USYD ENVIRO COLLECTIVE 2021 presents
COMBUST
Acknowledgement of Country The Environment Collective meets and organises on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. This publication was thus edited and distributed on stolen land. Sovereignty of so-called Australia was never ceded. The environment that we aim to protect and conserve is sacred country, and the destruction of such country is an ongoing act of colonial violence. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging, and stand in solidarity with First Nations peoples across Australia and the world - because there is no environmental justice without Indigenous justice.
Officebearers’ note Hey there! It’s great to see ya because if you’re reading this it means you have the 2021 edition of Combust in your hot lil hands! This booklet brings together ideas, stories, art and love from activists at USyd and beyond to give you a taster of what the environmental movement is all about. Think of it as a crash course of things we wished we’d known when we first got into enviro politics. The Enviro Collective is a branch of ASEN (Australian Student Environment Network) - a non-hierarchical grassroots organising space for environmental activism and community building. We hold weekly meetings and you can get involved in our reading groups, film screenings, semester campaigns, snap actions, roadtrips and more. You don’t need to be an expert on all things environmental - we are all learning to be better activists together. Combust is a small part of that, so we hope you take something from it. Love Drew, Bella and Lauren Enviro Convenors 2021
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Contents my home, our home .... 4 radical glossary .... 5 gas gets dug out, you get sold out .... 6 global health and the climate crisis .... 8 2O2O in pictures .... 10 ecofeminism: a primer .... 12 a degrowth manifesto .... 14 green tinted glasses .... 16 green jobs now .... 18 get over it, decolonise now .... 20 towards a radical ecology .... 21 ecosocialism .... 24 gamil means no .... 26
Cover art by Madeleine Rowell Photography by Lauren Lancaster
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My Home, Our Home Fale o a’u, matou fale
Words by Benson Lilo Oto The smell of to’ona’i, prepared the day before, Walking white-clothes, line into church doors, A warmer than usual Sunday, life still normal, My recent memories of Sāmoa, my lands, But for your shores along our Big Blue Highway, Threat lurks near your homes at the bay, The destruction to Mother Earth from far-away lands, Is making your whole islands fade away, Pasifika people were the masters of the ocean, But now, our watery fates are interwoven, Your way, our way of living at risk, And the hearts of our generations emerging, broken, But we will not go easy into the blue gloam, We are family, we seek justice together, not alone, We will fight to protect what is rightfully ours for The Pacific is my home, our home.
Image by Isabella D’Silva
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Anti-colonial: So-called Australia is the product of colonial exploitation and expansion. White supremacy, white saviourism, and violent dispossession are intrinsic to this nation. Colonialism is inherently violent. It justifies the continuous oppression of Indigenous peoples in various forms including economic exploitation, limitations upon sovereignty and autonomy, genocide and stolen generations, and police brutality. It is imperative that we recognise the global violence of colonialism and incorporate anti-colonialist stances in our activism, supporting and platforming Indigenous peoples and causes. Eco-socialism: Anti-capitalism must provide solutions and alternatives to the climate crisis. In embracing eco-socialism, USYD Enviro fights to abandon the capitalist mode of production and create a system run by the masses. We believe that workers should control production, incorporating strong environmental politics. Anti-cop/ACAB/1312: Police forces exist to protect private property, with no real interest in attaining justice for the working class and marginalised. By being anti-cop, USYD Enviro acknowledges that the police frequently obstruct effective industrial action and actively work against our interests. The police are responsible for 434 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991 and frequently assault activists during protests and blockades.
Radical GLOSSARY radical RADICAL GLOSSARY GLOSSARY RADICAL RADICAL GLOSSARY RADICAL
RADICAL GLOSSARY
Anti-capitalist: USyd Enviro recognises that the current ecological crisis is not a market failure, but a crisis stemming from capitalism itself; infinite growth is impossible on a planet of finite resources. Environmentalists should recognise that capitalism chases profits while neglecting wider society. To pursue a sustainable future, we must recognise that this system is not viable, and instead fight for workers, BIPOC and everyone alienated by capitalism.
Indigenous sovereignty: USYD Enviro Collective acknowledges that the land on which we conduct our activism is unceded Indigenous land. We should learn from the complex knowledge of land management and sustainability that Australia’s Indigenous peoples have developed over many millennia. Country was violently stolen in 1788. Indigenous peoples are still the owners of this land: their sovereignty and autonomy was never ceded. Indigenous sovereignty is intrinsic to united struggles against colonialism and environmental degradation.
Just Transition: The concept of a just transition recognises the transition to renewable energy could be detrimental to the workers who depend on the fossil fuels industry. A just transition accommodates the needs of the working class, fairly compensating and re-training those in polluting industries. Decarbonisation should not leave workers behind.
