It is also a question that deserves a clear answer, so here it goes: people in WA and around the world are increasingly focussed on Woodside because of the huge threat it poses to WA’s oceans and wildlife, and to our global climate. 

There is mounting disgust at the impunity with which Woodside is being allowed to proceed with its destructive plans. As Tim Winton has said “we can’t keep averting our gaze and pretending that this isn’t happening”. 

Just last week, Woodside got the green light from the regulator to start seismic blasting off WA’s north-west coast. Right now, Woodside’s blasting ship is headed toward WA’s coastline. Soon, there will be underwater sonic cannons exploding in the habitat of endangered whales. 

As the shocking recent footage of beaching pilot whales at Cheynes Beach showed, cetaceans are deeply sensitive to changes in their environment. Seismic blasting is incredibly loud and can damage the hearing of whales, leaving the creatures unable to navigate, communicate or forage for food. A deaf whale is a dead whale.

And it is not only the whales. Some of the most incredible and pristine places in our oceans – jewels like Scott Reef, Rowley Shoals, Mermaid Sound and even the world-famous Ningaloo Reef – are all at risk. 

Woodside wants to run pipelines and drill for gas on the fringes of some of Australia’s most intact coral reefs. Whether or not you’re an environmentalist, no one can deny the value of the billions of dollars these fishing, diving, and tourism hotspots bring to the WA economy every year. All that could be lost because of Woodside’s corporate greed.

Then there’s the straight out climate impacts. We’ve already seen our state and country burn, flood, and crack under unprecedented weather extremes, supercharged by climate change that is driven by the burning of coal, oil, and gas. It’s the same confronting story the world over. 

Not only is Woodside perpetuating harm, it’s also stopping progress on solutions. 

For instance, modelling commissioned by Woodside from the CSIRO demonstrated that Woodside’s gas exports risked crowding out the growth of renewable energy in Asia – this was a report Woodside tried to suppress, but journalists uncovered through freedom of information requests. 

Woodside has also made claims about the local business benefits for its gas, which are baseless. Most of the gas from Scarborough and Browse will be exported so it won’t have a significant impact on the Australian grid. 

And by attempting to lock in decades of future gas extraction, Woodside is crowding out clean energy, making it difficult for governments and businesses to invest in renewable infrastructure and supply. This makes it more expensive for polluting-but-essential industries like steel and mining to switch to clean energy, and means that West Australians get left behind as other nations take the prize share of jobs and opportunities from the global shift to clean, low-emissions energy and resources. 

This is the context in which Woodside is pushing ahead with the Burrup Hub, which involves drilling multiple wells across two huge massive offshore gas fields and extending the operations of gas infrastructure until 2070. 

Woodside knows full well that if it goes ahead, the Burrup Hub will be Australia’s dirtiest fossil fuel project, producing the equivalent of more than 12 times Australia’s annual domestic climate pollution. But Woodside apparently doesn’t care, so long as it can deliver short-term profits to shareholders.

Going back to the Premier’s question – which he asked in the context of some protestors turning up outside Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill’s house last week – it’s no wonder that so many people are obsessed with stopping Woodside. 

And it is a shame that the protestors became the story – rather than that Woodside had been given the green light to blast the ocean.

The quiet frustration is growing, amongst ordinary people who are worried about the future and are fed up with Woodside being allowed to chuck a spanner in the works.

There is a rising tide of determination that the state’s future can be clean, safe, and prosperous – powered by renewable energy. The real obsession is with building that better future; which is why so many West Australians are now determined to stop Woodside. You can join them.

Tell Woodside it’s time to walk away from its toxic gas project.

David Ritter is the CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Emma from SS4C seated at the bow of the Rainbow Warrior at dusk in Fremantle, 27 April 2023.

What is your name? Emma. I’m 16.

Where did you grow up? Margaret River – I love the ocean there, the trees and the community is really nice. I’m glad I live there.

