Small Change for a Climate Crisis

Denmark: an oasis in Europe; a land of fantasy; birthplace of Hans Christian Anderson; the country in which ABBA performed its first live concert. Clearly it has seen both triumphs and low points in history. It is, of course, also the backdrop of perhaps the world's greatest tragedy, a tale of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. No, I do not refer to Hamlet, as some of the astute thespians among you may believe. I am naturally referring to the UN Climate Conference (7–18th December) in Copenhagen, which, for all its good intentions, has the potential of releasing the single greatest emission of hot air in history.

Perhaps that's going a little too far. I'll admit that I included incest in the list as a red herring in order to make my tentuous literary allusion (although the intimately related world powers who are jumping into bed together and arguing to do as they have ever done could raise an eyebrow or two). The point is that while the conference itself is an enormous step forward towards addressing climate change, the outcomes may be little more than rhetoric and back-patting. Policies touted as 'green' by the governments who propose them often fall far short of intercepting global warming as it fast approaches exponential growth. The carbon trading schemes (Emissions Trading Scheme or Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as it's known in Australia) represent little more than buying and selling the right to pollute, and allow market forces to dominate the approach. The problem is, these forces are the very corporations that have caused the problem in the first place, through fossil fuel-intensive practices and massive deforestation. The decision makers seem to be missing the point, which is that climate change is more than an ecological issue, and certainly more than an economic one. In fact, it is an issue of human rights, as it directly affects people's rights to food, shelter, health, work, and life itself. True progress in tackling this global crisis should centre around the concept of climate justice, which advocates for those most affected by a problem not of their making. Industrialised nations need to find the money to invest in green technology, sustainable agricultural practices, and equitable access to resources for developing nations. Different paths forward must be found, rather than trying to find different ways to do the same thing that landed us here in the first place.

Last weekend I participated along with 40,000 others in the Wave in London, the world's biggest climate change rally to date. It was encouraging to see such a large number of people from all over the UK come together to call for urgent action on the issue. At the same time, however, I was distressed to find that only 27% of Americans and 31% of British people considered that climate change posed a large threat to the world. I have watched with a sort of tragic amusement as the issue in Australia has regressed into a debate as to whether global warming is even a result of human activity. On one side the Labor government is pushing for legislation that has been widely criticised as not nearly going far enough, giving free carbon permits to the biggest emitters and setting targets far lower than the necessary percentage cuts. On the other side, the Liberal party is imploding as the Flat Earth society spreads doubt as to whether there's even a problem. Sometimes I am relieved that Australia rarely makes it into the news overseas. 

It is the world's poorest people who will be most affected by climate change. The Australian Human Rights Commission predicts that even in Australia, which is already ravaged by droughts, floods and bushfires on a regular basis,

northern Aboriginal communities will bear the brunt of climate change and will face serious health risks from malaria, dengue fever and heat stress, as well as loss of food sources from floods, drought and more intense bushfires.

However, I advocate for the next UN Climate Change Conference to take place in Bangladesh. This nation is experiencing the reality of climate change in the present, not as a distant future possibility. It is expected that by 2050, twenty per cent of Bangladesh's landmass will be gone, the result of rising sea levels and flooding rivers.

Eyewitness Climate Change: Bangladesh from Oxfam Australia on Vimeo.

This clearly isn't an issue for purely political and scientific debate. It's an issue of humanity.

There are a lot of things we, as ordinary people, can do to act on the issue. For one, we can join the movement that is gathering more and more momentum and now has the potential to hold governments and big business to account. Things like the Wave, or Walk Against Warming, show that we stand in solidarity with developing nations, and send a clear message to world leaders that there are those who refuse to stand by and watch a preventable catastrophy unfold in our generation and those to come. Furthermore, in contrast to self-interested business lobbies, we can lobby governments to make decisions based on climate justice, rather than economic measures which consolidate the right to pollute. After all, there are more important rights at stake. Shakespeare's Hamlet ends with the protagonist's dying words,  '... the rest is silence.' Let us not be silent, then, or this too may become a great tragedy.