ASEN: Australian Student Environmental Network, a collective of like minded students who meet and agitate for radical environmental change. When Enviro people from one uni talk to other Enviro people from another campus, chances are they are all in ASEN. ASEN is the big umbrella that brings us together in this anti-capitalist and anticolonialist movement. Together we are
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Gas Gets Dug Out, You Get Sold Out
Alana Ramshaw reflects on her recent activist trip to the Pilliga region of NSW, divided by coal seam gas exploration projects. In February, students from the USYD, UTS and UNSW Enviro Collectives had the opportunity to go to Narrabri to gain an understanding of the local impacts of coal seam gas exploration. This was an eyeopening experience that allowed us to support local activists from Gamilaraay Next Generation in their protest against Santos and the Santos-sponsored ‘festival of rugby’ hosted in the town. Santos is an Australiabased oil and gas producer, one of the largest in the country. In the past year, they have attracted controversy and attention for their growing over 80 coal seam gas fracking wells in the Pillaga region, in far north-west NSW. Narrabri is a town in
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this region where local First Nations people (the Gomeroi people) and activists are fighting to stop the gas giants destruction of country and erosion of local community and culture.
does not constitute rehabilitation. We also encountered what we believe to have been a Santos tanker full of contaminated “produced” wastewater, driving into the forest with the intention Gas mining in the of illegally dumping Pilliga not only causes the hazardous waste. irreversible ecological destruction, but The approach Santos does so on sacred, have taken towards sovereign Gomeroi gaining local approval land in a forest with for the expansion spiritual significance of their gas project in Gomeroi culture. is underhanded, Santos’ desecration of insidious, and Indigenous land serves intentionally divisive. as a clear-cut example of the inseparable Santos have financially nature of the fights supported local for climate justice and businesses, schools, Indigenous justice. and events such as the rugby festival. In return, We saw “regeneration local newspapers refuse zones” fenced off by to publish anything Santos in a pathetic critical of Santos or attempted reversal their gas project. of their existing e n v i r o n m e n t a l Local individuals vandalism. Planting a and families are few sparse shrubs acro unwilling to criticise ss irreparably dead land a corporation they
Collage by Isabella D’Silva
and will not, exist with the field, paying off fossil fuel industry in Santos’ automated relatives of activists firsthand is invaluable. model of infrastructure. for their support. Frontline activism lends both credence Through unclear, poorly Talking with GNG activist and perspective to completed reporting Karra SmithKinchela we city-based activists and modeling, Santos learned that her nephew that cannot be gained have framed their Pilliga had been onstage by other means. project as economically dancing. The fence The work of local and environmentally between protestors activist groups has been b e n e f i c i a l . and spectators seemed instrumental in the fight to almost represent against campaigns of In their reports, Santos the divisions Santos manufactured consent. make no account of the was responsible for Santos’ misinformation fact that their gas mines sowing within the is becoming increasingly in the Pilliga are running local community and difficult to sell because dry years before Santos’ within local families. of grassroots campaigns modeling had predicted, raising awareness of and without account Ultimately, our trip to the the ecological and for the permanent Pilliga drove home the social consequences ecological destruction importance of frontline of the project. the project is causing. environmental work. It was heartbreaking While Santos is trying As protestors gathered and harrowing. to divide the Narrabri outside the fenced off community, we left the match, a weak attempt As advocates for town with an earnest at gaining social license environmental and faith that people and was made by Santos. In Indigenous justice, families will see through the hope of appeasing the understanding the smokescreen of Indigenous concerns, and perspective we fabricated information a welcome to country develop by witnessing that Santos is and Indigenous dance the ecological and attempting to sell. were performed on social impacts of the
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Global Health and the Climate Crisis
Tom Davids explores how the health of humans and the planet is intimately connected. Art by Ranuka Tandan The human body never was, and never will be, sheltered from the climate crisis. One of the most confronting effects of our changing climate, and by far the most direct and experiential, is the global health crisis it will create. The Lancet published a report in 2018 identifying the climate crisis as the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century, and insisting it will be the bodies of those most vulnerable in our globalised society that will bear the brunt of our negligence. This includes, but is not limited to, rural and urbanised poor, the elderly and those with chronic health conditions. There are many ways that this will manifest, but here I will discuss two of the most consequential: increases in diseases like malaria and worsening
(the worsening of a certain pre-existing conditions), namely in the elderly and those with respiratory or cardiovascular conditions. Dr Lucy Barard points out that “there is a welldefined value of (daily average) temperature above which mortality risk begins to rise”. This threshold will vary considerably across regions, depending on what their population is already accustomed to. However, in traditionally colder regions, that threshold is markedly low.
health outcomes from heat-waves. Soon, our changing environment will test us and our health-care systems in a multitude of ways; the possibilities seem endless and difficult to comprehend, but one thing is certain in this
15.4% increase in mortality. Again, during the European summer of 2003, a serious heatwave swept over the region, which led to 15,000 deaths in France alone. This represented a 60% increase in mortality
seemingly distant and external crisis - it will hit us in our most personal of spaces: the body itself.
on previous figures. The death toll across Europe is believed to have exceeded 30,000.
It is now generally accepted that a steady increase in the Earth’s temperature will not just cause a gradual change in ecosystems, but an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. One such event is the heatwave. It is common knowledge that heatwaves can have significant impacts upon general health, even when excluding the role of hyperthermia. According to Dr Sari Kovats, they can also cause spikes in mortality and morbidity
We, as humans, are very good at adapting to our environment. We’ve created changes in architecture to help with ventilation and air conditioners to blast us with cold air, but there are always limits to our ability to adjust to our environment. Expensive air conditioners and fancy houses with good ventilation to fight against heat waves are a privilege, meaning those who cannot afford these luxuries are further prone to suffer from the environmental
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In London this threshold is 19°C, with a risk starting to occur if the daily average over a prolonged period of time is at, or above this threshold. During the summer of 1976 in London, heatwaves were attributed to a
crisis. Add to this that those in poverty are more likely to suffer from diseases whose effects will be made worse during a heat wave, we see that
tropical regions that are at a higher altitude experience a rise in average temperature, such as in Ethiopia, where the majority of the
those at most risk will often be the ones unable to protect themselves. This could be particularly relevant for Western Sydney, where many residents of low socio-economic status reside. It’s geography causes the region to experience more days over 35°C than the rest of Sydney, with an additional ten hot days by 2030.
population lives in such highlands, malaria will start breaking out of its traditional altitude restrictions and start affecting new areas.