Describe how you got involved in climate activism. When I was 13 or so we watched a David Attenborough documentary in class. It was called ‘A Life On Our Planet’ and there was a scene where he went through what would happen in 40 years if we did not meet our global 1.5 degree global warming target. Fires, floods, trees, no animals. This really really shocked me – so much doom and gloom. But then he started talking about solutions and I remember thinking they all seemed really easy. Really achievable, and they would make a much better world. So I struggled to understand why we weren’t doing any of those things, why our politicians kept ignoring the calls for change and continued leading us down an irreversible path towards an unsafe climate. That summer we had the 2020 bushfires. I was over east and saw the Hawkesbury covered in smoke and became increasingly frustrated by watching Scott Morrison, his inaction, and the way he ignored climate affected communities, the way he kept blocking and delaying climate justice. That’s when I started googling climate organisations and found School Strike 4 Climate. I learned about the Fund Our Future Not Gas campaign that SS4C was running. Scomo in the budget after the recession at that time was all “gas lead recovery” for the economy. I’m no economist but I knew that sounded like a terrible plan.

Do you have any particular anecdote or story about becoming an activist that you’d like to tell? Are there any special moments that stand out? The May 21st strike in 2021 was really crazy for me. I was 14 and had never done any community organising before. I helped to organise a Friday School Strike in the park. I remember going through permits and learning everything from scratch. But on the day, seeing friends and volunteers all turning up to the strike to stand together for climate justice, against dangerous gas was incredible. We’re just a small town but on that day it felt so powerful. It’s still one of my favourite moments. The community you make and meet through this work is so beautiful. Just hugging people and feeling lucky, so proud of this movement is one of my favourite things – there is so much love and support. Since then I’ve met some incredible mentors. Anybody that has worked at School Strike – graduated strikers and adults. I’ve learnt so much from them, and I’m so grateful.

What are you doing at SS4C? Describe how you got involved. Right now, locally we are in the process of conducting a survey to learn more about what people want to see in the Federal budget. Our Federal MP hasn’t really been very engaged with our community and listened or advocated for us. So we’re organising a big visual art installation of what our community wants to see in the Federal Budget so they won’t be able to miss it. This is in my electorate of Forrest.

Have you witnessed anything that makes you especially anxious about climate change?

Fires and seeing the impact it has on communities. When a fire happens it affects everyone. I’ve watched friends evacuate their whole lives. Politicians making big decisions that have big implications – new fossil fuel project approvals, like the process currently underway for Woodside’s Burrup Hub.

What gives you hope? The community in the climate movement and everyone I work with. Walking to be a proxy at Woodside’s shareholder meeting and seeing everyone there protesting, being so strong and staunch.  I am so proud of everyone I get to organise with,  seeing people everywhere, particularly my friends, organising things across the country to fight for climate justice makes me so hopeful – that we can build a better, more just future.

What do you know about Burrup Hub? I know its emissions will be 4 x times bigger than Adani – bigger than Australia’s national emissions combined with 6 x times Australia’s annual climate pollution. A lot of people have been outraged recently over the Willow project in America being approved – I watch their jaws drop when they find out that the Burrup Hub is 14 x times bigger in emissions than that. Burrup Hub’s climate change impacts have real and more tangible impacts on communities across the country. It has the potential to harm our oceans and reef, and damage First Nations’ Country. I love open water swimming and do this every weekend at Gnarabup and this alone is enough to make me angry. Imagine what it feels like to have your sacred spaces threatened or destroyed?

What would you like to say to Woodside ahead of the Paddle Out?

To Meg O’Neil – how do you stand there looking so poker-faced knowing your decisions are going to do so much damage to my generation and everyone in the future? You keep saying phrases like ‘offsetting emissions’ knowing full well the impact it will have. I want to believe your empty promises, so very much, but I have no trust in your words. You throw words around like confetti, but I don’t think you know that these words you throw around mean so much, that they matter. I expect better from you because it means so much to young people like me – you are playing with my future. Burrup Hub is risking everything – our country, our futures, our hopes of having a safe climate

Greenpeace and community paddle out in Fremantle, Western Australia for #WhalesnotWoodside. credit line: © Michael Lutman / Greenpeace

What will you do when you leave school? I thought about environmental law or environmental science for a while there but I am not sure I want to work in environmental law. I am in Year 11 now so it’s something I’m actively thinking about. I know I want to keep organising when I leave school. Where I find joy is organising and fighting for a better future. 

Was your mum a big influence in your life? In some ways yeah. In the early and late 90s she lived in Northcliffe – a tiny town kind of on the way to Albany. She used to go there and do sit-ins in trees. It was the start of the decades-long fight to save Western Australia’s old growth forests. She wasn’t in that movement for the longest time or necessarily the most active member, but I recall her telling me about a forest called Boorara. She lived in a house on her friend Wally’s property, he is a farmer, and the state government had decided to log trees on his property. In her room there is a photo of one of the huge trees in Boorara.

