Nicolette Rubinsztein

Greenpeace Australia Pacific Board Member

Nicolette Rubinsztein is a renowned author, qualified actuary and experienced director. She believes climate change is the most important challenge of our time.

Nicolette has held non-executive director positions at UniSuper, SuperEd, the Actuaries Institute, Zurich Insurance Group, Class Limited, ASFA and CBHS Health Fund. She chairs the Audit and Risk Committees of both Zurich and Class, and is a former President of the Actuaries Institute. She has held a number of senior strategy, product and marketing roles at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Colonial First State, BT Funds Management and Towers Perrin.

How can we stop funding the climate crisis? Way too often, our hard-earned dosh is being poured into coal, oil and gas projects that damage the environment, heat the planet and hurt our health. The banks and super funds can either play a vital part in supporting the fossil fuel industry… or… they can play a part in financing the renewables revolution.

Help is on the way!! We hit up Munira Chowdhury, a Market Forces analyst, to learn how we can easily divest from dirty power and invest in the clean energy future It’s so easy that Ash switched her super while we were working on the episode. Boom. Done. Pinky promise to save the planet: kept! We’ll also learn how to double, triple, and quadruple our positive impact on the planet. Katrina Bullock, Greenpeace’s General Counsel and Finance News journalist, and Heidi Lenffer, musician and founder of FEAT, will share how we can collectively confront our financial institutions and use our networks of influence for the (heaps) better of our stunning planet.

Ep3: How can we stop funding the climate crisis? – TRANSCRIPT

Heidi Lenffer: Hey, I’d love to speak to you if you have a minute, I’m grappling with the question of
how can my band tour in a way that’s going to have a positive effect on the environment. Is that
even possible?

Ash: Heidi Lenffer from Cloud Control has been a touring musician for 12 years.

Heidi Lenffer: Any musician in my position where you tour for a living and you make the majority
of your money on the road, playing shows, has to face the uncomfortable reality that you get on a
plane way too frequently.

Ash: Before the pandemic, Heidi might be performing in one city on a Friday, a new city on a
Saturday, and maybe even a new country by Sunday. So those travel miles, they start to really pile
up fast.

Heidi Lenffer: I mean, if you just sit there for an hour and Google the facts, there’s no way you can’t
leave without a sense of existential dread.

Jess: So what can you do when the carbon cost of the things that you love – and your job – is just
way too high? When there doesn’t even seem to be another option?

Heidi Lenffer: We can’t afford to be touring in the same way anymore given what’s at stake.

Ash: That’s why in this episode, sorry to say, but we were giving up. We quit saving the planet. If it
means that our favorite bands have to give up performing, then I guess we’ll just have to watch the
world burn to a dope soundtrack.

Ash + Jess: Psych!

Jess: Hey, I’m Jess.

Ash: And I’m Ash, and we’re two friends who want to see our favorite bands during what they love
long into the future.

Jess: In this podcast, we’re asking how we as everyday Australians can fight the climate crisis and
help bring on a clean, renewable future.

Ash: So we have a hunch that our money might be financing the climate crisis… but it’s kind of in
the “too hard basket”. I also just don’t like to look at that kind of part of my life.

Everyday Australians: The process of dealing with any kind of big life finance decisions is just so intimidating for me that it just does turn me off.
I have absolutely no idea where my super money is being invested and it is definitely something I’ve
been meaning to look into and change, but I don’t know where to start.
I barely understand what a super is! And now that I do, it didn’t even occur to me that it might be
part of the problem.
Does it even make a difference?

Jess: I did switch my bank and super during the bushfires and I kind of did it out of guilt, but I’m no
finance expert. Did I take a big risk with my savings, especially in these COVID times?

Ash: We want answers. And since you’re here with us, we’re guessing you do, too!

Jess: None of this would be possible without our pals of Greenpeace Australia Pacific who
partnered with us on this journey so we could make a heaps better podcast – for you!

Ash: But first, we can’t leave you feeling like the music industry is going to shit. How did Heidi from
Cloud Control fix the unfixable problem of being an Earth-loving, frequent flying musician?

Heidi Lenffer: After I decided that my band couldn’t go on tour in the same way anymore and that
I had to try and design a way to do it better, for us and for my friends who are in bands, I called the
science community and ask their opinion as to if there’s anything we could do. And the generosity
of the science community was overwhelming. So many people called me back, so many people
were like, thank you for listening. Thank you for caring.

Ash: I mean, Heidi could have quit touring, which would help the carbon footprint of just one little
muso.

Jess: Or she could try offset her emissions, like plant a whole lot of trees to try to balance things
out.

Ash: Or she could address the cause.

Heidi Lenffer: And I quickly learned that carbon offsetting is nowhere near as good as keeping the
fossil fuels in the ground. But in order to do that, you need to replace the entire energy system.

Ash: This is what Heidi did. She created a way for artists like her to invest their touring income into
solar farms with her initiative, Future Energy Artists or FEAT for short.

Heidi Lenffer: FEAT is a movement of artists investing in renewable energy. So they are using their
touring income to build new infrastructure in Australia that can then generate clean energy for up to
30 years.

Ash: Does that mean they make money from that investment?

Heidi Lenffer: Yes.

Ash: What are we talking? Is this kind of, you know, is this a sound investment?

Heidi Lenffer: Boom, boom! Is that a pun? We all gave you kudos for your pun and you didn’t even
realise!

Ash: OK, well, just so we’re clear. Yes. It is a sound investment in every sense of the word.

Ash: *Transport sounds* I feel like in Legally Blond when she turns up to Harvard wearing all pink
with her little dog in a little convertible, like woefully unprepared.

Jess: You’re turning up to Greenpeace wearing green at least!

Ash: Where are we going Jess?

Jess: To Greenpeace’s secret warehouse.

Ash: It’s an activist wonderland full of boats, climbing gear, costumes and amazing props. And so
many carabiners.

Ash: *Honks the Greenpeace doorbell* Oh this is the best doorbell excuse me, I have a very
important meeting! *honk honk*.

Jess: We had a very important meeting with a finance expert who was going to tell us how not
to finance the climate crisis. And just so you know, the info that we’re going to share with you
is general information, not personal financial advice. We don’t know your personal situation or
individual needs. Ash was more excited about the doorbell.

Ash: Finance isn’t really my thing.

Katrina Bullock: Hey, guys, I’m Katrina Bullock. I’m a legal and governance officer at Greenpeace
Australia Pacific, so I handle the legals for the Australia Pacific region. And I also work as a finance
news journalist for the Finance News Network. I’m very excited that you’re here today to have a bit
of a chat about our super and banking!

Ash: Katrina is drinking water out of a mug that says “underestimate me, that’ll be fun”. She sounds
bubbly, but remember the mug!

Katrina Bullock: Like all companies, fossil fuel companies cannot exist if they don’t have funding.
So how do they get their funding? Well, in most cases, it actually comes from the share market.
So investors buy shares in companies and companies use that money to finance more fossil fuel
projects. But you’re probably thinking, in a day and age where we know the catastrophic impacts
of climate change and the financial risks associated with it, who on earth would make such an
unethical investment? And surprisingly, you may actually find that the answer is you.

Ash: I mean, I would never make such an unethical investment.

Jess: I guess you don’t really think of yourself as an investor, it has a real ‘suit and tie’ kind of vibe.

Katrina Bullock: But because of compulsory superannuation in Australia, every single Australian of
working age has a superannuation account and they are an investor. And of course, that fund has to
be invested somewhere else so that the balance can grow. And what you’ll find is that in Australia,
most superannuation companies are investing in fossil fuels. So I can almost guarantee you that if
you are not watching where that money goes, you are investing in the fossil fuel industry.

Ash: I’m… I’m investing in the fossil fuel industry? I am a fossil fuel industry investor? OK, let’s just
hold up here and break it all the way down. Have a job? This means you probably have a super fund,
which automatically makes you an investor. Do you have your money in a bank? You’re inadvertently
investing via the bank. Even if you go to a university, you’re an investor. All these institutions are
investing your money in order to make more money. These institutions aren’t just sitting there with
your golden eggs. They’ve got your golden goose, like Jack and the Beanstalk. Remember the giant
up in the cloud? He’s super annoying and keeps saying fee fi fo fum or whatever? The giant has this
enchanted goose that lays golden eggs.

Jess: So it’s kind of like it uses… You use the goose to make eggs. I see where you’re going. I’m
following.

Ash: In the story that goose is our goose, so the goose is our investment and the big banks and
super fun giants are giving our golden eggs and our money straight to coal mining projects and
fracking, and getting them off the ground. The giants are thriving. They’re using our goose on things
for which our goose must not be used. So just like Jack, we need to climb the beanstalk and rescue
our goose from the giant.

Jess: So in real terms, we can choose to divest some of our money from the banks and super
funds and corporate giants who are financing fossil fuel projects and then put it into clean funds
that support renewable investment instead. I had no idea that Jack and the Beanstalk was about
divestment Ash. A.

Ash: Little known fact!

Jess: So if we were going to create a simple list of top 10 things that we could do, that is going to
have serious, long lasting impact on climate change, where does changing our finances actually sit?

Katrina Bullock: At the top of that list. Like it’s the kind of thing that can create massive systemic
change.

Ash + Jess: Hey there, systemic change, old friend, I’m so glad you’re here, systemic change!

Katrina Bullock: But this is one way that you can directly change the system. You can divest, you
can stop financing, you know, fossil fuels today. And that’s huge.

Ash: So how does finance interact with systems change? Why is one going to help the other?

Katrina Bullock: So much. So when we change our finances, when we divest from fossil fuels or
we support renewables, what we’re doing is actually slowly changing the system. We’re changing
where the money sits. We’re changing how those systems are going to interact. And and that’s
really powerful. And in order to do that, of course, first we need to change mindsets. And those
changes are really interconnected because as we divest away from companies, as they lose money,
because we’re leaving, because we don’t want to be involved with fossil fuels, directors start to
change their attitudes and they don’t want that capital flight. So they will start to introduce more
environmentally friendly policies. And you get this really beautiful sort of loop and cycle of, you
know, changes. So it’s really important to attack it at a systems level, not at a temporary change
level.