Increases in temperature will not only directly affect disease, but will also increase the capacity of vectors (e.g. insects) to transmit disease. In 1990, WHO identified malaria as the infectious disease most vulnerable to climate change. This vector borne disease is common in tropical areas of the Global South, where poverty is rife. Dr Mercedes Pascual outlines in her research that its latitudinal and altitudinal restrictions are determined by climate, because the vector that carries the disease, the mosquito, flourishes in the warm climates that are restricted to these regions. As the average temperatures of these climates rise, she warns that these higher temperatures “quicken the digestion of the blood meal and maturation of its developing eggs, thus increasing vectoral biting frequency”. The resultant increase in the mosquito population, and therefore how many people they bite, could increase the malaria burden in already affected areas. Further, if the
Dr Pascual also outlines that malaria is “predominantly a disease of poverty”, and that many parts of the tropical world are entrenched in poverty partly because of malaria. If eradicating malaria is considered key to the flourishing of these societies, then increasing virulence is not just a problem that resides within the box of global health, but is an issue of social and economic justice as well. This is by no means a comprehensive list of possible global health challenges that we may face. Drought, unsustainable farming practices and overfishing could all affect our global food security, while climate refugees will face a range of health consequences when they are forced to migrate. In addition, those who led the charge on creating this climate catastrophe - the rich, and those in positions of power - are leaving many of its adverse consequences to those most vulnerable in our society. This should be seen as one of the grave injustices of our time. In looking at the climate crisis from a global health perspective, it no longer stands as just an environmental crisis, but a deeply human crisis as well.
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2020
Photos by Aman Kapoor and Lauren Lancaster Art by Amelia Mertha and Isabella D’Silva
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IN PICTURES
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ecofeminism - a primer
lauren lancaster, usyd enviro convenor 2021, explains... Climate change is a human issue, so it necessarily intersects with human inequalities.
gender inequalities and, inevitably, the exploitation and oppression of women.
Ecofeminism is a movement and school of thought that conceives of environmental degradation and gender inequality as interconnected. Arising from of the synapse between ecological and feminist movements in the seventies and eighties, it emphasises the common root of domination in human society — a patriarchal-capitalist power structure.
Ecofeminist theory clarifies that a patriarchalcapitalist society ultimately results in a hierarchical structure that promotes the superiority of the white, male, “human” subject, forcing all things that constitute the “other” (including women, nature, and animals) to exist in binary opposition to such a subject and therefore be considered inferior. Women and nature are thus used by the white male in order to progress and prosper under capitalism.
Patriarchy manifests itself as a hierarchical social order whereby men claim superiority and power over women. This establishes binary power divisions that extend to the way man exerts power and domination over the environment and land. Capitalism establishes a system whereby the creation and accumulation of wealth at the lowest possible cost to the bourgeois class is the key marker of societal success and progress. There is a similar binary to be found here to that which is established by patriarchy — a community or individual’s success is measured by how well they can achieve capitalist domination through exploitation of workers and resources, just as a man’s success is reliant on the existence of
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Ecofeminism is an intersectional approach that should necessarily include queer, First Nations, disabled and spiritual approaches, visions and experiences.
It focuses on ways of thinking and being that consciously detach from Western binary structures that perpetuate “othering” and the dominance of a cis-male, oppressive hegemon. Ecofeminism also allows us to consider real world environmental challenges through a gendered lens.
For example, not only do women comprise 70% of the world’s poor (IUCN, 2015), poor women in rural areas are the most vulnerable to the material impacts of climate change. This is due to their dependence on natural resources and primary industry for their living and concurrent isolation from decisionmaking and leadership, which augments climate-driven threats to their food security and job stability (e.g. natural disasters, droughts, poor crop yields due to extreme weather, and insect plagues) (CDP, 2017). Women are often the last to eat in traditionalist families, and the first to be removed from school or paid work in the event of financial insecurity (PLAN International, 2018). Climate change exacerbates stressors in unstable societies, and women are the first to experience the consequences. Close to home, we can look to the Djab Wurrung directions trees and protest actions. At the end of last year, the trees of the Djab Wurrung people in Northern Victoria (Grampian National Park), believed to be up to 800 years old, fell victim to the Victorian Labor government’s highway expansion plan and were cut down to make way for an inexplicable concrete bypass. The trees were a deeply intimate cultural site for the Djab Wurrung people — Indigenous women have given birth beneath them
for centuries, their blood mixing with the soil, and many Dreaming stories are connected to their trunks and branches. As Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe lamented, ‘with the destruction of these sites, the spiritual tapestry that connects our culture and language with our natural environment is further severed and cannot be retrieved, except in the memories and stories of our old people.’ This spirituality is bound up both in gendered worship of motherhood and the physical importance of protecting the environment (particularly First Nations’ significant sites). There is thus a complex intersection of feminist and environmentalist justice here, that should be used to mobilise and anger us all.
Only once we realise the deep interconnectedness of gendered, First Nations and environmental struggles will our activism truly succeed. We achieve this by listening, educating and fighting together for a world that does away with old power and envisions a new, radical future.
