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- Commentary
- Preserving our sanity amidst the consuming madness of the times
- Removing the mask of the insecure babyman
- The internet: from digital democracy to digital dementia
- Doubt as an asset, certainty as an affliction
- Fascism, collective insanity and ourselves
- Navigating disinformation, uncertainty, individualism and the poison apple of conspiracy
- If nothing changes nothing will change: the Voice referendum
- What can we learn from disaster communities?
- New year, a time to embrace the uncertainty of it all
- We could be non-binary
- Adaptive resilience vs safety paternalism
- Left wing, right wing? What just happened to politics?
- Covid, class and the addiction to certainty
- Neoliberalism, the Life World and the Psychopathic Corporation
- Democracy is about our bodies, not just our minds
- What’s your motivation: is it yourself or the change you’re making?
- Mind over matter: The world of abstraction is driving us to destruction
- The real threats to our liberty and survival
- Avoiding the abyss of conspiracy theories
- The difference between a legal system and a fantasy novel
- What’s a conspiracy and what’s just common garden variety corruption?
- Unpredictability, humility and an emerging anthropandemic
- The trilemma – climate change, economic collapse, and rising fascism
- Happy New Normal for the decade ahead
- The race to the bottom in australian politics
- Fires, liars and climate deniers
- Talking about lock-on devices – an article in ‘The Conversation’
- The Ponzi scheme is teetering
- Regenerative culture a key part of the blockade experience
- Staying sane in the late Anthropocene
- Extinction Rebellion
- Major parties have failed on climate, it’s time to rebel.
- Elections In The Late Anthropocene
- It is the Greens that are defeating the Nats and it’s all about your preferences
- Australia’s powerhouse of democracy and innovation is in the Northern Rivers
- Is identity politics a problem for the left?
- The climate emergency and the awful state of Australian politics
- Democracy and rights under threat in corporate police state
- Liberty, freedom and civil rights? Do any of us understand these things anymore.
- The forest wars are back, time to mobilise
- …more commentary
- Workshops
- News & Events
- Media
- A Flood of Emotions – Sydney Ideas Event
- Participatory democracy in the COVID era – SCU podcast
- Activism educator Aidan Ricketts explains how and why protests can be peaceful
- Bob Brown Is Taking “Shocking” Anti-Protest Laws To The High Court
- Anti protest laws could arrest nannas, seize tractors
- “They blinked first”
- Colin Barnett quick to protest against ‘activism degrees’ – The Australian, 16/10/2014
- ‘Degrees in activism’ put brake on growth – The Australian, 15/10/2014
- Magistrate throws out vexatious police case against CSG protesters
- Outrage over school PR ‘by stealth’- The Northern Star
- CSG clash a certainty
- Communities use new tactics
- Gas group attacks lecturer
- …more media
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I like these sites
Community Organisations
- Code Green Tasmania
- CSG Free Northern Rivers
- Friends of the Earth Melbourne
- Generation Alpha
- Huon Valley Environment Centre
- Lock the Gate Alliance
- Nature Conservation Council NSW
- North Coast Environment Council
- North East Forest Alliance
- Plan to Win
- Rainforest Information Centre
- Save our Foreshore
- Still Wild Still Threatened
- The Change Agency
- The Wilderness Society
Climate change, think globally respond regionally
We entered the new millennium carrying the baggage of the old. The political economy of the 2oth century was all about fuel, mostly fossil fuel. It was assumed that to produce energy there was a need for fuel, a physical commodity that could be located, extracted, owned and controlled. Those who could control the supply of fuel had a massive political and economic advantage, and so we have seen numerous wars fought over the control of fuel.
The West Australian, 31 May 1947, p. 12.
The strong message from the planet and it’s scientists for well over 30 years has been that we must stop burning fossil fuels or we face climate disaster. Sadly the main response from the fossil fuel industries was to ramp up the dishonest rhetoric of denial and doubt, ramp up the industry’s investment in manipulating political parties and governments and worse still to ramp up a last ditch greenfield gas and coal mining expansion.
Neo-liberalism is often mistakenly called economic rationalism, but the response we have seen to climate change has been anything but rational, it has been to sandbag the old and terminal business and political model and to delay effective responses for as long as possible.
The problem is not about where we can source energy from, energy is abundant, it hits this planet every day in quantities that massively exceed our needs, the problem for the fossil fuel industries has been that renewable energy eliminates their fuel-based business model, and the fuel-based model of world political domination of the US, its allies and a number of its non-allies. In short renewable energy is a massive game changer, and the old power structure was scared of it.
Here in the Northern Rivers we have experienced our own micro version of all of this global politics. The fracking threat exemplified by Metgasco, was our regional version of the politics of extreme energy, the latter day foolishness of an industry that wanted to launch just one more fossil fuel boom before we went renewable. But we don’t need a transition ‘fuel’ we just need a proper transition.
But we discovered, as communities across Australia and the world have, that to stand and fight the fossil fuel industry was also a fight for the heart of democracy. We were standing against an established corruption that had inveigled all of the major political parties. To fight we needed to go back to basics, to re-invent our communities as networks of peaceful resistance, reinvigourate local democracy and to face up to threats of massive retaliation. We did that. Now that we have mostly succeeded we get to actually move on to the front foot and build from the grassroots our low carbon future.
It is so good now that the gas battles are hopefully behind us as a region to have the opportunity to lead the way with innovative community-based solutions. This too is a part of re-invigourating democracy. We could just wait for government, but all we would get is a model that suited the old energy distribution companies, maybe even a tax on solar households.
The truth is we were never idle Nimby’s or hypocrites, we just needed to respond to the crisis in the order of urgency, first fight the crazy fossil fuel gas expansion, in the process re-invigourate democracy, and then get on with the job of transforming the political economy of energy.
The Northern Rivers is playing its part in a much larger picture, the world is changing.
Worldwide, coal is dead. A Navajo Nation woman protesting for change. Image by Wahleah Johns.
King Coal is dead, and coal divestment is now a runaway train. Oil will be around for a while yet, we still need it to make a lot of cool stuff, but we won’t need to be wasting it in regular transport soon. Hopefully much will come of governments meeting in Paris to discuss climate change, but as we know so well in this region, it is always better if communities devise their own solutions.
A happy festive season to all, much more work to be done in the years ahead.
This article was first published in the Nimbin GoodTimes, Dec, 2015.