Off the rails

It’s traditionally a derisive label, branded upon those who have left the ‘righteous’ well-paved road to follow selfish paths to harm and antisocial behaviour: drug addicts; criminals; non-conformists; wayward youths. Perplexingly, I myself have been labeled so, although I suspect I fit only partially into some of the above categories. I am calling for a rethinking of the term, however. I am reclaiming the phrase, and even going so far as to extol the merits of going ‘off the rails’.

I recall the little golden book of my youth, entitled ‘Tootle’. In it, the protagonist is an overly adventurous baby locamotive, whose defiant desire to leave the tracks and frolic in flower-strewn fields leads him to a shameful demise, with mud clogged wheels and a strong rebuke from the engineer. Today, I wonder if Tootle didn’t have the right idea. What are rails? Cold, man-made lines of steel that carry men and women to an inevitable destination, single-mindedly and without diversion. I agree that much of society sits contentedly on these rails, awaiting the final station, resigned to make the best of the journey and satisfied that the engine knows best. The rails permit neither questioning of the direction, nor any deviation. As long as the train is on the rails, the way is set.

This is not the way it has to be. It is a philosophy of fate that more subscribe to than would admit it. The ‘rails’ keep addicts chugging mercilessly towards ruin. The ‘rails’ carry Indigenous children toward poor health and education, substance abuse, incarceration and an early grave. The ‘rails’ consign those who have suffered abuse to perpetuate the cycle by inflicting it on others. The ‘rails’ send developing countries into spiralling debt, and the ‘rails’ propel wealthy nations towards unfettered and unregulated economic growth. The ‘rails’ project the planet into cataclysmic climate change, and sink nations under rising waters. The ‘rails’ send religious institutions rallying onwards to self-sustenance, shuttered to the reality around them. The ‘rails’ send every one of us from birth to childhood to adolescence to adulthood to old age and to the grave, straining to entertain ourselves and taking advantage of the free buffet along the way. We are not born on ‘rails’. ‘Rails’ are man made. God is not on ‘rails’.

I consider the old adage, ‘Get off the grass!’ What a strange command. Why on earth would I want to get off the grass, when all that awaits me are the rails? I desire fiercely to get off the rails. Scandalously, I encourage every student I teach to get off the rails. I plead with them to ask questions, not to accept what I tell them IS. I hand to them the ultimate tools for derailment: hope, and change. Perhaps many of them will be more content to ride the train, as long as it’s going where they want to go. Hopefully some will jump from the moving carriages, look up, see the horizon, and the endless routes that will take them there. Certainly wrong turns will be made; unexpected chasms stumbled upon; impossibly high mountains encountered. But it is the rails that have taught us to fear our mistakes, rather than to know the deep human necessity of them.

Get off the rails, and on the grass, and let’s go from there.

Nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground

Peter Garrett first sang those words back in 1990 as front man of Midnight Oil, long before he grew up and got a real job as Australia’s current Environment Minister. He also penned such lyrics as: 

Mining companies, pastoral companies,
Uranium companies,
Collected companies,
Got more right than people,
Got more say than people.

Of course, that goes all the way back to 1987, and he’s since approved at least one uranium mine in his official role. Today, however, these issues are more pertinent than ever. Around the world, mining companies are wielding immeasurable power, and doing untold damage to the indigenous communities whose land is all too often being exploited. Take, for example, the hills of Orissa, India, where the Dongria Kondh have been living and worshipping their god Niyam Raja for centuries. According to local belief, this god resides in Niyamgiri hill, which recently was sold to a mining company to be gutted of its bauxite deposits. The effects of a mine at the site, and the destruction of the hills that surround it, would subsequently mean the devastation of the forests, rivers and streams that flow out of them. Not to mention the Dongria Kondh themselves. Far closer to home is West Papua, forcefully acquired by Indonesia in the late 1960s and refused its right to vote for independence ever since. This is a mineral rich island, with gold and copper deposits which still earn the international companies which own them over one million dollars profit a year. Meanwhile, in regions of the country where companies such as BP are profiting hugely from natural gas reserves, villages are suffering from famine and a lack of basic health care. Any protest or dissent is quickly quelled by a brutal Indonesian military.