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A Degrowth Manifesto i: overstepping planetary boundaries
In the year 2000, when I was born, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide had reached 370 parts per million (ppm), up from pre-industrial levels of around 280ppm. Humans had known about anthropogenic climate change for several decades. The threats posed by increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide - including sea level rise, food insecurity and desertification - had been identified decades before. Given that danger, you might have thought that by 2021, I would live in a world that had averted environmental crisis. You would be wrong: the situation has only worsened. Last March, when I turned 20, atmospheric carbon hovered around 415ppm. Understanding how we arrived at this point requires us to look back in time: to the industrial revolution, when human activity on this planet dramatically shifted. Industrialisation set in motion the conditions for unprecedented levels of affluence, mobility and personal freedoms. To fuel such growth required energy, and lots of it. Humanity found this energy in the form of fossil fuels. Since then, the extraordinar y growth in our society’s economic wealth
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by ellie stephenson
has been powered by unrestrained exploitation of the natural world. Our economies are leveraged on the promise of fossil fuels extraction. We show no sign of reigning in our appetite for emitting greenhouse gases: Australia’s most lucrative exports are fossil fuels. This trates
brief history a confronting
illustruth:
our way of life and our prosperity is built on overstepping planetary boundaries. Planetary boundaries measure environmental limits beyond which humans cannot thrive - when we overstep the Earth’s ability to adapt to environmental change, we increase the risk of crisis for humanity. We cannot have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Our best option is degrowth: a controlled slowing and shrinking of developed economies.
ii: facing disaster
The consequences of climate change are already beginning to unfold. Recent years have seen raging bushfires, storms and heatwaves. We know that extreme weather patterns will only worsen. Global heating will worsen the spread of tropical diseases and wipe out many habitats. Oceans will acidify, decimating ocean biodiversity and the communities that depend on it. We know that these effects will be worse for the most disadvantaged communities. The Global South that will be most vulnerable to the destruction caused by the Global North. Countries which are already facing
food security pressures will face catastrophic droughts and crop failure. Two thirds of Bangladesh’s land area lies below 5m above sea level, making it highly susceptible to sea level rise; the same issue threatens many Pacific Islands. Worst of all, climate change could reach a tipping point, after which feedback loops are activated and the climate crisis worsens beyond our ability to reverse it. This means we need to act now, and radically. With the imperative to act established, why is degrowth the only option for change?
Attempts to decouple growth from emissions are doomed to fail for a number of reasons. First, increases in efficiency often encourage people to use more resources, as it is cheaper to do so. This is known as the rebound effect, where the gains created by better efficiency are lost when people consume more carelessly. Secondly, regardless of the efficiency of production, its massive scale means we still pollute at unacceptable levels. Data from the International Energy Agency shows that consumers are consistently choosing larger vehicles, houses with bigger floor plans, and more electronic devices, out-
Feeding humanity’s current energy needs with renewables would require huge mining operations which would continue to produce emissions and destroy ecosystems. Bar our energy needs, the staggering waste problem of human society is a direct consequence of unsustainable levels of production and consumption. Finally, countries in the Global South deserve room to develop. While the international community should do its best to minimise emissions from this activity, it will undeniably require some pollution. Given the Global North has systematically extracted wealth from these nations through imperialism and global value chains, we have a moral duty to reduce our emissions.
iii: a better approach
Economic growth is embedded in how we imagine a functioning society. Our society is dependent on continuously expanding production and consumption; when GDP growth falters, people’s wellbeing and livelihoods are threatened. This makes it difficult to imagine a world where we have scaled down our economy. The policies I suggest are based on the idea that there are more valuable measures of growth than GDP. Reimagining our relationship to economic growth requires us to shift our focus elsewhere: what would our society look like if it pursued growth in equality, in health, in sustainability? These are harder to quantify, but far worthier goals. How could an economy begin to slow and reverse its growth? Equitable degrowth hinges on significant redistribution of wealth. The spoils of unfettered growth have not been fairly
shared; instead, we have seen the concentration of wealth to an elite few. We will need less production if we share what we have more equally. Recognising that our current affluence is a historical anomaly, we should be willing to sacrifice some of our discretionary consumption. Things like international travel, fast fashion and large scale meat production will need to be slowed. This can occur through state planning and the use of taxation, with tax revenue spent progressively. We need to collectively realise that the low cost of these commodities conceals their very high environmental cost. We must reimagine labour to be both more fulfilling and less resource intensive. Our quality of life will increase if we can dedicate more labour to learning, recreation, entertainment and human wellbeing. Also, jobs can be created in solving environmental problems. Restoring and monitoring ecosystems is a worthwhile livelihood, while encouraging the repair of existing goods reduces waste.
people should work less. We simply do not need to be generating as much value as we currently are. Economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930 argued that the work week in 2030 would be 15 hours, based on his belief that once subsistence was guaranteed, leisure could be explored. That prediction seems absurd now, but the instinct which inspired it is valuable: humans should not overwork ourselves to finance unnecessary and unsustainable consumption.
and t h e environment, products are quickly rendered useless by planned obsolescence, t h e i r supply chains involve excessive worldwide transportation, and they thrive off irresponsible trends. Structurally, profits are funneled upwards into the hands of the already super-rich. In many ways, this is a fundamentally illogical system. A society in degrowth would reject this behaviour in favour of workerrun enterprise, flourishing local economies and just resource distribution.
iv : co ncl u s io n
My 20 years on earth have seen tragically limited environmental action. We are on the brink of catastrophe. This apathy and ineptitude regarding action is the result of an economic system illfitted to the challenges that face us. Our current system assumes we have the resources to feed infinite growth. We need to change this attitude: we are existing in a fundamentally finite environment constrained by human ills like inequality and commodification. Degrowth can pursue a distribution of our limited resources based o n justice.
