The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Evans, has thrown doubt over a long-standing Federal Government position on greenhouse gases in a move which will alarm the business sector.
The doubts on Australia’s response to the UN Climate Change Convention were compounded by Senator Evans’ admission that Australia had recently been “rolled” on its tough stand on the Basel convention on hazardous wastes.
At a Senate Estimates Committee hearing on Tuesday [24th May], Victorian Liberal Senator Judith Troeth asked: “Has Cabinet agreed that Australia will not implement measures under the climate change convention which would damage our competitiveness, unless other countries also do so?”
Gill, P. 1994. Minister signals change of policy on greenhouse gas. The Australian Financial Review, 26 May, p.6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian Government had, initially, in 1989 made the right noises about a climate treaty, but by 1992 opposition within the Labor government had hardened. Although Australia signed up and ratified the UNFCCC, it also started looking for loopholes to avoid any real commitments. The specific context was that this is before the treaty became international law. They knew that that was coming, and they knew that there would be a Conference of the Parties, and they wanted to start getting their retaliation in first.
What I think we can learn from this. This is not “the bad guys.” This is not the evil cloven hooves, tail with a triangle on the end, horns on head Howard Government (boo, hiss!). This is that nice, cuddly, social democratic government led by Paul Keating. It’s important to remember this.
What happened next. Most of the political elite and industry fought tooth and nail against a domestic carbon tax, which would have been the thing to keep the international climate negotiations sweet. And they sent the Environment Minister, John Faulkner, to the Berlin COP without much more than promises to maybe take action at some point. There was a National Greenhouse Response Strategy by this time, but it was farcical. No one took it seriously. Ultimately then, once the next government came in, they stopped even pretending to give a shit about the UNFCCC, and played hardball, which is why they got the incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (which they still didn’t ratify). I could go on for hours.
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.
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.”
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).
“JPMorgan Chase and Climeworks landmark CDR agreement heralds new standard in voluntary carbon market for direct air capture”
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 with the failure to use existing technologies like nuclear and renewables to reduce carbon emissions, we are now in such deep shit that we’re having to invent, and take seriously, fantasy technologies like Direct Air Capture.
The specific context was that direct air capture has been having a “moment” for the last few years. Reality is setting in, but you get these hysterical announcements about market making and investment and you’re supposed to take it seriously. But what we learn is that carbon dioxide removals is the emperor’s new clothes. It’s a farce.
What I think we can learn from this. Any crap gets believed in, if it is convenient. Bearded sky gods, Direct Air Capture, you name it.
What happened next. I haven’t been able to find anything more recent than 2024. Maybe the money is still ‘there’. But, you know these agreements, they last for a couple of years, and then they get quietly dropped, and another agreement comes along.
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.
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.
Forty seven years ago, on this day, May 22nd, 1979,
President Carter’s chief scientific adviser Frank Press requests NAS to look at CO2
[following MacDonald and Pomerance] Finally, weeks later, MacDonald called to tell him that Press had taken up the issue. On May 22, Press wrote a letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences requesting a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue. Jule Charney, the father of modern meteorology, would gather the nation’s top oceanographers, atmospheric scientists and climate modelers to judge whether MacDonald’s alarm was justified — whether the world was, in fact, headed to cataclysm.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 3xxppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from the mid 1970s, various scientists in the United States – we’re talking Gordon MacDonald, Alvin Weinberg, Roger Revelle, perhaps a few others – had been able to lobby the ERDA to start taking climate change seriously and put pressure on the higher-ups in the science establishment in the United States, especially President Carter’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Frank Press. And Press, on this day, asked the National Academy of Sciences to have a look at the issue with new eyes to see if the fears of the carbon dioxide action advocates were fair and justified.
The specific context was that Chief scientists understandably want to make sure a problem they are being told about is actually a problem, before they go to their political pay masters with it. That’s fair and legitimate.
What I think we can learn from this. That for all reasonable circumstances, we knew enough by the late 1970s to be taking action.
What happened next. The NAS did the study. This was the Charney report, and it said, “yeah, if we keep tipping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there’s absolutely no reason not to believe that the temperature will go up significantly and that will cause a world of pain” and Press clearly didn’t like that, didn’t think it should be something on Carter’s agenda, especially in the following year, which was an election year.
Frank Press died 2020 – a life of magnitude https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004812117
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.
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 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.
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).
(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’.
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.
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
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.
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.
Demonstrating her continuing interest in climate change, Margaret Thatcher invited John Houghton to present the scientific findings of IPCC(1990) to her Cabinet on 21 May 1990.
Folland et al 2004
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 again, the British government had been warned repeatedly about climate change. New Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in 1979 had responded to her Chief Scientific Advisor, “what you want me to worry about the weather?” And there had been other attempts to get her on board. Finally, in 1988 for domestic political reasons, she pivoted and gave her speech at the Royal Society. This set the ball in motion.
The specific context was that in April of 1989 Thatcher had held a one day seminar for her cabinet on what to do about the greenhouse effect. I think Houghton was there. A lot of other people were too. In November of ‘89 she’d given a talk at the United Nations General Assembly, and here she was as the IPCC First Assessment report was released, asking the head of the Met Office, (I think he’d retired from that post by then, but had become the chair of IPCC Working Group 1, I want to say) to give a presentation to her cabinet.
What I think we can learn from this is that the problem was not lack of information. The problem was the stupidity, greed, etc, of various politicians, but also the social and electoral systems that allowed them to be stupid and greedy and societal systems as well.
What happened next. Thatcher continued to manage the climate issue with nice speeches, but she never picked up the green gauntlet, either literal or metaphorical. And you see this pattern again and again. “Oh, look, we’ve had the top scientist in to speak to us. Therefore, give us a break.” And it’s rubbish. But liberals are happy to fall for it.
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.
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…
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.
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.