Ash: Now, one of the things I’m stuck on is I am one of seven billion people and I just don’t have that
much dosh to my name.

Jess: Well, hang on a sec. Let’s just talk about our super first. So according to the Australian Bureau
of Statistics, the average superannuation balance for people over 15 is almost $145,000.

Ash: (Laughs).

Jess: I know! I thought the same thing.

Ash: Is that what mine should look like?!

Jess: Well that is just the average. So obviously it’s going to depend on a whole lot of things
like our age, how long we’ve been working our income, but that is indeed the average. And so for
most people, it’s the largest sum of money that will ever have in our lifetime. So let’s say we have
a divestment dinner party, Ash, and we invite 10 mates over. We have a really fun time switching
our super. All of us combined could potentially be moving one point four million dollars away from
funds that financed the fossil fuel industry, just 10 of our average mates.

Ash: I mean, my more wealthy mates would need to be invited to make up for what I lack. But I’ve
never wanted to have a party like this so much of my life!

Jess: I know! And we can make it even bigger.

Katrina Bullock: Now, this morning, I quickly logged on to our Greenpeace Australia Pacific social
media accounts, and just between Instagram and Facebook, we have access to a community of
around half a million like-minded people. Now say if just half of them were working Aussies who
chose to switch their super away from fossil fuels and based on the average superannuation
account value, that’s over $36 billion divested away from fossil fuels. Now, of course, most super
funds don’t invest 100% of their funds in fossil fuels. So it would be a portion of that $36 billion. But
I mean, look at the size of that pool. Look at the impact we can make.

Ash: A quick shout out to you all up there, if you’re up for a record-breaking dinner date, I totally am.

Jess: Me too. But I’ve got one big question here. It makes sense from an environmental standpoint,
but surely if so many banks are still lending money to fossil fuel projects, it must be because to not
invest in them would be risky, right?

Katrina Bullock: There’s such a myth out there, guys. Fossil fuels are becoming an increasingly
risky investment. And there’s a lot of risk attached to fossil fuel companies, which are likely to
actually result in them being a much poorer investment over the long term.

Jess: OK, so Katrina told us that the first big risk is the physical risk associated with rising global
temperatures that can affect all businesses, not just fossil fuel companies.

Katrina Bullock: They include like a greater frequency and severity of weather events, flooding,
rising sea levels. And all of this can, of course, affect property. It disrupts trade. It causes power
outages.

Ash: Gotcha. So there’s the risks of a warming world that are going to have financial impacts on
everyone. And every business is going to be impacted across the board.
Jess: And then the second risk is transition risk, which comes along with our move to a
decarbonized economy.

Katrina Bullock: Because governments move towards a low carbon economy, they start to
remove subsidies. So that’s a type of regulatory change from fossil fuel industries. And companies
stop buying coal, oil and gas because their country’s moving towards renewables and they don’t
need it. And when they stop buying those fossil fuels, the value of the fossil fuels decreases.
For example, at the moment, coal companies might have really large coal fired power stations
sitting on their balance sheet as assets that they claim are worth millions of dollars. But if our
government announces, as many other governments have, that Australia will no longer use coal in
the generation of electricity, that carbon bubble bursts and those assets become what’s referred to
as stranded assets, which plummet in value overnight. And of course, if they plummet, so does the
company’s share price. So it’s it’s highly likely that fossil fuel companies are currently overvalued.

Jess: I did switch my banking and super because I felt a sense of urgency after the bushfires and
it was something that I’d been meaning to do, because I’d heard it was a good thing. But I’ve got to
be honest, I don’t actually know… I’m not a financial expert. Is it a risk to be in these new clean super
funds, or…

Katrina Bullock: I think it’s riskier not to, honestly. We’re at a point in time now, where this transition
to a low carbon economy is almost inevitable.

Ash: Hey, Jess, I just switched my super.

Jess: What! When? That was so quick!

Ash: Took me like five minutes and my Internet’s pretty bad here, so it could actually take a bit less
time.

Jess: Was your fund one of the bad ones?

Ash: Well, I was in a fund that let me choose a tilt towards investing in renewables, which I liked. But
then I looked closer I couldn’t find anything about fossil fuels on their website at all. So I emailed
them to ask, is any portion of my money funding fossil fuel projects or companies? Are you abusing
my goose? And they sent me like seven hyperlinks saying all the information is in here, but I don’t
want to peep the fine print for the next 30 minutes while it takes only five minutes to change to a
fund that literally says no to fossil fuels on the tin.

Jess: Yeah, makes sense.

Ash: So I just went to the website of a fund that makes that promise, added my basic details and
elected to change my full balance out of the fund, like bam!

Jess: You did it?

Ash: Yeah, it’s done.

Jess: I’m so proud of you Ash!

Ash: I used this website called Responsible Returns – we’ll check a link to it in the show notes. I
think that’s a good idea.

Jess: That Responsible Returns tool was great. That’s what I used as well when I did mine and it
had a whole bunch of different options like you could choose by your values what you wanted to
not be investing in and what you wanted to not be investing in. And then it kind of gives you a list of
different options of clean ethical super funds to choose from.

Ash: Totally. And there were quite a few, but I ended up going with Future Super, and the best part
was in my welcome email they told me that by having changed my balance over to an ethical
super fund, they were saying like, oh, this is the equivalent, like annually, of you having gone vegan
for six years! And then they were like, oh, this is the equivalent of you not driving a car for two
years! And I’m like, oh, all of that veganism and driving! But like the long and short of it, is that
with three minutes – or five minutes because my Internet sucks – but with five minutes of admin, I
accomplished more than I could ever hope to in the same amount of time. So it was just a really
nice, easy win, and I like that kind of win for a minute type thing. I vibe it.

Jess: Now, how are you feeling about your bank?

Ash: I don’t know, that one still feels a bit much. I have a few different accounts and they all feed
into each other and everything’s connected and I run my business out of one of them.

Jess: OK, OK. So I changed my bank at the beginning of the year. I think I told you that already. I did
it out of bushfire climate anxiety. But when I was trying to figure out what to do, I found this really
helpful bank comparison table made by this group called Market Forces. I’m going to pull it up and
show you.. so it’s marketforces.org.

Ash: What is your super funding? Help us campaign to keep your money out of fossil fuels. Vibes.

Jess: And it’s put together by a team of analysts like Munira Chowdhury, who I’ve invited into our
Zoom call to tell us more.

Munira Chowdhury: Hey, everyone, my name is Munira and I work as an analyst for Market Forces.

Ash: One question that I actually wanted to ask you to explain like I’m five, is what does an analyst
do? It’s like when people say I’m a producer and it’s like, a producer of what? You know?

Munira Chowdhury: So what I do is look at the companies that are listed in the stock exchange in
Australia and basically see how they’re behaving in terms of climate change. So, yeah, researching
companies, looking into what they’re up to, looking into their disclosures around climate, whether
they’ve made science based commitments around reducing emissions.

Ash: So you’re like a finance detective?

Munira Chowdhury: That’s a really awesome title to have. I’ll definitely use that!

Ash: Right. We need to reintroduce you or you can reintroduce yourself – Munira Chowdhury,
Finance Detective!

Ash: One eye on the data and one eye on the video call, Munira Chowdhury, Finance Detective, was
off duty in her way.

Jess: When it comes to the dank, dirty balance sheets of the big banks, sunlight is the best
disinfectant.

Ash: When a financial institution is crooked, who’s going to set them straight?

Munira Chowdhury: Our main motto is to shift finance away from fossil fuels towards things that
are solutions to climate change.

Ash + Jess: Munira, Finance Detective.

Jess: OK, back to the website. OK, so you can scroll down and see the bank comparison table. Ash,
can you see your bank there?

Ash: Is your bank investing in dirty fossil fuels on the campaigns? Yeah, OK, I see Commbank here.
I’m a Dollarmites kid, Jess. Don’t judge me.

Jess: Yeah, I was too. They got us with those holographic rulers!

Ash: Wow OK, Commonwealth Bank has loaned more than $12 billion to coal, oil and gas sectors
since 2016. Excuse me, when was the Paris agreement again?

Jess: 2016.

Munira Chowdhury: Yeah, 12 billion dollars do the dirty fossil fuel industry. And you can see in
comparison how little they’ve provided to renewables.

Jess: Well, Ash, it’s enabled 5.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, enough to cancel out the gains
made by Australia’s emissions reduction target more than 12 times over.

Ash: Yeah. So the problem is that they’re basically enabling new fossil fuel projects in a way that,
you know, is taking us further and further away from being able to do anything about climate
change in time. Excuse me, CommBank, what are you doing with my money? Oh, my gosh, I’m so
mad.

Munira Chowdhury: An example I can give you is that ANZ, for every dollar that they’ve provided in
loans to renewables they have provided more than five dollars to the fossil fuel industry as a ratio.
So if you hold a bank account with one of the big four banks, you must really raise this issue with
the bank.

Ash: And when you say raise the issue, what do you think is the most effective way that a person
like me who has very little financial literacy can go about raising the issue with their bank?

Munira Chowdhury: I think just as simple as sending them an email and saying that you’re unhappy
with their decision to stick with fossil fuels, you can call your bank and elevate it to the manager
of your bank branch saying that, you know, I need to speak to the manager. I really don’t want my
money to be invested in fossil fuels. So you can call them as well. I think those would be the really
first simple steps. And you give them a chance to respond, you give them a chance to change their
policies. And if they don’t do that, you can take more actions.

Ash: OK, I got this. Hey, CommBank, look at what you’ve done to my golden goose. You have put
it to nefarious use. I’m sorry, guys. This is organically turning into a poem. You’ve served it up to
mining groups. Please stop or else I’m leaving you.

Jess: Ash, that was beautiful.

Ash: Email sent. There’s also a link in the show notes to help you put your bank on notice on the
market forces website. A very easy thing to do, and also a little bit fun. What’s next?

Munira Chowdhury: On our website we have a banks comparison table, which you can look at and
you can find the banks that are not backing fossil fuels and select a bank from there and then you
can make the switch.