Australia is largely free of such large-scale exploitation, chiefly thanks to stringent Native Title legislation. However, in principal similar issues exist for traditional landowners, who possess or manage around twenty per cent of the continent. Much of the land is mineral rich, although Native Title deeds exclude ownership of anything underground. Mining companies are obliged to enter into binding agreements with individual land councils, who are capable of rejecting any prospective mining parties if they see fit. Still, the picture is far more complicated than this. Australia is on the brink of yet another mining boom, and in the midst of so much economic uncertainty on a global level the government is keen to make the most of it. Powerful rhetoric is flying about in both the federal and state parliaments, boldly signaling the benefits for all that will burst magnificently and bountifully from this burgeoning industry. Indigenous Australians are particularly in the spotlight, as they are key players in the scheme. They are constantly reminded of the poor unemployment rates, low living standards, and lack of access to industry that plague their communities. They are shown graphs with lines that move ever upward, promised generous royalty cheques (which they are entitled to under Native Title legislation), and occasionally even guaranteed jobs and training. Fears about damage to country are quickly allayed by promises that the mining companies will clean up when they’ve got what they wanted.

Experience has shown that the ‘cargo cult’ surrounding mining and its supposed benefits is vastly removed from the reality on the ground. A recent study entitled Power, culture, economy: Indigenous Australians and mining, released by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), analysed three large-scale mines on Aboriginal land in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. They found that in those three cases little had changed in the areas of unemployment or economic growth. Furthermore, in the case of the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory, there were serious health concerns relating to the unusually high cancer rate amongst Indigenous people in the area. At all three mines, there were significant environmental concerns relating to destruction of sacred and cultural heritage sites, damage to ecologically vital wetlands and the impact on subsistence fishing in several areas. Considering all this, the effectiveness and appropriateness of financial payouts is extremely questionable, especially when in the case of the Yandicoogina mine in Western Australia this money could not be accessed and used effectively by communities because it was locked up in trusts.

Still the federal and state governments plough ahead with their boom, desperate not to forfeit the financial gains to any environmental or social concerns. In Queensland the Wild Rivers Act seeks to preserve the pristine river systems of the Cape York Peninsula by regulating industry within a certain distance of those rivers. Mining, however, is excluded from the legislation, despite the immense toll of the water usage, road building and heavy vehicle traffic necessary to sustain the industry. In South Australia, even as an Indigenous Protected Area is being set up in the far north-west corner of the state, Rio Tinto and Metals X are embarking on a joint venture to explore a potentially vast nickel deposit, much like the one just across the border in Western Australia which is making the relocation of the entire community of Wingellina ever more likely. This is traditionally important land for the Pitjantjatjara people, connected to the papa (dog), patilpa (Port Lincoln Parrot) and ninu (bilby) dreaming stories, as well as being home to over two hundred Anangu people. While these people are promised jobs, training and money into the future, the remains of abandoned chrysoprase mines still scar the landscape, relics of bygone mining ventures. The people themselves express anxiety over the future, citing the potential mine in Wingellina as a source of depression in an area already wracked by suicide.

In the midst of all this, Aboriginal people are all too often left feeling powerless in the face of the mining companies and the governments. With such a strong focus on mining, and the consistent contention that it is a surefire way out of economic disadvantage, land councils and other decision-makers are left with difficult choices. The view has been expressed that while communities who are not involved in mining escape the injury to country, they are left with few alternative opportunities to develop industry and economic activity that could benefit them directly. It’s no wonder, as very little investment is made in sustainable industries, Indigenous initiatives or even taking the time to listen to what communities truly want.

Whether it be in the troubled areas of Orissa and West Papua, or in the more stable, if equally problematic, Indigenous communities of Australia, mining has effects that remain many years after the operations have packed up and left. To simply close down all mining ventures in this country would be economically disastrous, putting an end to almost forty per cent of the nation’s total exports. However, if Aboriginal ownership and stewardship of country is to be taken seriously, mining can no longer be portrayed as a do-or-die industry. There must be recognition by the governments that economic growth, even when it genuinely occurs, does not equal wellbeing and a better quality of life on the ground for Aboriginal people. Any industry that wishes to function on Indigenous land needs to ensure that its practices and outcomes are completely transparent and in the best interests of those who are most affected. Genuine investment needs to be made in sustainable industries, including culturally appropriate training and employment initiatives. Above all, we need to ensure that companies never have more rights than people, nor more say than them. Otherwise Native Title is a farce, and equality for Aboriginal Australians remains a long way off.