What advice do you have for other young people like yourself who may want to get involved in the climate movement but aren’t sure where to start? Just start! Getting involved with the climate movement is one of the best things I’ve ever done! Something that I was told growing up was you can’t complain about something if you are being passive, not doing anything to fix it, and I think you can apply this to the climate crisis! If you are frustrated by government inaction or scared for the future, transfer that into action! There are loads of great climate orgs in Australia to get involved with, and they all have the most lovely people who will support you in getting involved.

Some that I recommend,

1. School Strike for Climate (SS4C)
2. Greenpeace
3. The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC)
4. Tomorrow Movement 

They all do different amazing things. There’s also so many local organisations who you can get involved with – your local environment centre, a local environmental campaign! I went into organising with no support or knowledge other than what my mum had shared with me about how she used to blockade forests, it was a good experience to learn through doing things. Nannas for Native Forests are amazing – nannas going to sit on equipment and lock on! They are a community group that has helped me so much! 

If the nannas can do it – so can you!

1977 protests outside the last whaling station in Australia in Albany, Western Australia. Photo from the book, The Last Whale. Credit: Jonny Lewis Collection

Late one dark night, in Albany, on the southern coast of Western Australia, Greenpeace activists launched two Zodiacs from Middleton Beach. They stealthy followed the three whaling vessels as they came out of Albany harbour and blocked the entrance preventing them from leaving.

The protest lasted for several days, and although no arrests were made, the incident brought national attention to Greenpeace’s cause. This was Greenpeace’s first significant action in Australia, back in 1977.

“This wasn’t a slick operation, but it was successful because of the combination and character of the people involved … the conditions were terrible and the zodiacs going out to sea was on one hand mad but also courageous”

 – Charney Barber, 1977 anti-whaling activist

Greenpeace has a deep connection to Albany, and Western Australia. For over 150 years, this small port town was known as the ’whaling capital of the world’. Whaling was a lucrative but notoriously brutal industry that was by the mid 1970s facing sustained protests..

In 1977, a small band of Greenpeace activists arrived in Albany, accompanied by several zodiac inflatable boats. As Chris Pash – a reporter at the Albany Advertiser 1975-78 who extensively covered the campaign – said at a recent Greenpeace press conference:

“Many then thought the aim of the activists was to beat the whalers at sea. This wasn’t it. That’s not what they were here for. This thought was too literal. Stop the [whale] chasers? No way.”

Instead, the activists wanted to document the horrors of whaling, and get those photos to the world’s media so the whole world could see just how cruel whaling was.

“What they [Greenpeace] did have was Bob Hunter. The Canadian journalist and writer wanted what he called a media mindbomb….the strategy was to lob information, the images of dying whales, into the minds of media consumers, preferably those watching television. Essentially changing public opinion.”

This strategy, combined with the efforts of our allies, eventually paid off.

In late 1978, the whaling station – the last in the English speaking world – closed. That same year,  the Australian government passed the Whale Protection Act, which effectively ended commercial whaling in Australian waters.

The end of whaling in Albany marked a turning point in the fight to protect whales from extinction. Greenpeace continues to use its direct action tactics to draw attention to the urgent need to protect the planet’s wildlife and ecosystems.

In the 1970s, the greatest threat to whales was whaling. Now the greatest threat comes from fossil fuel companies like Woodside who are driving dangerous climate change.

Right now our ship, the Rainbow Warrior, is in Western Australia to join with coastal communities to stop fossil fuel giant Woodside Energy from drilling for gas in our precious oceans.

The Rainbow Warrior’s first day in Australia for the #WhalesNotWoodside Ship Tour. Credit: Harriet Spark / Grumpy Turtle Film / Greenpeace

Woodside wants to drill 70 gas wells in some of the world’s most biodiverse waters. If an accident were to take place, it could impact up to 12 marine parks including Ningaloo Reef.

“When I look at Albany today, where whale watching is the primary tourist attraction, where a wind farm is generating the electricity of the town, it swells me with pride. This is not the time to give up or give in. Our oceans are under attack. The ocean peoples must be protected.”

 – Charney Barber, 1977 anti-whaling activist

Greenpeace is committed to challenging Woodside at every step of the way – and we need you with us. Take a stand by telling your MP you want clean energy, not Woodside’s dirty gas.