Ash: Hey, Jess, another thing that’s become super clear to me, going through all these bank
comparison tables in the Market Forces website, is that like the clean or responsible banks are also
promising not to be investing in things like logging or gambling or the arms industry. And on the flip
side, they’re actively investing in sustainable social housing or education or health care, things that
we need to survive.

Jess: Mhmm. Our money has been used to finance some pretty dodgy stuff, but this is an
opportunity to think big picture and invest in a morally and ethically built system.

Jess: Another thing I wanted to ask you, Munira, is that aside from being an analyst and a finance
detective, you also have a passion for climate justice, and I’d love to hear from your perspective
what that means to you, and how the worlds of finance and investment ties in with that for you?

Munira Chowdhury: I think for me, if you talk about climate justice, it gets really personal. So I am
from Bangladesh, which is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. And it’s just an
everyday thing for Bangladesh to face catastrophic climate events like floods, like cyclones. It’s just
like every day you see it get worse and worse. And it’s really quite late in my life that I connected
the dots between extreme weather and climate change and realised that it’s like predominantly the
fossil fuel industry and the backers of fossil fuel industry that is fueling climate crisis. And that’s
when I became really passionate about really taking action and doing something about climate
change. And in terms of our work at Market Forces, I think it really resonates with what I want to do
about climate justice.

Jess: I want to sit with this idea of climate justice that Munira just mentioned, because climate
change does hit some people way harder than others. So when we talk about climate justice, we’re
also looking at the ethical and political impacts of climate change and not only the environmental
ones.

Ash: Yeah, so the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, says, as is always the case, the poor and
vulnerable are the first to suffer and the worst hit. And if we’re taking this seriously, then it feels like,
you know, it’s we’re doing this episode on finance because it sort of feels like it leaves some people
out because maybe they have less money, but they also have less power. And I think it’s something
we need to talk about, even if it’s a bit complicated, because there’s this extra special power that we
have with our money that I think most of us don’t know we have and we don’t use it.

Jess: And this is where we get into an important but unsexy form of activism, shareholder activism.

Ash: OK, so we need to redact that because Katrina would take issue with us. We met Katrina at the
Greenpeace warehouse where there were like all of these boats and these fun props and all these
cool things everywhere. And then she’s talking about shareholder activism and I’m like, whoa, that is
like the least sexy form of activism. How unfun. Like no bridge-scaling involved here! And she took
massive issue with us.

Jess: Yeah, we had to eat our words because she then sent us this note saying, ‘Am I the only one
who sees shareholder activism as being sexy, AF? It’s literally suits, heels and saving the world one
transaction at a time!’

Katrina Bullock: As a term shareholder activism just refers to attempts by one or more
shareholders, and we’ve already established that we’re shareholders if we have a super fund, so
attempts by one or more shareholders to influence the management of a particular company.
Ash: So we stand very corrected. Do not underestimate Katrina Bullock. Shareholder activism is
officially sexy.

Katrina Bullock: And another really great example of shareholder activism was the recent Rio Tinto
Jukaan Gorge scandal. You guys familiar with this one?

Ash: Rio Tinto wanted to expand a mine in Western Australia, which happened to be in the lands of
the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples.

Jess: That included 46,000 year old rock shelters of deep spiritual and historical significance to the
traditional owners. Rio Tinto actually knew the significance of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters.
Ash: They knew when they laid explosives to blast the site open for mining expansion, and they
knew because they actually commissioned the archeological and ethnographic surveys that
revealed the significance of the sites. In one of those rock shelters, they found a belt made of hair.
It was four thousand years old that her belt was DNA tested and it matched the PKKP traditional
owners alive today.

Jess: Rio Tinto knew all of this. They knew the site was occupied as far back as 46000 years and
they completely destroyed it.

Katrina Bullock: They came under intense investor pressure, as you can imagine, when investors
caught wind of this and we had a bunch of activist investors who came out and demanded that
there be an internal investigation. And as a result of that, they chose to reduce the executive’s
bonuses, there were three executives that were responsible for this decision.

Ash: So those execs are on million dollar salaries. So taking away their bonuses is like taking away
their pocket money

Katrina Bullock: That still wasn’t good enough. Investor pressure actually forced those three
individuals to step down.

Jess: And I mean, this is obviously a devastating example of consequences being maybe enacted
thanks to shareholder activism. And I say devastating because it happened in the first place. Is
there some way of being involved earlier in the picture? Like would there be another way of looking
at that story if we could have that time again?

Katrina Bullock: Absolutely. One of the cool things investors are doing is they are demanding that
all of these gag orders that Aboriginal communities have signed in relation to mining agreements
with Rio Tinto now get reconsidered. So they want the board to grab all those agreements to have
a look at them and see what’s actually going on. So that would be a really great long term solution
because it provides some transparency and it can make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen
again, and at least people are held to account.

Jess: So after we recorded this interview, Rio Tinto wrote to 12 indigenous groups across Western
Australia’s Pilbara region and they vowed to release them from gag orders in their land use
agreements and improve the benefits provided for mining their ancestral land. And this has been
achieved because of pressure from both indigenous leaders and from Rio Tinto shareholders.

Ash: So bringing this back to something like superannuation… shareholder activism might kind of
sound lofty, but everyone who has a super account is a shareholder. So you can be a shareholder
activist. Market Forces ran a campaign with UniSuper customers to demand that they quit investing
their money in coal, oil and gas. And in response, UniSuper actually dropped their shares in thermal
coal companies. So demanding change of super funds and banks can really work.

Jess: And if you own shares in companies that are tied up in fossil fuels, you can go Rio Tinto
shareholder style on them, don your suit and heels, go to AGMs and demand that things change
from the inside.

Ash: Yeah, talk to those giants, go up that beanstalk, get them to change the way they are treating
our people and the planet and goose.

Jess: And our geese!

Ash: OK, so I definitely need to change my bank, I can’t hear all this and not change my bank! And I
think Commbank is going to change based on what I’ve heard, maybe sometime in the future, but
not quick enough for me. So I need to get out of there. I’m going to renovate. My funds are outdated,
dilapidated. They’re not growing with me.

Jess: You need to Marie Kondo your finances. Spark some joy!

Ash: I love it. You know, the the sound she makes when she picks up something that sparks joy is
*sound* I picked up my car the other day from my bank and I was like, you don’t spark joy.

Jess: Have you seen my card Ash? It sparks joy. Do you need one last kick from Katrina, Ash?
Should Ash renovate her finances?

Katrina Bullock: Yeah, but not just of the heart decision, of a pure, hard core objective financial cost
benefit analysis.

Jess: Let’s do it. Are you ready?

Katrina Bullock: I can see it. Her pupils are dilated, she’s ready! She’s caffeine-fuelled. Oh God, it’s
exciting!

Ash: OK, Jess OK, I’m ready to do this. But I feel like I need a little bit of guidance. Jess can you tell
me how you did the whole bank switch?

Jess: Yes. Yes. So you need to figure out where you want to change to, but you’ve got those Market
Forces and Responsible Returns tools that’ll make it super easy. You pick the bank, opening a new
account takes like a matter of minutes. You can do it online. Transfer any money, easy. Shut down
the old account, tell the bank you’re leaving. Simple.

Ash: And also victorious. And then I tell them why I’m leaving? Right. Hey, guys, I’m just here to
close down my account. I really don’t like the fact that you’re trashing my planet.

Jess: Yeah, exactly. And then the only thing that takes like a little bit of maybe a nice admin morning
with a cup of tea is switching over your direct debits. But then you’re done! Simple! And you’ll have a
new card that sparks joy

Ash: OK, so future Ash speaking now. I did it. It was super easy and I actually kind of prefer the app
of my new one anyway. So yeah!

Jess: Now, let’s go back to where we started today, to our vision of a better future of renewable
power and lots of live music. Remember Heidi Lenffer, the musician from Cloud Control who started
a whole investment fund so that artists could directly fund solar farms with their touring income? I
mean, it’s a pretty big call Ash, but if you’re really fired up, it’d be pretty fun next step?

Ash: I love it. You know what? We can make a Heaps Better solar farm. Not better than what Heidi
made, but like heaps better listeners or, you know, all of us together.

Jess: I got it. I’m on board. OK, so let’s go back to Heidi.

Ash: So, I mean, Jess and I, if we wanted to, for example, try and make a big solar investment or
maybe a wind investment for the podcast industry, I mean, can you tell Jess and I how to do that?
Just like just like a five point plan?

Heidi Lenffer: Just the 101? Well, you and Jess have a community that you tap into who would
bring the money, the investors. But you would also need to have the people that know where to find
the right land to use, know the best wind conditions and solar conditions in the country. So you
basically need a solar infrastructure developer. So we’ve partnered with two different companies,
one who looks after the investment strategy and one who looks after the solar infrastructure. And
then my contribution is to bring the community of people to make it sing.

Jess: OK, are we all ready to sing with Heidi? Just to remind us why we’re all doing this.

Heidi Lenffer: It’s a shared enterprise, this whole life business on Earth, there’s a biochemical
reality that has created this symphony of wildlife that we grew up with, us being one of them. And
now that symphony has ended, it’s like the sound has stopped and we’re seeing in our lifetime,
you know, since 1970, 68% of the world’s wildlife has gone extinct. That’s not even the space of
my parents being alive. If I let myself sit in this energy for too long, I wouldn’t do anything because
it’s too depressing and I would just want to curl up and cry. So the only way I can move forward
is to be putting all of my time into something that I think will help move the needle in one aspect
that’s super important. But the thing about the climate crisis is it’s so huge that there’s so many
opportunities for other people to do that in different spaces. So you just need to find the thing that
tugs your heart and build something to really like use a laser sharp focus here, fueled by the passion
that breaks your heart to create that solution and like try and push it as far as you can using your
network of influence. That’s really at the crux of what I’m doing at FEAT.

Ash: To rein it back in your simple, easy, economically sound actions for today are:

Jess: One: find out if your bank and super fund are financing the climate crisis.

Ash: Use the Market Forces bank and super comparison tables. So, so easy to do. They’ve done all
the work and it takes less than a minute.

