.

At this point Frank Bongiorno gave a shout out to his book about the 1980s, and pointed to a list of failures (of treaty, of public service reforms, of the marketization of services that would be better off under actual public control).

Interviewed long after being booted out of the Prime Ministerial role by her own party (sound familiar?) Margaret Thatcher was asked her greatest achievement. She said… Tony Blair.

Blair learned from Hawke/Keating – the early years of Blair gave me a real sense of déjà vu for the mid-80s, in terms of the way the political battles were fought. But I am a bit of a weirdo perhaps (1). 

The economy grows, but the problems, the pile of debris we call progress, also grew.  Now, 20 and 35 years after they left the stage, those problems are becoming impossible to ignore…

Footnote

 At the bus-stop on the way home (after a fabulous meal at Dino’s, the Greek place at the King William Street end of Hindley Street) we bumped the sixteen-ish year old daughter of a friend.  The mum is very smart, as is the daughter. I asked her is she knew who Bob Hawke was. Nope. But then, I don’t think at her age I knew who, say, Arthur Caldwell was. The caravan moves on.

To read/re-read/watch/rewatch

The Hawke/Keating Hijack by Dean Jaensch

Tom Uren’s biog (my favourite bit is the tale of the UK and Australian POW camps and their different survival rates. See also James Clavell’s novel of Changi – ‘King Rat’

Blanche D’Alpuget 1982 Robert J. Hawke: a biography, Schwartz,

Blanche D’Alpuget 2010. Hawke: the Prime Minister, Melbourne University Press, 

John Murphy An Unlikely Survival: The politics of welfare in Australia since 1950

True Believers TV Show – see this rebuttal.

Labour in Power 1993

Chris Wallace 2019 How to Win an Election

Tory Bramston Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny

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
Australia

May 20, 2001 – ABC Doco on Humans, An Endangered Species

Fifteen years ago, on this day, May 20th, 

Humans, An Endangered Species: Global Doomsday Scenarios (repeat)

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/backgroundbriefing/humans-an-endangered-species-global-doomsday/3484868

May 20 2001,

Many scientists predict that as population increases and we industrialise more we will send the earth’s control mechanisms out of gear. It’s not the end of the world – just the end of us…

Chris Bullock, Producer

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC had come out this year saying, “look, we’ve really got to reduce emissions much more sharply than we’re contemplating with the Kyoto Protocol. There will be serious trouble ahead.”

The specific context was that the Australian Government was resisting any action, and the Australian national broadcaster had some spine still back then, and was trying to get people to think through the implications. 

What I think we can learn from this is that there are journalists still finding space to raise these questions back then, at least. I’m not sure how it is now.

What happened next? Well, more documentaries, more questions, but very little action. 

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 20, 1959 Times of India letter about Teller and CO2 – All Our Yesterdays

May 20, 1960 – Spengler suggests decline of the … whole shebang

May 20, 1970 – NUC Symposium on Environmental Preservation 

May 20, 1976 – UK World Trends committee chair worries about the weather… – All Our Yesterdays

May 20, 1977 – Australian Prime Minister says “coal, not solar” is the future

May 20, 1990 – “Ironing out the Greenhouse Effect”

May 20, 2010 – climategate keeps delivering for denialist

Categories
Australia Upcoming events

Event – Weds May 20 – “The Climate Emergency: A Film Screening, Update and The Way Forward”

The recent public release of a 45 minute UK-produced film, “National Emergency Briefing”, now showing across the UK, presents the opportunity to expand its screening internationally and this is one of the first international sites. A narrated and curated synthesis of information presented by leading UK climate and biodiversity experts in November 2025, this film is coupled with audience reaction and highlights the escalating climate and nature emergency we all find ourselves in. Extreme weather events, existential climactic threats and tipping points, water and food insecurity, social unrest, human health impacts and collapsing biodiversity and ecosystems are all featured – and resonate globally. 