[button href=”https://greenpeace.org.au/act/clean-energy-transition” style=”emboss” size=”large” color=”#81d742″ hovercolor=”#7adb20″ textcolor=”#ffffff”]Email Your MP[/button]

As the world starts to go back to offline, the world of online organising is here to stay! Running a grassroots campaign or starting a movement online can be intimidating, but there are so many great tools available to help you get started. Here are our top picks from the world of online grassroots activism. Not only are these platforms all entirely FREE, they’re easy to use and they’re all for promoting responsible grassroots activism!

Fundraising

Chuffed

Chuffed is an incredible online crowdfunding site – with a twist! Unlike some other crowdfunding sites, Chuffed is aimed specifically at supporting change-makers, providing a platform for nonprofits, charities, social enterprises, community groups and individuals to make a positive difference in the world! Chuffed allows you to fundraise through crowdfunding, but also has a new peer-to-peer fundraising feature that allows other people to join your fundraising team and fundraise with you!

Chuffed is also a Social Benefit Company, which means that they operate for the benefit of the community, taking social, environmental and community impacts into all of their decision making!

Features: crowdfunding, peer-to-peer fundraising, offer perks to your donors, customise different ‘impact levels’ for different donation sizes, branded email receipts, email journeys for donors.

Communications

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an online marketing platform BUT it has a free version that’s pretty great for sending out emails to your members and supporters. It has some great tools that let you make some very schmick looking emails so you can keep your members updated on all the latest events, meetings, campaigns and related news in style!

Features: email up to 2,000 contacts, send out up to 10,000 emails per month, access to loads of pretty dope email templates, create automated welcome emails.

Petitions

Change.org may be the most popular place online to create petitions, however there has been recent controversy over their status as a for-profit company and how those profits are used. Thankfully, there are some great alternatives out there!

SumofUs Community Petitions

SumofUs is a non-profit organisation that is committed to holding corporations accountable on issues ranging from worker’s rights, to climate change, human rights to animal rights, and more!

BUT they also have an online community portal where you can create your own petition to tackle issues you care about and hold corporations, businesses, governments and decision makers to account! The platform is super easy to use and allows you to download the list of signatures so you can deliver the petition!

Features: create your own petitions, download signatures, share your petition with the world!

Online Events

Zoom

You may have already heard of this one. In fact, it’s probably impossible that you haven’t if you’ve lived through the joys of working and volunteering online in 2020! As much as you may have come to loathe zoom calls, it’s an incredible tool for online organising. Zoom is super useful for online meetings and events. While the free version does have a 40 minute call limit, you can always get around that by scheduling multiple meetings one after the other.

Features: break out rooms for smaller discussions, screen sharing (for presentations and movie nights!), whiteboard tool, record meetings, and of course, the ever hilarious zoom backgrounds feature.

All-in-One Platforms

These sites are the all-rounders of the world of online-activism, the swiss-army knives if you will – they have all the tools, tools you never even knew you needed, but don’t know how you could ever have lived without!

Action Network

Action Network is a non-profit, free to use platform that provides all the tools you could ever want or need to organise online! Action Network is all about supporting progressive causes and responsible activism and that’s why we’re obsessed.

There are too many awesome features on this platform to mention them all so here are just a few of our personal favourites.

Features: create events (both online and offline!), create petitions, send emails and texts to your supporters, create automated campaign journeys, letter writing campaigns, call campaigns, create fundraisers, keep track of your members.

Stay Connected

Slack

While Facebook groups are often the go-to place for online community engagement and organising, there are better alternatives that offer a range of features to better engage and connect with your community. This is especially true of those wishing to get themselves off Facebook. Slack is a particularly strong contender. With a free version available to anyone, and both a desktop and mobile app version, it’s the perfect platform for organising and staying connected in the digital age!

Features: connect it up with your calendar app, as well as zoom or google applications, control over notifications so you can tune out in your down time, direct messaging, ‘channels’ for communications with big groups of people so everyone can stay in the loop!

Now you have all the tools in your activist utility belt to tackle all the issues! Go forth and activate your community!

The news has been bleak for months, and many of us are distressed and emotionally worn-out. The fact that the grief we’re feeling is stacked on top of heartache from recent bushfires and ever-present climate breakdown has only sharpened its blow.