Jess: Two: switch your super.

Ash: You literally only need five minutes and your tax file number. I mean, you can even do it with a
bunch of mates and do it together over pasta and wine for way more impact and fun and, you know,
keeping each other accountable and sharing what you know about the funds.

Jess: Want to hear something cool? We could fund the whole of Australia to transition to a
renewable energy sector by 2030 with just 7.7% of Australia’s superannuation savings.

Ash: Wait. So we could go 100% renewable with just 7.7% of what we have sitting on super really.

Jess: Three: if your bank is financing the climate crisis, ask them to stop. Escalate it to the
manager. And if you want out, get out.

Ash: And the last one is big, big in terms of impact and not big in terms of what it’s going to take
from you. Tell any institution you are with your bank, your super, your investments, your mortgage,
whatever, that you don’t want your money invested in fossil fuels. Be really explicit.

Jess: Do it for your goose.

Ash: Do it for your goose, Jess! We’ve put everything you need on the Heaps Better website so that
you can do this at home with your mates.

Jess: That website is Greenpeace.org.au/heapsbetter. Subscribe to Heaps Better on Spotify, Apple,
or wherever you listen, and if you like what you heard, please write and review this podcast. It’s a
huge help.

Ash: Heaps Better is a podcast made by us, Jess Hamilton and Ash Berdebes with Greenpeace
Australia Pacific and Audiocraft by our side. The mixing engineer is Adam Connelly, EP is Kate
Montague and the Creative Lead at Greenpeace is Ella Colley. We acknowledge and pay our
respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which this podcast was created and their
enduring legacy of sustainability and land care in this country.

Jess: A huge thank you to the Greenpeace team for getting us out of the weeds and showing us the
bigger picture, especially Katrina Bullock.

Ash: And thank you to Heidi for being such a creative and inspiring legend and to Munira
Chowdhury, finance detective, and the Market Forces team, and the many experts who wrote books,
papers and guides that helped us make sense of all this money stuff and who are chipping away
every day to bring on the renewable revolution.

Jess: And thank you for coming with us. Together, we are heaps better.

Australians overwhelmingly want a safe climate future. But the people who are in positions of power and influence don’t seem to be hearing us. This week Australia was snubbed from speaking at the Global Climate Ambition Summit because our leaders are being… well, not very ambitious when it comes to our climate commitments.

So how can we send the message that we want to move forwards to the renewable future and leave coal oil and gas in the past — and be heard? We need to raise our voices and our friends in the Pacific, Fenton Lutunatabua and Joseph Moeono-Kolio join us in Episode 4 to help us speed things up. We’ll learn how to amplify our impact with legendary social researcher on climate communication Dr. Rebecca Huntley, and get a politician’s inspiring point of view from Deputy Lord Mayor of City of Sydney, Jess Scully.

EP 4:How can we make our leaders listen? – TRANSCRIPT

Jess: Picture long stretches of sandy beach, clear blue ocean, a backdrop of rolling foresty
mountains…

Ash: Now add an enormous coal loading facility, some thousand ton ships and rolling hills of coal.

Fenton Lutunatabua: And I remember just sitting at the top of that coal loading facility and as far
as I could see, there were just ships, right?

Jess: This is Fenton Lutunatabua, and he’s a Pacific Climate Warrior. It’s 2009, and Fenton has
chained himself to the Hay Point coal loading facility in Queensland. And he’s watching as these
ships carry tons of coal dug from Australian mines out to the Pacific Ocean.

Fenton Lutunatabua: They look like mountains out on the ocean, mountains of coal out on the
ocean that were moving.

Ash: Fenton has put his body on the line – like literally on the climbing line – dangling 50 metres in
the air to demand a stop to the expansion of the coal industry.

Jess: For years, Fenton has been one of the many voices of the Pacific nations trying to get a
message through to Australia about climate change.

Fenton Lutunatabua: You need to do more if you keep calling yourself a big brother to the Pacific.

Jess: It’s a message that Jess and I hear loud and clear… but we’ve got a little problem. We know
we have to call on the big wigs, politicians, banks and big business to get fossil fuels out of our
system now. But for some reason, when it comes down to Ash and I, we’re feeling a little out of our
depth…

Lifeguard: Get out of the water, professionals only!

Ash: Do you know how to talk to influential people about climate change?

Jess: Not really… I usually just stay safe on the shore and leave it to the experts.

Lifeguard: Uh… Are you guys wearing floaties?

Ash: I feel like an idiot.

Jess: Ugh! Something touched my leg!

Lifeguard: Ash Berdebes and Jessica Hamilton, get out of the water!

Ash: Hello there, fellow systems changer, I’m Ash.

Jess: And I’m Jess, and we’re two mates on a mission to work out how to talk about climate
change to the people with power.

Ash: We’ve got research that says 90% of Australians want action on climate change. So why do we
all hold back on asking for it?

Everyday Australians: I’ve never spoken to anyone in a position of power about climate at all…
You know, do you call someone? Do you email someone? Are you allowed to do that? I don’t know…
I’m curious to know what advice people have for communicating about climate better and
specifically communicating the importance of policy change…
I don’t know how much ability I have to influence politicians.
I do occasionally sign petitions when I see them, but to be honest, I never know what impact, if any,
those petitions that I do sign end up having.

Jess: We need some help! So we’re calling on the experts and our new mates at Greenpeace
Australia Pacific to help us figure out how everyday people like Ash and I can influence the
influential so that we can do it – together – because we’re heaps better together.

Ash: OK, so back to that coal port that we were just dangling in, I mean, we weren’t really at a coal
port. We podcasters, we haven’t done any of the intrepid stuff yet. We’re on a Zoom call with Fenton,
but he’s now safe on the ground in Suva, Fiji.

Fenton Lutunatabua: I’m Fenton Lutunatabua. I’m a big believer in storytelling in purpose of
something. Oh, and I probably should say I do work as well for a climate organisation, 350.org.
Jess: And we’re also joined by Joe Moeno-Kolio.

Joe Moeono-Kolio: So I’m Joe Moeono-Kolio, based here in Samoa. It is just after 8:00 here. So it’s
pretty dark outside.

Jess: Joe is another Pacific Climate Warrior and he’s head of Pacific for Greenpeace.

Joe Moeono-Kolio: We were a former colony. I think it was one of the first nonviolent, peaceful civil
disobedience actions of the 20th century that enabled us to build an empire. And I often reflect on
that as, you know, the methods used back then I feel are quite potent and perhaps very vital lessons
for this new empire of sorts that we’re campaigning against now, which is greed and climate
change and that sort of thing.

Ash: Both Joe and Fenton are incredible campaigners, total experts. They’ve had the ear of the BBC,
CNN, even the pope.

Joe Moeono-Kolio: So all that work has been largely informed by where we’ve come from as
a people having to constantly live in this perpetual state of fighting back against some kind of
injustice. It’s come from the need to have really solid strategy in place. But it’s also come from
relationships like mine with Fenton and the Pacific way, right? Working together for this kind of
collective goal.

Ash: We’re all talking about it whenever we, like, have beers at the pub, but I don’t know if we’re
doing anything. Like how do we move from talking about it to being active?

Jess: So we asked, “how can Ash and I add our voices to the campaign and ask the Australian
government to walk the talk when they refer to the Pacific as family?” And they were kind of like,
yeah, that’s on you guys.

Joe Moeono-Kolio: The people that select your government are the ones who are responsible for
delivering this message. You know, you can build all the solidarity and goodwill with us, but it’s the
responsibility of the Australian voter.

Fenton Lutunatabua: You have to activate Australians and get them to use their vote in ways that
will sort of shift us from the trajectory that we’re on right now.

Ash: OK, so we need to activate ourselves. I’m up for the challenge.

Jess: I mean, I would definitely like to learn a little bit more before I make a total fool out of myself.

Ash: OK, let’s get out of these floaties. Can we get some help here, please? Hello? Can we have the
little safety orange ring thing? Thank you!

Jess: OK, it can be a little scary to talk to people in power about climate change, so to get our heads
around this little stagefright issue, Ash and I started a book club. Yep, one of the easiest ways to
get out of our floaties and get engaged. Reading, thinking and learning! So we’ve picked a book and
we’re inviting the authors into our ears to talk about some of our favorite parts. Ash, wanna kick us
off?

Ash: Yes. So I wanted to know how to get into these conversations without getting entirely bummed
out and bringing people all the way down. So I picked “Glimpses of Utopia” by Jess Scully. Jess has
had a really interesting career between the arts, media and politics. She’s currently the Deputy Lord
Mayor of Sydney and she happens to live around the corner from me. So I invited her around for tea.

Jess Scully: Thank you for inviting me into your beautiful horse stable! Oh look at this door!

Jess: In case that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to you, Ash lives in a tiny converted horse stable.
It’s very cute.

Ash: So I wanted to read this book because Jess has front row seats to this awesome future that’s
unfolding in pockets around the world every single day.

Jess Scully: I get these bursts of adrenaline when I hear from these people and meet these people
and I feel empowered and energised. And then I realised everyone else is super depressed because
they don’t get this – I need to bottle some of this lightning and put it in one place and share it. So
I wanted to give people a document that said this has been done before in hundreds of different
places around the world. Let’s pick and choose from this lolly bag of options.

Ash: So your book is basically a lolly bag of options for making the world a better place? I mean,
that sounds delicious.

Jess: It does sound delicious! Can you give me one of these lollies, Ash?

Ash: Oh, my gosh. Can I show you my fave one, it is so tasty. So one of the things that kind of blew
my mind in that it was so attainable and so impactful was the idea of this citizen’s jury.

Jess: Oh yeah, what’s that?

Ash: So there’s been like citizen’s assemblies over the world, sometimes just focused on climate. But the idea is that you get like a really random, broad group of people that represents the actual population, and then you get them all together, you give them all the information and then you see
what they actually want.

Jess Scully: So instead of having a parliament of people who are mostly wealthy white men with
law degrees from teams blue and red making decisions, you have a group that looks like the actual
population of the country taking the time to take all the information in and then coming to a set of
positions and recommendations.