The other motivation for holding this event at this particular point in time is the convergence of two important events. During Laudato si’ Week (May 17-24), we re-double our efforts to care for our Common Home and take the lead from Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical. The Laudato si’ week’s theme this year is fittingly “From Hope to Action” and comes at a time when increasing numbers of people across the globe are discerning and directly experiencing this rapidly unfolding “ecological overshoot” emergency.
In 2026, the Laudato si’ week also overlaps with the period between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday. At this time, we also await the Holy Spirit, as we are sent forth under guidance and with gifts. The timing is also important as the event closely precedes National Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June), the theme being “All In”, a call for action and a commitment to wholehearted reconciliation. 

This event, combining spirituality, Indigenous perspectives, and science, has four broad aims.

1.  The screening of the “National Emergency Briefing” film will initially present a science-based, factual and realistic account of the true extent and gravity of the climate and nature emergency before us. The conclusion is that immediate and drastic reductions in the use of fossil fuels are needed – and hence anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

2. The information presented in the film will then be contextualised for audience members who live in the Southern Hemisphere and in Southern Australia. Garry Goldsmith, a Narungga man and representative, will present Indigenous perspectives, wisdom and culture, and highlight the devastating cultural impact the harmful algal bloom has had on his people and community. He will also outline the activities and aims of the newly formed Southern Australian Aboriginal Land and Sea Management Alliance, Garry being the co-Chair. Darren Ray, a well known local meteorologist and climatologist, will then present updated climate change and related projections, their regional and local implications and what this means for community resilience.

3. Emma Sandery, Beau Warren and Michael Dwyer, drawing from a diverse set of backgrounds and experience including community sustainability, simplicity, climate change, community gardening, landscaping, permaculture and fiction writing, will then present practical and tangible community and individual actions which are available and required right now. Importantly, the outcomes of these actions include a restoration and strengthening of Planetary/One Health, as well as renewed and functional relationships with our planet and each other. 

4. Lastly, the event will conclude with audience discussion and participation in a Q&A with a presenter panel. There will be an opportunity to explore the needed transformation into sustainable, self-sufficient, simpler, localized community life thriving within biophysical limits.

As it is a 150 minute event, an interval will provide some opportunity for refreshments, a chat and greetings. 

More event information is included in the link below – as well as several ways you can register (or just turn up). Please join us for something very important.

https://events.humanitix.com/laudato-si-week-event-the-climate-emergency-a-film-screening-update-and-the-way-forward

Categories
Australia

Golf is a good walk spoiled, and a planet despoiled…

What crazed tree-hugger said this in 1969?

“When civilized man looks out from the padded cell of urban life, what a destruction of the human environment he would see if only his eyes had not become too narrowly focused on his house, his motor car, his golf course, his cocktail bar and his television set. he would see a countryside despoiled, wild life being exterminated, vegetation withered, air and sea polluted, rivers made foul, green fields turned into dumps for rubbish and old model cars, and the night and day hideous with a blasphemous blare of uncontrolled noise. Is the only remedy for this to thicken the insulation and increase the comfort of the padded cell, or can we do more to mitigate or check this destruction.”

Why that would be the then governor-general of Australia, Paul Hasluck, who’d been a Liberal politician for decades. This was back when conservatives were trying to conserve things (1).

Hasluck was speaking in Adelaide, at the opening of a Congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. This was just as what we call the modern Environment Movement was kicking off.

Adelaide, btw, is where the Labor Government is busy destroying a portion of the parklands for the ‘upgrade’ of a golf course. I could go on I did, here).

On golf’s ecological impact, well – I have no doubt that

a) there are some academic studies

b) that the golfing industry have hired plenty of spin-Doctors and spin-Professors (see what I did there?) to muddy the waters.

I wasn’t planning to write long, and don’t have time, so I will just post a book cover (borrowed it today from the library) and move on.

Footnotes

(1) Yes, I know they were trying to “conserve” a very specific patriarchal and anthropocentric – and, frankly, Eurocentric and racist as fuck – version of “Nature”, but still…

Categories
Australia Sea level rise South Paciific

May 16, 1991 – environmental refugees from Pacific islands 

Thirty five years ago, on this day, May 16th, 1991,

Australia would have to take thousands of environmental refugees from the Pacific if greenhouse seas drowned their island homes, a defence strategist said in Melbourne on Thursday [16th].

