On this day (ish) in 1971, “Ecology Action” was formed in Sydney. There had been a series of campaigns about specific patches of nature that were about to be bulldozed or mined etc, and well, people decided to get together to take action on Ecology.
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Ecology body is formed
SYDNEY : Ecology Action has been formed recently here by people wanting to “take action to prevent irreversible destruction of life on earth.”
It is working closely with the Society for Social Responsibility in Science (SRS) and other conservationist and anti-pollution groups. Ecology Action is calling a meeting tonight (Wednesday June 16) at 7.30 pm, at the Stephen Roberts Theatre, Sydney University, to hear Dr. Stephen Boyden of the ANU speak and to discuss action proposed by Ecology Action. Ecology Action, with SRS and the National Trust is holding a meeting on June 28, at the Sydney Town Hall at 8 pm to discuss and protest the proposed Clutha development on NSW South Coast. Ecology Action’s address is Box K404, P.O., Haymarket, NSW, 2000.
Tribune, Wednesday 16 June 1971, page 12
Except, well, it was about a month earlier – see this from The Bulletin, near the other end of the political spectrum (Tribune was communist).
Why this matters.
We’ve been here before! Repeatedly. And see below…
What happened next?
Ecology Action lasted until about 1980. I’ve looked at the material in the National Library – newsletters and so on. Climate is not mentioned (and understandably so – still too abstract) but it seems there was the usual pattern of a few committed folks begging others to get involved… And then, well, it just fizzled out, I think. I don’t know for sure. That is NOT a criticism of those involved. I am sure they spent countless hours trying to slow down the apocalypse. And here we are.
On this day, in 2009, at the climax of their three day Climate Action Summit, protesters linked arms around Parliament House in Canberra. Climate activism had exploded in 2006 in Australia, with everything from marches to, in the following years, direct action attempts to prevent the export of coal from Newcastle. Activist group Rising Tide had held climate camps and with the new Rudd Government talking about climate action, the time seemed ripe with promise.
However, by the end of 2008, it was obvious that the Labour government which had promised so much was going to deliver at best, very, very little. Activists had interrupted Rudd’s National Press Club presentation at the end of 2008. And economist Ross Garneau had denounced Rudd’s “carbon pollution reduction scheme” with the words “Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given without public policy purpose, by so many, to so few,”
So 2009 looked like it was going to be the year when citizens said enough. However, it was not to be. Protest movements struggle, once an issue is on the agenda, because many who would otherwise support it, say, “you’ve got to give the process time, you’ve got to see what emerges.” This, of course, plays into the hands of incumbents who know very well how to slow things down, how to sideline proposals, how to water down commitments, how to demand extensions, and special treatment. If the insurgents don’t have a class interest that binds them together, they are even more vulnerable…
And of course, this was all happening in the middle of the global financial crisis. (But there is always some reason not to act on a long term problem, like climate change.)
Why this matters?
We need to understand that you can physically, symbolically encircle a parliament but actually restricting the ability of elected politicians to weasel out and to water down is a much tougher proposition requiring different skills, different capacities.
What happened next?
Rudd’s CPRS failed to get through Parliament early in 2000. And in mid 2009, and failed again, in December of that year, when the Liberals revolted, the Greens refused to support it. And the rest of the story is horrible. But we know that.
Sakshi Aravind is a PhD student at University of Cambridge. (see her review of Andreas Malm’s book “How to blow up a pipeline” here, and see an interview here) reflects on the 32 years since this-
1990 Shabecoff, P. 1990. Environmental Groups Told They Are Racists in Hiring. New York Times, 1 February. WASHINGTON, Jan. 31— Several members of civil rights and minority groups have written to eight major national environmental organizations charging them with racism in their hiring practices
After thirty-two years, it is a small relief that we do not have to write letters about discriminatory hiring practices in environmental organisations. We have traversed some distance. Let us make past this momentary sense of satisfaction. We can sit down for a hard-headed debriefing about whether this ‘distance’ was noticeably significant in any particular direction or just self-congratulatory posturing about having made it past our front yards. Since I am writing about a small but exceedingly significant letter written in the year I was born, I cannot dismiss all that peoples’ persistence has achieved in these years. The concept of ‘environmental justice’ has found a strong foothold and bided its time in the social, political, and juridical spheres. Social movements for environmental justice, fair and equitable environmental policies, and opportunities for democratic participation are very vibrant. The environmental organisations do not have visible and impenetrable walls obstructing BIPOC members. The phrases ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’ seem boundlessly desired even by vampiric corporations. While it is easy to pin down ‘what changed’, ‘what did not’ is worrying. What have we done with the achievements, transformations, and progresses of the last 32 years as the nature of planetary collapse worsens?
When the racist hiring practices were seemingly remedied, how did the people responsible for those changes define the problem? What did they imagine they were solving when they hired a more representative workforce and opened their membership for all? It is important to document and assess the changes we have witnessed in the last three decades to classify what problems are fully addressed and what others have shapeshifted into another version of themselves. Whilst environmental movements and groups appear to be more representative, ‘representation’ does not fill the shoes of ‘recognition’. Even ‘recognition’ can be a lopsided concept if it is not constructive and does not allow for a plurality of voices across race, class, gender, etc. The big question of what changed between then and now should be: whether the change of heart in environmentalism confronted the entrenched whiteness (and consequently coloniality) that underlies the collective understanding of environmental injustices, policy choices, and the general direction of environmental movements. The problem of racism and coloniality in environmental movements is also structural. Hence, cosmetic changes in representation can only have incremental benefits and not the epistemic shift we need to counter the rapid destruction of the planet. Mercifully, we did not regress. However, environmental organisations also did not build on their knowledge on a required scale. There are no visible and invisible forms of environmental racism and environmental colonialism. There are either visible aspects that are hard to deny or the aspects that are wilfully ignored and diminished without any accountability—through entrenched knowledge and epistemologies that are vital to the sustenance and reproduction of colonial, white supremacist, capitalist nations.
If environmental movements and organisations had understood how ‘spaces’ (emphasis on structures as opposed to a handful of institutions) exclude BIPOC workers, activists, members, and environmentalisms, our responsibilities at the moment would have been lighter despite the number of challenges regarding environmental destruction and climate change. Something as simple as how wilderness is defined, what opportunities are available to benefit from the environment—even simple pleasures such as birdwatching—and what autonomy does BIPOC have on controlling and governing land, natural resources are steeped in relationships of expropriation and elimination. Therefore, it is still easy to please many people with Don’t Look Up as if it were the pinnacle of artistic expression. At the same time, Global South prepares for the worst of climate crises that have been building up due to imperialist plunder. In 1990, they were concerned about the absence of People of Colour in key organisations. Now, we are concerned about the absence of constructive voices that would define climate change as anything but a specific event; dismantle structures of accumulation, theft, and exploitation; demand reparations and imagine world-making practices in terms of kinship, care, cooperation, and justice.
If we think long and hard, a lot changed for the good. Nevertheless, the ways in which environmental injustices have been defined are still largely in the clutches of those who command the resources—social, political, capital et al. Effectively, the epistemic resources need redistribution along with material redistribution. Moreover, epistemic justice must follow environmental justice close at hand. Meanwhile, we keep writing and conversing in the hope that we might have done a little more towards the things we care for than what we inherited thirty years later.