Ash: And so in 2019, the City of Sydney ran a citizens jury. They asked people living in the council
area to tell them what they wanted from the city.

Jess Scully: So we received 2,500 ideas, submissions, pieces of input from citizens across the city,
from experts, from kids on postcards, you name it.

Ash: And then a group of 50 randomly selected Sydneysiders sat down over a few months and
they wrestled with all these ideas and they had the opportunity to interview those experts who then
wrote their own report.

Jess Scully: And and their recommendations were, I get goosebumps thinking about it, because
the first thing they told us was that we need to make a regenerative city, that we can’t just be
sustainable, but we have to go a step beyond that. We have to clean the air in the water. We have to
give back more than we take. And they put care for each other, affordability, creativity and nightlife.
All of these things were central to the vision as well as a process of truth telling and justice with
First Nations people. So the recommendations you get from a representative group of citizens who
have all the information is something quite different to what you’d get in the pub test if people are
just kind of like spouting off based on the last thing they heard on the radio.

Jess: Oh, Ash, this is so good.

Ash: I know. Look what happens when we get together and we actually have a platform and the
right information and the confidence to actually say what we want?

Jess Scully: Once regular people have all the information at their disposal and they have the ability
to ask questions and they’re empowered to make decisions, you get courageous climate action and
climate policy.

Jess: I just really love this story, Ash, because it’s like we really do want this future – this heaps
better future – and we’re not just like, you know, sometimes it just feels like you’re just one small
person just screaming into the void.

Ash: I know. And I was talking to Jess Scully about that feeling, like kind of how we feel small and
powerless a lot of the time in this, and what’s the point of even trying to talk to people in power?
And she said –

Jess Scully: That feeling that you have of being atomized and isolated and lacking direction or
purpose and disconnected from the place that you live in this world and feeling always tired and put
upon? That stuff is the system that we have today, that stuff isn’t just happening to you. Everybody
feels that and that’s the sign that the system doesn’t work for anybody but a tiny few people at the
top of the pyramid who are making plenty of bank out of it. And that’s why they want everything
that they want to keep this going exactly as it is. But every single one of us will do better, feel better,
be more joyful and more joyous in our lives if we change the system.

Jess: Right. So we really need to change the system… But we already knew that!

Ash: We’re just lacking the… confidence?

Jess: OK, let’s think of this big old faulty system that we’re living in as a big boat, the Titanic.
We’ve got the captain and the crew who are responsible for the safety of everyone on board – the
Australian government. Then there’s the people who built and powered the thing – the fossil fuel
industry and other big business interests. And they’re all eating together at the same First-Class
table to the tune of a string quartet that’ll play whatever music they get asked to.

Ash: OK, so the string quartet is the media?

Jess: Yeah, certain pockets of the media and it’s like they’re being conducted by some rich old
bloke in America. Then there’s us – 25 million-ish passengers. Now, this Titanic of ours is cruising,
but there’s been a few oversights. First, it’s powered by coal and it’s going to lose steam if it doesn’t
make some changes real quick.

Ash: Not to mention that the workers are getting a lot of smoke in their lungs

Jess: Second, there’s a giant iceberg of extreme weather events in our direct path. We’re all out on
deck with binoculars staring at this big iceberg and thinking it’s “Oh, is that what I think it is? That
does not look good.” The people running the joint are busy steaming up the windows of the car in
the hold with the fossil fuel lobby and the media are playing their love song. And us? We generally
trust that the staff know what they’re doing. So we’re strolling around, falling in love with Leo and
passively cruising toward… Well, we’ve all seen the film.

Ash: This boat is not designed to withstand giant icebergs!

Jess: But there could be an alternative ending to our story and that’s because we know that we
really need to go talk to the crew

Ash: OK Jess, I’m on board in every sense of the word. I would like to navigate us to a new system,
but how do we talk about climate change in a way that actually is going to make a difference?

Jess: Oh Ash, what a segue! Let me tell you about my book club book. It is literally called:

Rebecca Huntley: “How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference.”

Jess: And this is the person who wrote it.

Rebecca Huntley: Hi, I’m Rebecca Huntley. I’m a researcher and writer, broadcaster and mother of
three girls.

Jess: So Rebecca has spent years listening to what Australians think about a whole lot of stuff, but
particularly how they feel about climate change. Rebecca was feeling kind of bummed out after the
last election, feeling like all these people who say that they care about the planet didn’t actually vote
for the planet. So she wrote this book to help us out.

Rebecca Huntley: And it’s really about not shifting people’s belief in climate change, but shifting
people’s action.

Jess: In order to shift people into action Rebecca says we need to shake up who is doing all the
talking about climate change. Politicians would often say to her, yeah, sure, we hear all this research
that says that most Australians want action on climate change, but we never hear from the
greenies.

Rebecca Huntley: One of the really critically important challenges for the climate movement is
to diversify the people who talk about climate. People struggle to think about who are the most
effective climate change communicators and generally they think of them as scientists, politicians,
the occasional celebrity. You know, Leonardo DiCaprio takes some break from having sex with
supermodels to talk about climate change. Good on him. Actually, everybody should follow his
Instagram account because it’s very, very good. It’s fun making fun of Leo, you’ve got to take your
joys in climate change!

Jess: Look, I was a young Leo fan, but old Leo is doing some good stuff. Totally.

Ash: Jess? Jess… jess?

Jess: Ash! Sorry, I was suddenly a teenager again in Leo-land. Where were we?

Ash: Rebecca was just saying that we only ever hear from scientists or politicians or celebrities.

Jess: Oh, yeah.

Rebecca Huntley: In a sense you’re more powerful if you’re not an environmentalist. So one of the
most kind of interesting and inspiring kinds of developments are groups of people coming together,
whether they be focused around a hobby or a profession. So you’ve got professional groups like
particularly mental health nurses, midwives, accountants, architects, engineers coming together
saying, ‘there are genuine implications for how I do my job and my capacity to do my job and my
professional ethics and my professional life from climate change’.

Jess: So when politicians here from all walks of life, then there’s no option for them but to listen and
act. So all the farmers concerned about crops and cricket coaches worried about kids training in the
heat, people in the city, people in the country.

Ash: OK. But what do we actually say?

Jess: Everyone’s on board and so many Australians are concerned and alarmed, like let’s let’s do
something about it. But there’s some point where you go, “oh I’m just going to let the experts kind
of do their thing because I don’t know if I necessarily know how to speak about it so well or write
about it so well. These people know what they’re doing, so I’ll leave it to them.” That or “I just don’t
know if there’s any point.”

Rebecca Huntley: Yes. So it is good that people who are alarmed about climate change feel like
they want to understand the facts, but you don’t actually have to know that much about science
because the science is pretty basic. At a fundamental level, the world is heating up and the ice is
melting, but I would say to people like you who are concerned about climate change, you only have
to know enough of the science and you only have to know that 99% of all climate scientists believe
this is happening. What is more profound is for you to think about what does this mean to me and
people like me in my community?

Jess: What about all those auto-fill letters and petitions? Do they even make a difference? Does
anyone read them?

Ash: Our friends at Greenpeace told us that adding names to a list says, “yes, I back this message”
and it’s a big way that we can get involved and then stay updated in a campaign and we can raise
awareness around the issue. So I guess the thing with petitions and auto-filled letters and stuff like
that, it’s the first step and the first step is so important and easy.

Jess: Exactly. And all those prefilled letters. Well, yeah, you can just click and send or..

Ash: You can copy it into a personal email and you can use the information they’ve got there to
help craft your own message and customise it so you can, you know, sound a little bit expert yet
personal at the same time.

Jess: Whatever way we’re contacting them, as long as there are enough of us from all different
backgrounds, we can just say –

Rebecca Huntley: “These are the ways that we think that climate change is going to change the
community we love. We would like a meeting with you to sit down to talk about this issue.”
Jess: So you don’t have to say, that “this is what I think you should do?”

Rebecca Huntley: No you just say, “we would like to know what you’re doing.” Yeah, they might palm
you off to another staffer, but it’s very hard to palm off six or seven people who live in the area who
are all nurses or all parents. Just go and say, “what are you doing? What are you doing about this
question? What’s your policy?”

Jess: Is there any, like, things you definitely should not do once you go to write a letter or something
on social media?

Rebecca Huntley: I will tell you if you ever write to a politician, never, ever italicize, underline or put
something in caps. Having worked in many, many politicians’ offices, the moment people do that,
you just think crazy.

Jess: Really?

Rebecca Huntley: Absolutely.

Jess: OK, so writing that nice letter here and saying without any italics and underlines and saying I
am so frustrated!

Rebecca Huntley: Yeah. Do not say, “Dear Mr Bastad MP.”

Jess: Yeah I get that. I guess I would be more likely to listen to somebody if they weren’t berating
me for being useless and terrible at my job.

Ash: I asked Jess Scully how to speak to politicians because I mean she is one and her first piece of
advice was, she didn’t miss a beat, she was like –

Jess Scully: Acknowledge what they’ve done. Look at the work that they’ve done, the policies
they’ve had, the positions they’ve championed. Is there anything in there that you think is worthy
of praise or support? And often the results that we see in policy are the result of compromise and
negotiation and hard work. And maybe those people you’re sitting opposite or writing a letter to
have fought those battles. And this was the best they could get at the time. So acknowledge the
work that they’ve done and say, what you’ve done is so great the next step could be or building on
what you’ve done. Let’s try this.

Ash: I love this advice because it kind of applies to whoever we’re writing to, not just politicians, but
me writing to Commbank to tell them I’m switching banks.

Jess: Yeah. To those CEOs of big dirty business. So just do a bit of research, see where they stand,
acknowledge what they’ve done.

Ash: So we’re not calling them a bastard or spraying them with ALLCAPS! but I’m still really angry
about it!

Jess: Me too. Rebecca said, yeah, we can keep that anger.

Rebecca Huntley: Anger is important. Collective moments of anger and frustration are important,
but use anger like chilli, as a condiment rather than as a main ingredient. A little kick. And use it
strategically. Don’t use it on everything.