Professor Des Ball, of the Australian National University, said rising sea levels caused by global warming threatened the survival of several South Pacific islands.

Anon, 1991. Greenhouse refugees from islands. Green Week, May 21, p.8.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that it was obvious, again, from the late 70s, earlier in fact, that there would be massive geopolitical implications of rising sea levels. One of these was that the low lying island states would get screwed and the humans would have to go somewhere. 

The specific context was that here in Australia, it was well understood that this would be a problem. And here we have a security analyst, Des Ball, stating the obvious. 

What I think we can learn from this we’ve known, we’ve known this would cause havoc and chaos and disaster. Still, we didn’t act because we could kick the ball down the road, the tin can down the road. 

What happened next. Well, eventually, by the mid 2000s the Labour Party in the in Australia was producing hand-wringing documents, and another 20 years later, there would begin to be agreements to evacuate some people from Tuvalu. 

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 16, 1972 – “Carbon and the Biosphere” symposium

May 16, 1973 Energy and how we live. UNESCO seminar at Flinders – All Our Yesterdays

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese says critical action on #climate being delayed by 20 years… #auspol

May 16, 2006 – UK Prime Minister Tony Blair goes nuclear…

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese, eco-warrior…

May 16 – Interview with Rosie, about zero population growth, zero climate progress, etc…

Categories
Australia

May 16, 1990 – the cost of the world’s green conscience

Thirty six years ago, on this day, May 16th, 1990,

“It is a country where the ambitious environment minister hopes to ride to higher office by promising to deliver the most rigorous environmental policies in the world.

The finance minister is aghast at the cost of the plan and has held it up in Cabinet for so long that his colleague has effectively gone to the people with a nation-wide series of public hearings.

But now the hearings have become a lightning rod for all sorts of discontent and the environment minister’s carefully nurtured public support is threatening to evaporate just when the Government sorely needs it.

It may sound like a familiar plot but this time the players are not Graham Richardson or Peter Walsh and the Federal Government concerned has a distinctly conservative hue – except when it comes to turning green.

Canada, with a resource dependent economy like Australia’s and a pro-growth conservative Government, is embroiled in a national debate over a government promise to introduce a comprehensive five-year environmental plan which is forecast to cost billions of dollars.” 

Earl, G. 1990. Price and pay-off for the world’s green conscience. Australian Financial Review, May 16.

 The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that from the late 1970s it was obvious that getting off fossil fuels to deal with climate change was going to cost a lot of money. This was one of the reasons that the politicians maybe hadn’t acted. 

The specific context was that in 1988 it became impossible to ignore the issue anymore, and so by May of 1990 as the First Assessment Report of the IPCC was released, and it’s obvious that there’s going to have to be some sort of climate treaty. You will then get people counting the cost. And this article is fairly typical of that the business press was full of this at the time. Understandably.   

What I think we can learn from this. all the cards were in the air because the Soviet Union was in the process of disintegrating. The Berlin Wall had come down. Elections were being held in former satellite countries and Germany was on the way to reunification. By this time, 1990 it was clear that there was going to be a negotiating process for climate treaty, and that there would be a Rio Earth Summit in 1992, 20 years on from the Stockholm conference. 

What happened next. The cost of acting became embedded via all sorts of pathetic, tendentious economic modelling produced by so called independent think tanks, and this helped the forces of the status quo stop action from happening 

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 16, 1972 – “Carbon and the Biosphere” symposium

May 16, 1973 Energy and how we live. UNESCO seminar at Flinders – All Our Yesterdays

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese says critical action on #climate being delayed by 20 years… #auspol

May 16, 2006 – UK Prime Minister Tony Blair goes nuclear…

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese, eco-warrior…

May 16 – Interview with Rosie, about zero population growth, zero climate progress, etc…

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.