Profiteering needs to end. At present, producers have terrible incentives: they prioritise their shareholders over communities
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Art by Angela Xu
green-tinted glasses
Angela Xu takes them off to find out what’s up with greenwashing... It’s an increasingly common sight at the store: interspersed within mounds of plastic packaging are glimmers of green and brown and boldly placed claims of eco-consciousness. This speaks to the rise of greenwashing in the past few decades, as corporations shift their branding focus to market to a progressively more eco-conscious and eco-anxious consumer base. Greenwashing refers to companies’ use of packaging and marketing to construct a more green and eco-friendly image of their products, usually while doing very little to materially improve their environmental impact in production and manufacturing processes. Advertisements involving heavy use of nature imagery and vague claims that products are “all natural” are also common indicators of greenwashing. Most simply, companies get away with greenwashing through psychological trickery. The exploitation of psychological
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links between the colour green and ecofriendly practices compel consumer to view a product’s environmental footprint more favourably, even when in reality the product is equally as damaging to the environment as an un-greenwashed alternative. Companies may also employ deceptive marketing, using unregulated labelling of third party eco-certifications or endorsements to increase the perceived authenticity of their claims. For example, in 2011, the Federal Trade Commission in the US exposed “Tested Green” for selling fake certifications without actually investigating any of the products to which they gave endorsement. Australia is one of few countries that has substantial regulations surrounding greenwashing. The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) introduced a self-regulated Environmental Claims Advertising and Marketing Code in 2009. Claims against greenwashed products or corporations can be brought to them for investigation.
The Australian Consumer Law also protects consumers from misleading marketing and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have brought cases in greenwashing under this Act against corporations such as Woolworths and Volkswagen. While these regulations give Australian consumers more protection than in other parts of the world, they aren’t a foolproof solution.
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How can we protect ourselves from falling into a greenwashed, nature-adorned trap?
1. consume less
This should be a given as consumers in a country that oversupplies, although unequally, nearly all necessary and luxury items. Greenwashing distracts from the broader impact of hyper-consumerism on our planet and creates a false sense of security amongst consumers. When we believe that the products we are purchasing aren’t damaging to the environment, we give ourselves more license to continue purchasing more. This is not good.
2. look for the obvious
Don’t be fooled by the plastic product which has been packaged in green but is still wrapped in three layers of plastic. It’s likely that the manufacturer made no processural change but simply changed the packaging colour. Do your research before shopping and read up on company practices and legitimate eco-certifications.
3. fuck corps, shop small
Shop small. Greenwashing often gives a corporation a competitive edge over another, as it gives them an improved public image. This means they can continue to edge out small businesses and producers (who are using more ethical and eco-friendly methods of production) through deception.
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Today, we are becoming more conscious of our impact on the Earth, giving rise to an unprecedented sense of eco-anxiety. We should use this eco-consciousness to drive our choices, decisions, and lifestyles, but we can’t let our anxiety be exploited. To be eco-conscious in a consumerist and capitalist world now requires diligence, skepticism, and careful consideration. While ultimately we as individual consumers cannot turn the tide of climate change by using metal straws or shopping plastic free, to understand the tricks used by corporations to deflect fault for environmental degradation away from themselves is a useful tool to prompt reflection upon how the capitalist system perpetuates as a whole despite it’s fundamentally self-destructive nature.
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Green Jobs Now | No Gas Led Recovery by James Sherriff and Ruby Pandolfi (NSW ASEN Convenors, 2021)
The climate crisis is a class issue. The Coalition government is pushing Scomo’s “gas-led recovery” as the solution to the COVID crisis. It consists of the fast-tracking and funding of new coal seam gas (CSG) fracking sites across Australia, the extraction of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG), and the development of infrastructure such as pipelines and railways to export LNG overseas.
shift, while workers are denied the opportunity and benefits of a just transition process. We should be building renewable energy infrastructure across the continent, whilst fighting for guaranteed jobs for displaced workers, democratic control of workplaces and industries, and justice for communities affected. Instead, the expansion of the CSG industry will line the pockets of executives and shareholders with public funding, tax write-offs, and the huge profits that will be made from exporting LNG overseas.