Given all of this, it’s no wonder that when coronavirus ‘silver lining’ stories began emerging about emissions-reductions and wildlife returning, a good portion of well-meaning folk jumped to endorse it. Many reproductions of these stories framed humans as a scourge plaguing the planet, implying that our removal from nature is a positive, natural-course solution to ecological destruction.

While stories of nature recovering are indeed positive on their own, believing that humans are bad for the Earth sets us on a dangerous thought trajectory, and is ultimately unhelpful to the planet’s recovery. The reality is that ideas are powerful, and even the most well-intentioned but flawed ones can multiply fast, become hijacked, and result in horrific real-world consequences. 

We promise there are still things we can feel positive about right now (we’ll get to this!). First though, here’s why we should avoid perpetuating the idea that COVID-19 is good for the planet.

1. People are losing their lives, and the most vulnerable people will suffer most. Applauding the pandemic’s ‘silver lining’ exposes privilege.

To be clear, we’re not advocating for some kind of ban on fun, joy and all of life’s good things. Those are still important! What we are saying is that it’s tone deaf to pointedly argue that coronavirus may be on the whole a good thing, while people are living through intense hardship and losing their lives. Imagine telling someone who lost their job or a loved one, or an exhausted health worker, to look on the bright side of things.

Of course, there are grey areas here. It’s ok to feel heartened by small and big things, or see opportunities for positive change amid this crisis. Just make sure that these sentiments are shared sensitively, and that our big ideas for change centre those most-impacted.

2. ‘Humans are a scourge’ is connected to problematic overpopulation narratives.

On the fringes of the environmental movement are people who pedal the myth that human population growth is at the root of ecological destruction. The idea that a deadly virus is a panacea for the planet has obvious links to this. This narrative is wrong for a few reasons, mostly because it’s dangerously over-simplistic. For example, its logic of ‘more people equals more destruction’ assumes that the earth’s resources are distributed equally among all people, which is far from true. It also fatally overlooks actual systemic drivers, like economic models that prioritise profit and growth above all else, and colonialism, in which Indigenous ways of living continue to be erased.

3….which have racist roots, and dangerous consequences.

Overpopulation narratives and associated eugenics movements have a dark history of being weaponised for racial oppression and even genocide. The Nazi regime was famously influenced by eugenics. People like Garrett Hardin (who was a white supremacist dressed up as an environmentalist) actively lobbied against food aid during famines. More recently, conspiracies around immigrants and the environment have been adopted by far-right extremists, including the El Paso and Christchurch shooters.

The real solutions don’t involve any of us suffering. In fact, if we were to address systemic problems, everyday people stand to gain a lot.

4. It ignores the real problems, and feeds the unhelpful and untrue idea that climate action requires mass human suffering.

The real problems aren’t our lives or individual behaviour; they’re a combination of profit-at-all-costs logic, a rotten political system, racial and social inequity, and ongoing dispossession of First Nation peoples. From a strategic point of view, we really don’t want people to be distracted from these issues – or the villains behind them. Nor do we want people believing that a mass-scale crisis is required to heal the planet.. it’s not!

5. It ignores the real solutions, which benefit us all.

The real solutions don’t involve any of us suffering (besides maybe a few oil barons who may lose their private jets…). In fact, if we were to address the above problems, everyday people stand to gain a lot. Just imagine living in a society that’s powered by clean, renewable energy, where the government puts people first, wealth is fairly shared, no one is oppressed, and our environment is healthy and safe. It’s a big vision — but certainly not an unattainable one. In fact, each of these solutions overlap with each other, so when we progress one, we lift the other up too.

What we can feel positive about instead…

There are big ideas and societal shifts we can rally behind during this crisis, while still standing in solidarity with those most impacted by this pandemic. For example, we have a huge opportunity to make Australia’s economic stimulus green and catapult forward a just energy transition. We can take hope and heart in our ability to support one another, as evidenced in mutual aid initiatives, as well as our capacity for mass mobilisation. 

What’s more, we know that change happens at an accelerated rate during crises. While the risk that COVID-19 will act as a smoke-screen for regressive policies is real, so too is the opportunity to re-imagine our society so that people and planet are put first. What we can count on is that we’ve collectively learned so much about looking after one another – and the government’s role in this – during back-to-back crises in Australia. That in itself will change us.