Jane Fonda (Firedrill Fridays): Are you angry? I hope you are frigging angry.

Ash: OK, so you might remember from our first episode I caught Jess wearing a leotard and
sweating to Jane Fonda. But not the aerobics VCR, to Firedrill Fridays.

Jane Fonda (Firedrill Fridays): We may be stuck at home now, but we’re not stopping.

Jess: So good. But anyway, we’re not actually going to be speaking to Jane here. We’re interested in
this person.

Annie Leonard: We can’t stop just because we’re not together. This is our chance to reimagine the
best our country can be.

Ash: This is Annie Leonard. She’s one of the other brains behind Firedrill Fridays. She’s the Executive
Director of Greenpeace USA and she runs this project called The Story of Stuff. She makes these
concepts that are so complex and big fun. And I love her.

Jess: Annie’s an incredible communicator, a strategic powerhouse. And she’s talking on a global
level to the influential who have influence over the influential, so we’re feeling pretty lucky to have an
hour of Annie Leonard’s time.

Annie Leonard: My kid just went off to college, so I’m like, that’s it, man, 24 hours a day. Let’s go.
We’re going to fight this climate crisis.

Jess: So we’re not about to suggest that we all fight this 24 hours a day. That is one that we can
leave to the professionals.

Ash: But now we’ve got into policy we’re wondering, can normal people like us even change policy?

Annie Leonard: So the question is, can normal people change policy? I will tell you that normal
people are the only thing that have ever changed policy for the better. It is certainly not elected
leaders. There is no case in the history of the world that I know about where an elected leader woke
up one day and said, “I’m going to do the thing that is best for people and the planet.” The reason
that they do that is because normal people get together and exercise our democratic rights. In fact,
abnormal people are the ones that want to continue funding fossil fuels and coal in this era where
there’s just such a dinosaur thing to do. So it’s everyday people. And if you think about it like we
have the technology, we have economic policies, we have the common sense, we have the science
that says it is an imperative. It’s not just a scientific imperative. It is a moral imperative. People are
going to die if we do not turn this around. So we have every single thing we need to do this except
one thing, and that is an engaged public movement demanding it.

Jess: So we’re fired up and very willing to be part of this engaged public movement, but we’ve come
to Annie for help because we are busy. We have jobs and lives, family commitments and all sorts of
things going on.

Ash: If we’re going to pick the most influential person on this big system ship who everyday people
like you and me are actually likely to have influence over, who should it be? The captain, the crew,
the band?

Annie Leonard: Well, first of all, I challenge you on your narrative. I think the influential people are
your listeners.

Ash: You get that? Here it is again.

Annie Leonard: I think the influential people are your listeners. The influential people are the
students and parents and teachers and artists and writers and engineers. Those are the influential
people. We have the power here. The way that we make real change is by coming together. That
is the key word here. By coming together, by building community, by building a movement. When
we come together, our power amplifies gets more and more and more. And it’s infinite. The more
people we bring in and the more we start exercising our activist muscles, the more power we have
to demand change activists muscles.

Jess: Activist muscles, I love that.

Ash: OK, let’s get buff. Where do we sign up?

Annie Leonard: The other side has bombarded us with this narrative about there’s nothing you can
do, there is no alternative. This is just the way it is. Your vote doesn’t count. And we have to say
“absolutely not!” It’s our country. It’s our government. We’re paying the bills. It’s our future. Take it
back!

Ash: Hang on, we’re paying for the things, like this is our tax money. We should be taking it back.

Jess: It’s like the very expensive tickets that we’ve paid for that faulty cruise.

Annie Leonard: And I often think about government. It’s like people built government to take us to
a better place, right? That’s the idea. And if you built a car to take you somewhere and a bunch of
fossil fuel company executives hijacked that car and started going in the opposite direction and
running over kittens and birds and bunnies and smashing into stuff, would you just say, “oh, man,
that car sucks?” Or would you say, “give me back my car?” That’s what we have to say about the
government. These fossil fuel lackeys have taken over the government. It is our government. It
is literally our money. It is our government. It is our future. Take it back! Why are we letting these
people control the reins of power here? There’s way more of us than them.

Ash: Annie, are you trying to radicalise us?

Annie Leonard: Sounds like you’re already there, or you’re getting there!

Jess: I am ready to get radical.

Ash: Great. I feel really hopeful, but I still want to hear from her. What is the number one thing – like
we’ve been asking everyone else – you know, what’s that big impactful thing that we can do?
Annie Leonard: So there’s literally thousands of things you can do, but there’s kinds of things that
goes across no matter what kind of activist you want to be that make a difference, and one is to
find a friend who wants to do this with you so you’re not alone. I can’t tell you how many people
write to me and say and I want to get involved, but I’m only one person and I say go get a friend, you
just doubled! Go! Like there are times when it’s depressing and it’s hard and you’re tired or you just
want to bounce an idea around. Get a buddy to do this with is really, really important.

Ash: OK, step up now, hold onto the railing, keep your eyes closed and not step up onto the rail, onto
the rail and hold on. Now open your eyes. Will you be my heaps better friend forever?

Jess: Ash! Is that a pinkie promise? I love it.

Ash: I saw you wandering around on the deck all by yourself, sailing into this crap future alone. And
I thought, you need heaps better, friend.

Jess: I’m flying! Another reason not to do all this alone, and we don’t really need to say it, but 2020
was huge. From the worst bushfires that we had on record to a pandemic that kept us indoors and
totally changed the way that we’re able to protest and gather publicly.

Ash: In spite of all this, what’s so interesting is that we’ve still had a massive global uprising to
tackle systemic racism in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. And we’ve also had the
most people voting in the U.S. ever in history. So we wanted to know from Annie’s perspective what
collective action looks like in the post 2020 world?

Annie Leonard: This has been obviously an incredibly painful and challenging year, but for me,
it’s also a very hopeful year because I really do feel that we are truly on the cusp of this great
awakening. We don’t have the luxury to solve one crisis at a time, and so we have to solve them
together. And so this has brought together people working on immigration, on racial justice, on
women’s rights, on economic justice, on climate, all these issues together. And what we found
when we all came together is that the solutions to one of these, if we do it right, is a solution to all
of them. And we are so much stronger and smarter as a movement now because we’re not siloed
in our individual lanes just seeing part of the problem. And right now in the post-COVID moment is
the perfect moment for these politicians to change. They are going to be spending billions of dollars
in post covid economic stimulus. They can use that money to invest in that safer, resilient, climate
sensitive, more equitable future, like they can put Australia on a path that would be beautiful and
fair and just and healthy. Or they can prop up these dying industries that are literally killing us. Like
this is the moment.

Ash: There’s an alternative ending to our Titanic story, and we’re pretty determined to have it.

Jess: I hate the original ending.

Ash: Let’s rewrite it right now. We’re all in the same boat heading for trouble. The system is
changing, but not fast enough. And we can all make it change faster because thankfully, all of us
onboard the ship have hands and we can grab one of the tiny 25 million oars.

Jess: Maybe your oar is your ability to call your local MP for community Zoom meeting or make a
podcast.

Ash: Yeah, all everyday people influencing everyday people to make massive change.

Annie Leonard: I read just today that 90% of people in Australia want stronger action on climate,
90%! Like, go, get going, go!

Ash: Those are really good numbers! So action number one, go get yourself a buddy, send a text,
got a coffee, whatever floats your boat.

Jess: Doing all this climate action stuff with a friend or group of friends is so much more fun to
trust us. And you can kind of hold each other accountable in a really loving way.

Ash: And then do you have a dream? Build a team! We’ve heard and we’ve had so many ideas while
we’ve been making this podcast. And maybe you’ve now got an idea for kick starting a community
solar project or getting your local council to start a citizens jury like the City of Sydney story Jess
Scully told us about.

Jess: And finally, literally the easiest thing of all to do, just join an existing movement like
Greenpeace or Seed or 350.org or Knitting Nannas Against Gas.

Ash: One of the things I kind of didn’t realise before getting into this is that Greenpeace is
completely independent. Greenpeace doesn’t accept money from corporations or the government.
It is entirely funded by people who give a damn. And if you give a damn, maybe you want to join
their ranks. It’s as easy as subscribing to their mailing list. You can go to Greenpeace.org.au/
heapsbetter.

Jess: On that website you’ll also find a step by step action plan to make everything that we’ve
talked about in this podcast super easy for you to do at home with your mates. You can get there
via the show notes. And please share this podcast if you liked it, if you learn something and mostly
if you don’t have time to tell all your friends what you learned, just send us their way.

Ash: And give us a nice review, please! It matters because algorithms and stuff.

Jess: We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the land this podcast
was made on and their enduring legacy of sustainability and caring for Country. Heaps Better is
a podcast made by us, Jess Hamilton and Ash Berdebes with Greenpeace Australia Pacific and
Audiocraft. The mixing engineer is Adam Connelly, our brilliant EP and friend is Kate Montague. And
the Creative Lead at Greenpeace is Ella Colley. Our cute little podcast artwork is by Lotte Alexis, and
this series also featured some original music by H.C. Clifford.

Ash: A big thanks also to Liv and the entire Greenpeace team who got behind this project and
worked their butts off. Thank you so much for doing this with us. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast,
please consider donating to Greenpeace so they can make more content like this. There’s a donate
link on the Heaps Better web page.

Jess: Thank you to Rebecca Huntley and Jess Scully, and to Joe Moeono-Kolio and Fenton
Lutunatabua, who gave us so much of their time and stories and words and wisdom, so much more
than we could possibly fit into this little podcast. And to all the writers and activists and analysts
and artists and everyone chipping away every day to bring on the renewable revolution.

Ash: And thank you so much for coming with us. We know that together we are heaps better.

“This poll clearly shows that the overwhelming majority of Australians want businesses and corporations to step up and take action on climate change,” said Lindsay Soutar, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Almost 70% of respondents said they would prefer to work for a company that was using renewable energy, reflecting recent research from Edelman that found high levels of employee expectation that prospective employers will join them in taking action on societal issues (67%).