It is a blatant example of how the government is using COVID as a cover to push the burdens of the economic recession onto the working class, at the expense of the planet. In the context of increasing unemployment, cuts to wages and bene-ARCHIVALS At the same time, the federal govfits, and underfunded public services, ernment has continued to erode governments and big business are worker rights and union protections, continuing to put profits over the cli- seeking to remove the “better off mate, First Nations sovereignty and overall test” and cut rates and conthe livelihoods of ordinary people. ditions. It is clear who is getting a better deal from this ‘recovery’. This ‘recovery plan’ follows a pattern of workers rights being eroded by suc- This is a rerun of past battles, not a new cessive Australian governments since issue. The expansion of the fossil fuel the 1970s Accords, and demonstrates industry has repeatedly been forced the link between the exploitation through by state and federal governof workers and the intensification of ments, while mass movements calling the climate crisis. The contradictions for genuine climate action and a workinherent to capitalist development er-led transition to publicly owned are clear: the very path proposed renewable energy have been stifled. out of this crisis will only plunge us deeper into environmental disaster. This is because the government is beholden to the interests of Pushing a gas-fired recovery only the coal, oil, and gas companies delays the inevitable shift towards which fund both major parties, not renewables, and allows private com- the constituents it supposedly is panies to reap the benefits of this elected to “represent”. The state
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is acting in the interests of capital to maintain class divisions, by shifting the cost of the crisis onto the working class and pitting workers’ interests against environmental justice and climate action. Workers, including Indigenous peoples, students, and climate activists, must cut through this narrative and work together to fight for a just transition to renewable energy ourselves. Just as we cannot rely on private corporations and capitalists to solve the climate crisis, nor can we rely on the state to win it for us. What we need for the climate movement to be successful is widespread ARCHIVALS industrial action: an alignment of social forces behind strong demands for climate action and a just transition, culminating in a general strike. The urgency of the climate crisis is such that we cannot continue to fight against every new fossil fuel project as it arises. We cannot allow the state and private interests to dictate the terms of our struggle. This means building strong political consensus around radical demands, which drag broad institutions along behind active grassroots rank and file movements of ordinary people. To win the argument for a just transition we must mobilise and fight for it, from the streets to the workplace. We must bridge the gaps between atomised movements, such as the climate and labour movements,
where there is already some overlap. The fight for climate action will inevitably be toothless and ineffective if run by NGOs and think tanks who have little stake in provoking necessary radical changes, and without the backing of rank and file activity to bolster it. The labour movement can likewise benefit from the urgency and scope provided by the climate movement. If we are to identify and challenge the core causes of the climate crisis, we have to make apparent the link between the exploitation of workers and the exploitation of ecosystems and the environment. It is apparent that capitalism is their common cause, and without decisive action from a clear revolutionary socialist perspective we will have little power to challenge it. By aligning social forces together, we can fight against corporate handouts and privatisation. We must fight for more worker control over workplaces and industries, for a properly funded public sector, for publicly owned renewable energy, a just transition for workers in the fossil fuel industry, and First Nations sovereignty over land and water, by organising, mobilising and agitating in the here and now. United we compound key struggles to create the necessary momentum to fight against the capitalist-colonial project promoting this ‘gas led recovery plan’, which is no true recovery at all, and win a better world for all.
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M I L C : get over it : decolonise
T A
For hundreds of years her tears remain flowing, For her land and her children. Her soil is stained in generations of trauma, Souls of past, present and emerging. History carved into country for millennia, Only to be destroyed in moments, And an ego flying full mast blamed hysteria, Maliciously veiling their reality.
White thieves of land and lives, Arrived to colonise song and bloodline. “Get over it”, consistently they mirror their original crime, An ongoing invasion defiling black lives. First Nations have always remained, The boundless plains were never yours to share. It is time to decolonise your reign, Sovereignty was never yours to bear. poetry by ISAbella d’silva, usyd enviro convenor 2021 art by anna ho
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Towards a Radical Ecology: an Anarchist Response to the Climate Crisis T. H. Livingstone and James Sherriff investigate radical ecology from an anarcho-communist perspective.
We are at a turning point in history. An effective collective response to the global crises we face is becoming ever more urgent. Although the coronavirus crisis dominated 2020, the climate crisis has not halted or even slowed. Bushfires sweep the globe as summers come and go, and time is running out as we rush past tipping points. Despite these existential threats, deeply transformative change is still possible. This could be an era of abundance and prosperity, if the fruits of our collective labour were shared equitably, if communities had freedom and autonomy, and if workers could direct their energies towards productive and rewarding work, not the demeaning work currently forced on them. The possibility of a better society is within reach, if we have the will and the courage to seize it.
As anarcho-communists, we must determine how our ideas of libertarian socialist revolution fit with the material and scientific conditions pressed upon us by climate change, without compromising our commitment to a full and positive freedom for all people. We must avoid co-optation of radical climate action by ‘green capitalism’ or ‘market-based solutions’. We must also critique solutions which rely on a swollen state bureaucracy, such as the Green New Deal, as these solutions deal with only part of the problem. This is not an academic exercise, but an earnest response to a dire, tangible, and immediate threat. We also do not hold the solutions to this crisis ourselves - we only intend to start a discussion so that locally relevant and effective solutions may arise organically.
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The
Third
Road: the Approach
Anarchist’s
Faced with the two basic approaches to climate change, green capitalism and a centralised state-delivered intervention, anarchists feel caught between a rock and a hard place. We argue that any state, even those that are nominally ‘socialist’, exists as a violent entity that alienates the individuals it is created to govern. The state is inept at solving the specific problems of communities and cannot respond to localised dynamics of the climate crisis. This is due primarily to the centralisation and authoritarianism within both capitalist and socialist economies. Centralisation is the concentration of decision-making power and authority into a single institutional body, which delegates this power to other institutions. Its supposed merit is its ability to ensure uniformity of policy and action, and to enforce the rules and conditions of the society it governs. In the example of climate action, this would mean the ability to enforce a uniform transition to renewable energy sources across whole nations. However, centralisation removes the autonomy of communities and individuals. Instead of communities and the individuals within them deciding on how they ought to manage their surrounding environments, a central body (e.g. the NSW Department of Planning, Industry, and Environment) of technocratic officials is responsible. This presupposes that the community “doesn’t know any better” than the bureaucrats and creates unnecessary hierarchies of power. Dealing with a crisis as complex and variable as climate change requires our solutions to be flexible and responsive. As such, relying on a centralised bureaucracy to solve ecological crises is ineffective and undesirable.