This committee, which oversees the implementation of council strategies across a range of portfolio areas, including Environment, voted emotionally and unanimously to support Councillor Oke’s Motion for the declaration. The Motion enabled Melbourne to join the ranks of Sydney, Hobart, Noosa and some 24 other Australian local governments that have formally acknowledged the need for urgent climate action.

This is a monumental moment for Australians. The Motion, which can be viewed below in its entirety, consists of ten items, including a commitment to support the recently passed Motion at the Australian Local Government Association National General, which called on the federal government to declare a climate emergency.

A few tears shed for future generations at tonight’s meeting. But tears aren’t what youth want. They need urgent action. Proud Councillors unanimously supported my urgent motion @cityofmelbourne to continue our leadership & declare a #climate & #biodiversity #emergency pic.twitter.com/DLVh4NFYMW

— Cathy Oke (@cathyoke) July 16, 2019

The Motion was passed during a very emotional parliamentary sitting, with Councillors Oke and Jackie Watts both visibly moved to tears while contemplating the dire future politicians were ensuring for all young Australians by refusing to declare a climate emergency. Deputy Lord Mayor Arron Wood then took a moment to discuss the value in using innately negative words like “emergency” and “crisis” in relation to climate change, before vocally throwing his support behind this declaration. 

“When I talk to people, I say we are in deep trouble, and we need to be on that emergency and crisis footing. And that’s not about trying to scare people; it’s actually about how you resource things, how you push towards targets and what resources are required. It also sends a message to our community that not only are we taking action, but we take this extremely seriously as well.”

Deputy Lord Mayor Wood further stated that his initial concern with the word “emergency” stemmed from an uncertainty as to whether it would move people forward and enable them to take action. However, he was steadfast in his conclusion that, “In terms of who’s moving on addressing climate change, it’s more easy to ask about who’s not moving on addressing climate change, and unfortunately that’s our federal government.”

Councillor Oke’s Motion is a cause for celebration, and is definitive proof of what can be achieved when individuals, groups and councillors use their respective powers to demand real action to reduce greenhouse emissions and minimise biodiversity loss. This news is a clear indication that leadership on climate action will come from the ground up, with our local and city governments evidently the ones who will lead the way for our state and federal MPs.

Of course, a declaration of intention is not the same as concrete action — Canada has proven that — and we obviously still have a long way to go to effectively address this global crisis. But it’s important to acknowledge victories in all their forms, and Councillor Oke’s Motion is a testament to her committee for their refusal to stick their collective heads in the sand and deny the truth. 

It can sometimes feel frustrating and even futile to lobby MPs to step up and make a stand, so we at Greenpeace’s Melbourne City Break Free cohort want to loudly and proudly thank the Future Melbourne Committee for actually listening to the countless Melburnians who have signed petitions, attended rallies and lobbied their local council in an effort to affect change. Councillors, your actions are the first step to initiating a nation-wide commitment to making real policy changes that will help protect our vulnerable environment. 

Prior to this announcement, we had already organised to meet with Councillor Oke to discuss how she intends to implement a climate emergency, what her plans are in regards to lobbying the Victorian State Government and, most importantly, what we can do to help. After all, the climate crisis affects everyone and we need to ensure our representatives are taking serious action on what is an existential threat.

Change can feel uncomfortable, and taking action can be daunting. But when you truly accept and acknowledge our reality and what we will face if we don’t treat this climate crisis as an emergency, the only alternative to action is extinction.

Great change is non-linear. History is unpredictable. Elections come and elections go but we must retain belief in what is possible and execute our best plans to make it so. Standing from where we are today, Australia can still have a flourishing future.

Bitterness, fatalism, condescension or sneering won’t lead us to where Australia needs to be. Don’t hate on beautiful Queensland! We have to find a way through the climate emergency and our best chance will come if we can manifest a shared spirit and purpose as a nation.

The climate and extinctions emergency haven’t gone anywhere. The natural systems of the world aren’t interested in Australian electoral results. We have huge amounts of work to do, very fast. We made this mess, we can still clean it up. There is still time. Just.

This was a climate election, but it was many other things too. Meaningful action on climate change must be intimately connected with the promise of personal fulfilment: a golden thread that entwines the fate of the world to improving the lives of people within a single story.

Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos said very clearly on the ABC last night that community feeling can compel political action on climate change. Remember, Tony Abbott’s first budget? It was busted by community revolt. And the numbers in parliament are set to be very, very tight…

The government is not the country. Huge amounts of climate action can occur outside of what the Commonwealth government does. Cities, towns, states, territories, businesses, institutions of all kinds… all of these can take action.