“The biggest driver of climate change in Australia is coal, which is still burned to make a large amount of our electricity. As some of Australia’s biggest users of electricity, businesses and corporations have an obligation to clean up their act and make the move to 100% renewable energy,” said Soutar.

Many large-scale businesses operating in Australia have already committed to using 100% renewable energy to power their operations, including Carlton & United Breweries, Mars, IKEA, Westpac, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ, Bank Australia, Apple, Google, Macquarie Bank, ING Bank, Citibank, Microsoft, L’Oreal and Unilever.

“With bushfires raging across the country, AGM season in full swing, and increasing pressure on big businesses to clean up their act in light of the climate crisis, this is an important point of reflection for executives and board members.”

“When it comes to climate change, companies can go from being a big part of the problem to being a big part of the solution. In Australia and overseas, many companies are already leading the way and proving that 100% renewable is 100% doable.”

For more information or interviews, please contact Communications Manager Nelli Stevenson on 0428 113 346 or email nelli.stevenson@greenpeace.org

One company, Energy Transfer Pipelines, the company behind the notorious Dakota Access Pipelines, is responsible for hundreds of polluting spills and explosions that are a routine part of tar sands transport. On average, pipelines spilt an average of 34,000 litres of hazardous chemicals every single day in the United States. As we know, there is no safe way to transport oil.

ETP is suing Greenpeace and others for our advocacy alongside the community, which is being led by Indigenous People. One hundred and fifty First Nations groups have joined together in opposition to these pipelines. But ETP’s CEO, Kelcy Warren, has nothing but contempt for the communities in which the company operates, famously declaring that their opponents should be “removed from the gene pool”.

ETP is joined by Enbridge as well as the Trans Mountain project, formerly owned by Kinder Morgan before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nationalised the pipeline in order to push it through. That move stands in stark contrast to his “golden boy” image on climate change.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists have installed a life-sized pipeline in the Sydney headquarters of multinational lender Citigroup. (Greenpeace/James Alcock)

As in Australia, toxic pipelines are located in Indigenous and low-income communities, where they poison the water supply and traumatise local people. They are a perfect example of environmental racism, where particularly polluting projects are located next to communities of colour. If extracted and burnt, the tar sands these pipelines carry will use up 15 percent of the world’s available carbon budget if we are to keep warming well below two degrees.

Nevertheless, the projects can’t go ahead without support from banks like Citibank, who are one of the “dirty dozen” banks associated with the pipelines. Citibank appears not to mind being a climate villain, and they are the largest Australian funder of climate change among retail banks after the Big Four. But in the same way as we have managed to get the Commonwealth Bank to rule out new coal projects, we can get Citibank and the other twelve banks to rule out toxic oil pipelines.

So far, over 350,000 people globally have joined the call to demand banks rule out tar sands pipelines. They join the 10,000 people who have joined First Nations leaders in mobilising in the streets in opposition to the projects. A global wave of resistance is sweeping around the world, with protests outside bank branches who have not made their position on the deadly projects clear, and a creative human oil spill in Fiji. Early indications suggest the pressure may be starting to work.

As usual, it will be up to people to lead the way on defending the only home we have ever known. The ball is now firmly in Citibank’s court to tell us where it stands.

Sign the petition to #StopPipelines >> act.gp/no-pipelines

By Greenpeace Australia Pacific Campaigner Jonathan Moylan

2018 is far from over, but what a year it has already been! Thanks to the actions of millions of volunteers, supporters and donors, Greenpeace and our allies have been able to expose environmental threats and make progress toward their solutions all around the world.

Let’s take a look at some of the successes we’ve had in recent months… 

1. Samsung Electronics – Commitment to 100% renewables (June 2018)

© Stephanie Keith / Greenpeace

Since December 2017, activists have been calling on Samsung to “Stop Fuelling Climate Change”, challenging the tech giant to take immediate action and publicly commit to 100% renewables. Come June 2018, these demands were heard, and the company committed to 100% renewables in its operations in the United States, Europe, and China by the year 2020.

In other words, the collective voice of everyday people was able to bring about significant change in a prominent and impactful tech company. Not only does this ensure a cleaner future for Samsung, but the victory also sets a precedent for other worldwide companies to consider and implement more progressive environmental policies. Read more about the full details of Samsung’s commitments to a greener future here.

2. Statoil rebrands to form Equinor (May 2018)

© Jo-Anna Robinson / Greenpeace

Did you ever imagine that your support for Greenpeace could contribute to the rebranding of a massive fossil fuel company? Think again: this was exactly the case for the formerly known company, Statoil (now Equinor), in a likely attempt to dissociate themselves from the harmful practices and dangerous consequences of oil drilling. The company can take the oil out of their name, but it will be much trickier to take the oil out of an impending, likely spill that could result from drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

This is an example of how people power can expose a company and their unacceptable environmental practices. We know that combining oil drilling and pristine natural environment is a recipe for irreversible destruction. We’re not fooled by Statoil changing their name, we still know what they stand for.

With Equinor still circling the Bight, our #FightfortheBight campaign is far from over. Our crew are continuing to pressure the Government to protect the Great Australian Bight and fight for local communities and the health of a unique marine environment.

3. Coles and Woolies Pledge to Reduce Ridiculous Plastic Packaging on Fresh Produce (June 2018)

Greenpeace Melbourne Local Group volunteers at their Plastic Day of Action. Photo by Isobel Hutton.

Our oceans, coastlines, and beaches are prized and scenic, but they are also at great risk of harmful plastic pollution. A truckload of plastic waste enters the ocean every single minute. What’s worse is the single use plastic conundrum isn’t easing up: if anything, more plastic is being produced than ever before, entering the environment as pollution.

We’ve been tirelessly campaigning against single-use plastics on produce packaging in Coles and Woolies grocery stores. This year, our volunteers, supporters and activists called out these companies and demanded change through petition signing, online campaigning and Plastic Days of Action around the country.

And our voices were heard! Just a few weeks ago, both chains released announcements that they would begin trialling reduced use of excessive single-use packaging from fruits and veggies.

This is a huge step in the right direction, but we want to make sure these aren’t just empty promises. So we’re keeping pressure on the supermarkets by keeping our plastic campaign very much alive and ready to hold these businesses to their commitments. We expect substantial, visible change in the grocery aisles in the near future.

4. Coles and Woolworths Ban the Bag (June 2018)

© David Kawai / Greenpeace

Continuing with the attack on single-use plastics, Woolies and Coles, along with some other chain stores in Australia, have listened to the call of thousands of Australians to ban the bag. Plastic bags are a large source of plastic pollution, and they are not by any means in short supply: Australians use around 4 billion plastic bags every year – that’s a whopping 10 million or so each day.

Unfortunately there are still are plastic options in stores, such as reinforced, heavy duty bags available for an additional price. Step by step we’re making progress, but there’s still a long way to go. They say change is a marathon, not a sprint!

5. Charities Get an Exemption from the FITS Bill (June 2018)

Wait, the what Bill?

FITS stands for Foreign influence and Transparency Scheme. This proposed law would establish a new global register, where anyone engaging in activities in Australia aimed at “influencing politics” that is acting on behalf of foreign individuals or entities would have to sign up or face hefty penalties. Seems legit, but the devil is in the details.

Most charities and not-for-profits that receive any kind of support or donation from outside Australia (with an exemption for “humanitarian aid” groups) would have to register in the Scheme. Greenpeace Australia Pacific is part of a global organisation–we support and are supported by a family of Greenpeace offices around the world. We would, therefore, need to register and face a huge, unnecessary increase in administrative burden.

Greenpeace and allies have been campaigning against the FITS Bill and two other equally scary bills which pose a threat to democracy and our work protecting the environment. Our crew of supporters have been activating this critical campaign, sending thousands of emails and making calls to key politicians. 

In response to lobbying from key groups and an onslaught of public pressure, charities have now received an exemption from the FITS bill. If you’ve ever felt that you couldn’t influence decisions that happen in Parliament, this is proof that your voice can be heard.

Unfortunately, our work defending democracy is far from over, as the remaining two toxic bills pose very serious threats to the work of advocacy organisations like Greenpeace, and our civil society as a whole here in Australia. Want to take action to defend democracy? You can do so here.

6. Activist Interruption of Total Oil Company’s Annual General Meeting (June 2018)

© Guenole LE GAL / Greenpeace

How do you get the attention of the fossil fuel industry and spectators from around the world? Plan and execute a bad-ass protest stunt at a Big Oil AGM, that’s how.

This month, oil giant Total’s annual general meeting was disrupted by more than 250 activists from Greenpeace and ANV-COP21. The action peacefully, yet powerfully, protested Total’s plans to drill near the Amazon Reef off the coast of Brazil. The activists hailed from 10 different countries and are backed by over two million signatories to a global petition to stop dangerous oil drilling in the area. Several climbers deployed banners from the ceiling, saying “Save the Amazon Reef” in several languages.

Actions such as these show the power in uniting under a single cause. Activists who support and spread the message of Greenpeace create a global community of progressive environmental thinking and foster an environment of genuine care for the world. This collaboration forms a strong foundation in which all our efforts build upon.

Catch the power and beauty of collective action on video here. 

7. The campaign to stop the Adani Mega-Mine (February 2018)

© Greenpeace / Abram Powell

The campaign to stop Adani’s Carmichael mega-mine is one of the most powerful movements to stop coal in Australia’s history. 

Greenpeace, alongside an alliance of allies, are helping to slowly dismantle the feasibility of the Adani mine, beginning in 2017 with CommBank breaking financial ties with the evolving project. We continue to make progress, and in February of this year rail operator Aurizon said that it had withdrawn its loan application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility after failing to secure contracts with proposed coal mines in the region. Aurizon joined CommBank as they walked away from the project bound to cause harm for years to come.

The Adani story is one of people standing up for what they believe in. People power has blocked the progression of the mine, and with your support people power will help to block it all together.

8. New Zealand Oil Exploration Ban (April 2018)

Photo credit: Greenpeace New Zealand

This one was huge! Earlier this year, New Zealand’s government banned all new offshore oil and gas exploration, representing a historic climate win. The ban has come after seven years of growing public protests around the country, which has sent a powerful message to the fossil fuel industry: the New Zealand public, including Indigenous communities, do not want risky oil exploration in their backyard. 