Of course, for the community to adequately manage their local environment, knowledge is vital, but local people are best able to put this knowledge into practice. Similar to the argument that workers are most equipped to govern their workplace, local communities will most effectively manage the environments on which they rely. First Nations peoples around the world practised effective management of their local ecosystems without any external ‘experts’ or governing bodies for millenia. Indeed, if we are committed to decolonisation as well as anti-capitalism, the ideas of decentralised governance and anti-hierarchical democracy are critical to our revolutionary movement.
Ecology as Radical Science Murray Bookchin’s framework of social ecology helps us to understand revolutionary ecosocialism.This framework understands society, the economy, and the environment as intertwined elements of a broader ecology. Managing any one of these spheres requires an understanding of the others. This logic is critical of the state - Bookchin writes that even states which are ‘radical’, ‘worker controlled’, and ‘democratic’ naturally entrench the interests of the bureaucratic elite within the state.
T A T E C H
When communities are empowered to make democratic decisions on issues which directly affect them, these communities are often more sensible environmental managers than centralised state departments. In her Nobel
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prize-winning book, Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom uses behavioural economics to prove this point, citing the example of a group of Turkish fishermen successfully instituting a sustainable fishing model developed and managed by themselves. This does not deny the importance of scientific expertise.
The only truly democratic forms of social and economic organisation are those whose power comes from the bottom up. They recognise the autonomy of the individual and their community and facilitate higher-order coordination where necessary, without creating permanent institutions of top-down governance. Bookchin notes that anarchist movements worldwide are “based on voluntarism and selfdiscipline, not on coercion and command.”
This form of organisation, collective action, and decision-making relies on the ecological notion of spontaneity - the spontaneity of individuals, of affinity groups, of organisations, and of communities - which is only possible in a movement based on freedom and decentralisation. Spontaneity refers to the belief that projects, plans, and other developments should be free to find their own equilibrium, achieved through the creativity of free individuals. In this framework, spontaneity fosters the efficient and organic development of movements and empowers individuals to take up direct action where they can. Compare a ‘mass’ which is directed from above, and a collective which has embraced and encouraged the creativity of each independent individual in its movement. In addressing the climate crisis, we must embrace these concepts of anti-hierarchical decentralisation and developmental spontaneity. Global warming means increased food scarcity, raised sea levels, increased population density, and more extreme weather events that threaten global supply lines. For Pacific Island communities, sea level rise will submerse land and worsen the effects of storms.
Conclusion It is imperative that we ask how we can attack the root cause of the crises we face and secondly, how can we build in its place a system that will secure the freedom of every individual, community, and society around the world. In dealing with the first question, we must recognise our time’s intense potential for revolutionary change. The gap between what we have now, and the abundance which is possible, will drive the movement for a postscarcity society. Modern technology should free us, not facilitate further exploitation; there is enough food to feed all, but we need the means to share it. Change is a necessity, and it must be urgently brought about. On the second question we must be guided by the greater goal of fundamental societal change, a goal grounded in the desire for human freedom, social justice, and material prosperity for all.
In so-called Australia, regional communities suffer more frequent and intense fires, floods, and droughts, while asthmatics the country over suffer from bushfire smoke. Managing these effects will require greater flexibility and responsiveness to local environmental dynamics, which is impossible under a globalised capitalist economy and under an economy guided by a bloated state bureaucracy. Ecology describes a holistic harmony with the world which allows humans to flourish in their local environments. Just considering the sheer complexity and diversity of environments and societies across the world, an anarchist ecology is essential.
Art by Ranuka Tandan
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ECO-SOCIALISM
by Drew Beacom, USyd Enviro Convenor 2021 Corporations tell us the market solution to climate change is what has come to be known as Green or Eco-capitalism and the new phenomenon of ‘green growth’. This new approach to the climate crisis has been encouraged in economic forums and international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Monetary Fund. While definitions may vary, ‘green growth’ boils down to creating economies with steady growth that decrease their carbon emissions and resource use (i.e. decoupling the trend of increasing GDP with increasing carbon emissions and resource use).
In theory, this provides the perfect solution to climate change for the privileged. Minimal changes in day to day life, while market solutions in conjunction with state incentives will guide us away from a fiery demise. But this is impossible. The reality is that the world’s top 100 polluters account for 71% of carbon emissions and the existential crisis facing us is not the fault of indi-
viduals but that of corrupt governments and large corporations, for whom these emissions are a byproduct of lucrative mining, fracking, manufacturing and agricultural activities. We live within an economic order that places value on our resources only if they can be used as tradeable materials, and cares little for the universal availability of fresh air and drinking water.
The need for anti-capitalist environmentalism is borne out of the recognition that we cannot sustain such a system, one that requires infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. This approach recognises that the way we prevent an ecological disaster is through direct action, putting power in the hands of the masses to create policy for the common good. The climate crisis demands nothing short of systematic and widespread reform and transformation, for it has highlighted the cracks and corruption that run deep in neoliberal capitalism. It has shown our society to be built on an ideology that exploits the environment, the working class and First Nations peoples globally. As such, it is our responsibility to demand change selflessly, to seek a world in which all are free all from exploitation focusing on class solidarity and ensuring no worker is left behind as economies transition away from fossil fuels.