We are set for more climate disasters in the next three years. People will suffer. The country will suffer. We don’t know what the socio-political impact of these disruptions will be. We need a big approach to national resilience – something no major party leader has yet offered.

State the obvious, but we urgently need to do a range of things that Morrison doesn’t want to do. Launching to becoming a clean energy superpower. Backing regenerative farming. Closing all coal power within a decade. Ending fossil fuel exports. The imperatives haven’t changed.

Morrison has a coherent ideology and a coherent view of Australia. Whether you agree with them or not, these are worth studying and understanding on their own terms.

The bias of commercial media, scare campaigns, the spending of Clive Palmer, etc are not aberrations: they are the strategic operating environment. It isn’t right or fair, but it’s axiomatic that vested interests will use their power & money to maintain their position.

No question, there needs to be massive reform and reinvigoration of our democracy – and that would be true regardless of yesterday’s result. A coalition must be built to make that possible. And yes, we need a big conversation about digital media and the fragmentation of society.

Above all, the labour of our lives, our work of love, goes on. The need for leadership has never been greater. We all need to step up, all of us: if we care about our children’s lives, about one million species, about nature, about civilisation, about the future of our country…

So, there is no time to waste. We can do this. We must do this. We will do this.

Great change is non-linear. History is unpredictable. We must retain belief in what is possible and execute our best plans to make it so. Our beautiful Australia can still have a flourishing future.

I didn’t imagine I’d be live streaming to millions of people around the world on Greenpeace’s social media channels when I first got involved with the Student Strikes for the Climate. But here I was with thousands of my fellow students from all over Melbourne, brought together by our fear of inaction on climate change and our hope that together we can make a change. I was one of dozens of students from all over the world who took over Greenpeace’s social media channels to highlight the crisis we are in and the movement for change.

My name is Oscar Alateras. I am a 16-year-old high school student currently attending Aquinas College in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. My dream is to become an environmental engineer where I will not only investigate environmental solutions, but put them into place as well. This is at least 7 or 8 years away, maybe even more, and current circumstances have made it quite obvious to me that I can not afford to wait until then to make a difference in the global battle against climate change. I must start now.

This is exactly what I have done. I have been a climate activist for roughly three years now. Many may ask, why climate change? Why is it this particular issue that I have chosen to act against? The answer to this question may vary from person to person, but for me, the answer is simple: passion. Now this passion didn’t just appear out of mid-air. There were specific events that allowed me to discover it.

I was in Year 7, and my class was shown the environmental documentary ‘Before The Flood’ by Leonardo Di Caprio. After seeing this, it made me realise that if a man as busy as Di Caprio took the time to film a documentary aimed to raise awareness for climate change, then it must be an important issue. Subsequent to this, I started to spend hours researching about climate change, as prior to the documentary, I had no idea that climate change was even a thing. It didn’t take me long to realise the full picture of what was going on: to realise that were in a global existential crisis. If I am being completely honest, all the alarming statistics and data put fear right into my heart, as I was afraid for the security of my future. I knew it was in danger, and that unfortunately, past generations, the main contributors of climate change, were not willing to make up for their mistakes and save my future. Instead, they were too proud, too selfish to admit they were wrong and chose to ignore the issue even though deep down in their conscience they knew they were putting billions of futures such as mine on the line. This feeling of pure fear coupled with the fact that I didn’t want others to suffer from this crisis motivated me to take action: it motivated me to take my future into my own hands and encourage other young people to do the same.

I started with making small sustainable changes to my lifestyle to reduce my carbon footprint; but it didn’t take me long until I realised I needed to do more: the planet needed me to do more. That is when I decided to write a book (The Truth about our world) about climate change to raise awareness, as in order to be in the best position to tackle an issue, we must be educated and have the ability to fully comprehend the ‘entire,’ as this allows us to see the issue from every angle; giving us the best chance of tackling it. Writing has always been a passion for me and I found that it was an effective way to act against climate change, so after publishing the book, I decided to continue on with my passion of writing for climate change and started an active blog full of frequent posts about different aspects of climate change – particularly the hard truths that others were too afraid to talk about. Just like the book, this was an excellent way to raise awareness for climate change and educate others, but once again, I realised it wasn’t enough; so alongside the blog, I decided to do more.