Over the past seven years, hundreds of thousands of people have marched, petitioned, and blockaded in opposition to oil exploration. There is certainly strength in numbers, and New Zealand has constructed perfect blueprints for other countries to follow suit. Watch New Zealand make a historic stand to Big Oil here. 

People power is bringing down the age of oil, but there are still critical battlefronts yet to be won. For example, the one happening right here in Australia’s pristine Great Australian Bight. 

What’s Next?

© Malcolm Pullman / Greenpeace

There’s still a mountain of vital work to be done, but luckily, we don’t give-up easily. With the help of our crew, we will continue to expose environmental abuses by carrying out non-violent actions to raise awareness of our need for protect our oceans, forests, water supplies and our climate.

Did you know that Greenpeace is 100% supporter-funded? This allows us to make independent decisions and take action on campaigns that are most critical. Financial independence keeps us true to the people and the causes that we serve. It also means we rely 100% on individual supporters like you to fund our work.

The Canadian Finance Minister, under pressure from Kinder Morgan, announced that the federal government had reached an agreement with the company to purchase the existing Trans Mountain pipeline and infrastructure related to the Trans Mountain Expansion Project for $4.5 billion with the hope of selling it on to a new owner or owners.

Pipeline companies want to build three new oil pipelines from Canada’s tar sands to the west coast and down through the midwestern United States. The furthest along, and most urgent threat, is the Trans Mountain Expansion running from Alberta to Vancouver/B.C.  The other two pipelines are Enbridge’s Line 3 and TransCanada’s Keystone XL which are still in the planning stages.

If these pipelines are built they will cause climate chaos everywhere by locking in incredibly polluting tar sand production past 2060, using over 15% of the world’s entire carbon budget.

So whilst Trudeau dines out on his reputation as a climate golden boy, his decision is in stark contrast to his supposed climate credentials and his commitment to Indigenous rights.

This is the latest in a series of desperate moves from the Trudeau to keep this flailing project alive in the face of mounting resistance. An Indigenous-led movement in Canada, the local provincial government in British Columbia and thousands of people around the world have all been taking action to show that this pipeline will cause untold damage – to people, the climate and wildlife.

All three pipelines threaten to cause untold damage to people, nature and the climate so here at Greenpeace we have been working on tar sands for many years in many different ways – and now we are building our campaign to support Indigenous Peoples, Greenpeace and the many others who will stop this pipeline from happening.

And here’s where you come in.  For pipelines to be built they need funding from banks. Citibank is one of the Dirty Dozen banks who have failed to rule out funding this destructive pipeline.

By funding these pipelines, Citibank would actively impact Indigenous communities, threaten natural water sources, endanger wildlife in Canada and accelerate climate change everywhere.

Over the next few months, we are all together going to be sending Citibank a strong, clear message – no new funding for tar sands pipelines.

Change is possible.  On the same day that Trudeau made this decision, the Royal Bank of Scotland became the latest global bank to scale back financing for tar sands projects – following the lead of both BNP Paribas and HSBC.

Kinder Morgan ran away in the face of an Indigenous-led movement of people against oil pipelines. These communities have already put one pipeline company on notice – now it’s time to topple the rest.

Sign the petition to stop the trans mountain oil pipeline!

But in recent times, in Australia at least, we have seen an active move from banks to lower their investments in these kinds of projects. And while we all wish that meant these coal mines couldn’t go ahead, there are other options for funding out there.

When private banks refuse to invest in certain projects (again, think Adani’s Carmichael coal mine), Export Credit and Investment Agencies (ECAs), step in to help finance them. The Minister for Trade, Tourism, and Investment, Steven Ciobo, is responsible for Australia’s official ECA – the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (Efic). Efic was founded using public money. AKA taxpayer money. AKA your money. And they are dodgy.

Our friends at the Australian Conservation Foundation released a report last year which outlined Efic’s dodgy dealings. They found numerous links to the fossil fuel industry, including Adani. They also found that over a period of eleven years, for every $1 Efic spent on renewable energy projects, they spent $100 on fossil fuel projects. The mandate of Efic’s funding was originally to support small to medium enterprises (SMEs). A quick look at Efic’s annual report shows that the kinds of projects they supported in 2016-2017 couldn’t be considered small to medium. Not by a long shot.

So how has it been happening? Well, in a recent statement, Ciobo created a kind of loophole to extend Efic’s mandate. He stated that “the Government recognises that large projects or firms can help SMEs access markets through supply-chain participation”, and will therefore support these large projects through Efic. It almost sounded like Ciobo was paving the way for large projects (*cough cough Adani cough cough*) to be offered funding through Efic. So on Thursday night, although it was no surprise, it was disturbing to hear Efic general counsel John Hopkins confirm that Efic has supported entities that are part of Adani’s supply-chain. It is still unclear if Adani will apply for Efic funding directly, but Efic has not ruled it out, and has had discussions with Adani as recently as mid-February.

But wait, it gets even worse. Most of the loans from Efic are counted towards what they call their Commercial Account. But the one to be really concerned about is the other Efic account called the National Interest Account. This is where they put loans that are too risky and too large to include on the Commercial Account. And the process for writing loans on this account? Surely a rigorous environmental and social risk evaluation? Nope. Just the discretion of one man. A simple green light from Mr. Ciobo.

This has always been a dodgy set up, but last month, the government announced that they will be injecting $3.8 billion into the National Interest Account (which is 77 times more than the entire amount spent last year). The main purpose of this huge increase? To fund arms manufacturers to support the government’s new goal to make Australia a top ten global defence exporter by 2028. Remember when we ran a poll last year where 73% of you told us you want Australia to join a ban on nuclear weapons? The government has decided to disregard that completely and has instead created a scheme that would move us in the opposite direction to peace.

Fossil fuels and guns. What a combo. Especially when you add in the secrecy of the Act that legislates Efic’s processes and procedures. Parts 4 and 5 of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Act 1991 are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act), meaning that everything they do in areas governing insurance and financial services and products, and anything covering National Interest transactions (the dodgy ones that only need Ciobo’s approval to go ahead), does not need to be publicly disclosed. Taxpayer money funded Efic, and any losses on any of Efic’s transactions will need to be reimbursed by the Commonwealth (in the form of taxpayer money), so to restrict public information of this nature is concerning to say the least.

Worse still, they have used the broad exemption in the FOI Act to argue that they shouldn’t even have to disclose their policy on climate change-related risk. Last year, Greenpeace Australia Pacific filed an FOI request with Efic asking for any documents that would indicate how they evaluate projects (e.g. the Adani Carmichael Coal Mine) that are at risk of becoming stranded assets as the world moves away from fossil fuels. Efic acknowledged that they had a policy, but refused to publish it, even though they post other policies on their website. We have challenged this decision with the Office of the Information Commissioner, but this is a slow process and we aren’t optimistic about the outcome.

So here we have a government body that relies on our taxpayer money, invests in risky, potential stranded assets within climate and humanity destroying industries, and doesn’t even disclose the details of how they evaluate projects (sounds a lot like our friends over at the NAIF). Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has emphatically ruled out public money for Adani from organisations like Efic, although he has stopped short of saying that he would revoke the mine’s approval. Regardless, we deserve a government that truly understands what is in the national interest, rather than the interest of corporations that would see Australia funding warfare and climate wrecking projects. Over to you Malcolm Turnbull. Will you also rule out public money for Adani?

National Australia Bank today issued their latest risk appetite statement which prohibits the funding of any new thermal coal mines.

“This is a market-leading position for an Australian bank and is even stronger than the position taken by Commonwealth Bank last month because it is formal policy,” Greenpeace campaigner Jonathan Moylan said.

“All over the world financial institutions are turning their backs on coal after realising its contribution to climate change and the damage it does to the health of communities and the planet.”

Moylan said the announcement shows Australian banks were now joining other world financial institutions who are moving to abandon the most polluting of all fossil fuels, with ING promising this week to phase out coal within a decade and commiting to stop funding any utility company which relies on coal for more than 5 percent of its energy.

The World Bank also announced it will “no longer finance upstream oil and gas, after 2019″ in an effort to be consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C.

“NAB’s decision to abandon coal shows Australian banks realise they cannot continue to ignore the very real damage every mine and every coal-fired power plant is doing to the health of the communities that surround them, and the contribution their fossil fuel financing makes to climate change,” Moylan said.

“It’s time for ANZ and Westpac to do the same and rule out investing in new coal projects.”

For interviews contact:

Simon Black

Greenpeace Australia Pacific Senior Media Campaigner

0418 219 086 / simon.black@greenpeace.org

ING Bank is a Dutch finance giant with branches all over the world, with 37 million customers in over 40 countries.

Over the years you have relentlessly confronted ING and other investors on their financing of polluting fossil fuel projects. These efforts are increasingly paying off as more and more investors quit dirty energy.

Last March, ING announced that they were pulling out their investment in the Dakota Access Pipeline and becoming an advocate for the protection of Indigenous rights. Later on in June, they also took a clear stand against tar sands pipelines.

Following that announcement, the World Bank announced that as of 2019 it will no longer finance oil and gas drilling at all. This came hot on the heels of a letter from the world’s leading economists calling for an end to all new fossil fuel finance.

And if that news couldn’t get any better, French financial services giant AXA announced it would end over three billion euros in coal and tar sands investments using the Global Coal Exit list.

What happened today is huge. But we now need to make sure that other banks, investors and businesses follow these banks’ leads and take action for our climate. In Australia, you got the Commonwealth Bank to rule out new coal projects, and took action so that Westpac would also rule out funding new coal basins. But all four big Australian banks still lag far behind what they need to do to seriously tackle climate change.

People power is what made today’s victory happen. With thousands of you rising up for a clean future, financial giants are finally listening to us.

Now let’s make sure that the whole world goes in the same direction!

These wins are only made possible by a powerful people-powered movement which is completely independent of governments and corporations. If we all chip in we can keep shifting the world’s mightiest polluters to power the world with the energy of the wind, the sun and the waves.