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system change not climate change An ecosocialist future is more popular than governments would have us think, too. We need only look to the increasing rates of socialisation of energy grids. This trend is most prominent in Germany, where strong grassroots campaigns in large industrial cities like Hamburg have resulted in community ownership of electricity.
This step towards a form of ecosocialism has allowed for vital infrastructure to be controlled more democratically, paving the way for establishment of public energy collectives in place of privatelyowned and operated corporations. Community is prioritised over profits, and a renewables future is closer to fruition.
Although this is simply the first step, this marks a significant shift in environmentalism and fighting neoliberal capitalism. The goal for all those agitating for environmental justice should not simply be to meet emissions targets but to reclaim what is ours in the natural commons. We want a system that is democratic, environment and worker centric, that will fairly compensate and incorporate Indigenous peoples. Do not settle, fight and strike for a better future.
Pictures by Misbah Ansari
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Gamil means no:
The fight to keep coal seam gas off Gomeroi land by Shani Patel, USyd Enviro Convenor 2020 WHAT IS CSG? Coal seam gas (CSG) is an ‘unconventional natural gas’ currently used in Australia to generate lower-emissions electricity than that produced with coal. In September 2020, Scott Morrison announced plans for a “gas-fired recovery,” claiming to reduce emissions and provide economic growth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parallel to this plan has been the approval and allocation of $3.6 billion to a new CSG project by energy giant Santos, which will see the construction of approximately 850 wells in Narrabri. This was likely favoured by $60,000 in donations that the company made to the Liberal-National Coalition. Despite widespread and fierce opposition, the Australian government maintains its support for CSG development due to supposed economic benefits and environmental benefits — however both of these claims are in opposition to empirical data and firsthand accounts.
WATER IS LIFE Obtainment of CSG involves the invasive process of fracking — extraction from the pores of coal within coal seams thousands of metres below the Earth’s surface. This is achieved by reducing pressure
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and releasing the resource in a gaseous state, generating large quantities of discharged water which require effective treatment. ‘Water is Life.’ the 2018 Seed Mob documentary about the detrimental impacts of the fracking process associated with CSG in the Northern Territory explains a fundamental concern about unconventional gas development: the negative impacts on ground and surface water and flow-on (no pun intended) effects to local communities. A study in 2017 revealed that the water discharged from coal mining activities, including CSG in Sydney, suffered a 28-95% degradation in quality due to higher pH and increase in toxic trace elements. This will have grave impacts on local agricultural production,
along with Indigenous communities whose drinking supplies are sourced from already depleted rivers close to proposed development, such as in Walgett and Collarenebri. It should be noted that a lack of consistency was observed in these results, meaning that water degradation as a result of CSG activity is unpredictable.
ANOTHER GREENHOUSE GAS Another essential environmental consideration is that despite being marketed as a relatively ‘clean’ greenhouse gas, CSG is fundamentally a greenhouse gas.The stores of the resource in Narrabri are estimated to be made up of 90% methane and 10% carbon dioxide. Santos themselves have estimated the release over 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, for the projected project lifetime of 25 years. The potential for CSG to meet current energy demands paired with a lack of plans to phase out coal from both the Liberal and Labor parties will significantly hinder whether policymakers view the development of renewables as necessary.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS? On a local scale, Morrison has claimed that a gas-led recovery will create jobs, grow business and assist the economy. This is not entirely unfounded: broadly and theoretically, the local economic benefits of CSG development include higher demand for labour and increased wages in the communities where it occurs. However, the inequitable distributions of long-term economic benefits is a key concern. Santos’ shareholders profit whilst excluding local landowners and First Nations communities. Beyond profit, CSG development is noted to increase employment, however this historically occurs at the cost of agricultural and tourism sectors, with longterm effects unseen until industries are large and established. Coal is a dying industry — despite the government’s desperate attempts to cling to it, long-term economic benefits are unpredictable and diminishing in an export market that is transitioning away from fossil fuels.
GAMIL MEANS ‘NO’ The most important perspective to consider is that of First Nations communities, whose stolen land potential CSG developments will be occurring upon. An issue of white supremacy, environmental racism and colonial violence, this has been the story in so-called Australia — settlers stealing and destroying unceded land, with the greatest impacts manifesting in the most marginalised communities. As a kind of politics of refusal, the Gamil Means No movement (@gamilaraaynextgeneration), cultivated and led by young Gamilaraay and Gomeroi people, centres around protesting “the illegal occupation of our land by Santos”, stating that “we never have and never will give consent for their destruction and vandalism of our sacred Gomeroi Land”.
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Thank you to everyone who made Combust 2021 happen: Alana Ramshaw Alev Saracoglu Amelia Mertha Angela Xu Anna Ho Benson Lilo Oto Bonnie Huang Deaundre Espejo Drew Beacom Ellie Stephenson Isabella D’Silva James Sherriff Lauren Lancaster Madeleine Rowell Misbah Ansari Oscar Chaffey Paola Ayre Prudence Wilkins-Wheat Ranuka Tandan Ruby Pandolfi Shani Patel Tim Livingstone Tom Davids Vivienne Guo
Facebook: USYD Enviro Collective Facebook Organising Group: USYD Enviro Collective 2021 Instagram: @usyd_enviro Twitter: @EnviroUsyd Email: environment.officers@src.usyd.edu.au