This is when I started to volunteer my time to different organisations who shared my passion for climate activism. At first, I got involved with the Greens here in Melbourne – I knew that politics and government was an important space to make the change I want to see. Being involved in  The Greens has helped me learn more about Australia’s complex political system and the many barriers to climate change action.

In January of 2019, I attended a two day Summer Training Summit run by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC). From this experience, many opportunities opened up. Not only did I learn new things about the vast issue that is climate change, but I was given the change to become more involved in the School Strike 4 Climate movement in Australia. I began taking days off school to strike in front of Parliament steps, demanding action from my political leaders.

I didn’t stop there, I wanted to do more and become further involved in the big national March 15 Strike. I believed that building partnership was an important part of growing the movement; which is exactly what I decided to do. I, along with many other wonderful people, worked together to build partnerships between School Strike 4 Climate and unions, MP’s, universities and political parties. This had an amazing effect as it grew more support for the movement, which gave it more power, giving it the ability to influence others for the good of our planet. It was truly inspiring to see our hard work pay off with the 50,000 Melbourne strikers that came out on March 15th.

Subsequent to the strike, alongside my blog and volunteering for The Greens, I have joined another AYCC program known as the Student Leadership Program (SLP), as well as working with thousands of other Australians around the country to make this upcoming election a ‘Climate Election.’ (More information on the program can be found here: https://www.aycc.org.au/student_climate_leadership_program)

SLP has been such an amazing learning experience. I am halfway through the program and I have already gained so many new skills. The central aim of SLP is to educate members about climate science, politics and the skills needed to create a social movement and influence change. From this, I have learnt the best ways to act against an issue such as climate change and the strategies I can use to make my actions as effective as possible.

My story is a simple one. There is nothing complex about it. I am just a young boy who is scared about his future and is choosing not to be trapped in the darkest surrounding climate change, but see the light at the end of the tunnel; working hard each and every day to get there. The only answer, for all of us, is to start. And to start today.

– Oscar

Yesterday Opposition Leader Michael Daley announced that an incoming Labor government will power all State Government agencies with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. This will include all schools, hospitals and prisons.

This is huge! It follows up the ALP’s previous announcements that it will build 7GW of clean energy by 2030, in addition to a rooftop solar scheme, expected to add another 2GW of solar to the grid.

Labor’s plan to turbocharge New South Wales’ transition from coal to clean energy will reduce electricity bills and help to reduce the carbon pollution that causes climate change.

Daley and Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Adam Searle, also unveiled plans to host a climate change summit within Labor’s first year in office, to develop a climate change action plan to achieve net zero emissions across the New South Wales economy by 2050. The outcomes of the Summit will be then be enshrined in law through a Climate Change Act.

The Liberal Party has a 2050 net-zero emissions target, but no plan for how it will achieve that goal.

After almost a decade of inaction by Premier Gladys Berejiklian and the Liberal Party, it’s great to see Labor proposing measures that will help replace our aging coal burners with clean energy.

Labor’s suite of renewable energy policies will lead to more jobs, more reliable electricity and a safer future for all. In the midst of fires, heatwaves, and ongoing paralysis from political leaders around the nation like Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison it’s exactly what the people are crying out for, not only in New South Wales but across Australia.

However, while the ALP’s policies are strong they are far from perfect. It’s disappointing that Labor’s plan does not include a clear commitment and pathway to ending deforestation in New South Wales, which is the key driver of extinction and a key contributor to global warming.

With the ALP now having announced a number initiatives to transition New South Wales to clean energy the pressure is on the Liberals to step up.

The Liberal Party has failed on climate. With our rivers drying up and bushfires raging, Gladys Berejiklian can no longer continue to ignore the reality. As it stands she has no plan to encourage investment in clean energy. No plan to begin replacing our ageing and increasingly unreliable coal power stations. Every single person in New South Wales is paying the price for this, through higher electricity bills, missed job opportunities and billions of dollars of investment that are flowing to other states.

Gladys Berejiklian will never be serious about taking action on the climate until she supports the expansion of clean energy and stops pumping money into the biggest cause of climate change – coal.

But it’s not too late. The Liberals still have a chance to come up with a policy to prove they can break the coal addiction that paralyses their colleagues in Canberra and power New South Wales with clean energy.

If Gladys Berejiklian fails to do so she will be no different to the coal-huggers in Canberra, who led by a man who brought a lump of coal to Parliament.