Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of critical minerals including lithium, cobalt and manganese, with a significant role to play in the transition to a fossil-fuel-free and renewable-powered future. 

With this prominence comes important questions about the role critical minerals have in shaping the country’s sustainable path. As global demand for critical minerals continues to rise, it’s important that we approach mineral extraction, processing, use, reuse and recycling and disposal with care and responsibility.

The following blog explores the role of critical minerals mining in Australia’s clean energy transition and highlights some key principles to guide us to minimise potential social and environmental impacts.

Why are critical minerals important?

Critical minerals are essential for manufacturing various technologies that are integral to our modern world, including mobile phones, computers, banknotes, fibre-optic cables and medical equipment. These minerals are also instrumental in Australia’s transition towards clean energy, powering rechargeable batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels.

As nations unite under the landmark Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, the commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is paramount for protecting our climate, nature and humanity. By harnessing critical minerals, Australia can play its part in helping our country and the world break free from reliance on climate-destroying fossil fuels.

What role does Australia play?

Australia plays a pivotal role in the global landscape of critical minerals, as the world’s largest exporter of lithium and the third-largest producer of cobalt. Additionally, the country 

produces other vital rare earth elements such as manganese, nickel and copper, as highlighted in S&P Global’s 2021 Mining By The Numbers report.

This means Australia has the potential to contribute to the climate change fight by becoming a leading exporter of materials, cutting-edge technology and valuable expertise. By harnessing these resources, the country can create a thriving clean energy industry and generate new trade and job opportunities. However, this means Australia also has a critical responsibility to ensure that the mining, processing and manufacturing of critical minerals is carried out in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.

Does clean energy mean less mining? 

The short answer is yes, a clean energy future can reduce the scale and volume of mining overall.

Various studies, including the International Energy Agency’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2023 report have indicated that transitioning to a renewable energy-based economy will involve less mining and processing compared to one that is fossil fuel-based.

While fossil fuels are dug up, transported around the world, and burnt once to create energy, critical minerals can be re-used and then recycled multiple times.  

To put it in perspective, approximately 15 billion tonnes of fossil fuels are currently mined and extracted each year. In contrast, the global mining of critical minerals for low-carbon energy amounted to seven million tonnes in 2020. While this amount could increase to 28 million tonnes per year according to the International Energy Agency, that equates to about 535 times less mining than under the current fossil fuelled system.  

By transitioning from fossil fuel-powered energy to an all-renewable electric energy system, we have the potential to drastically reduce the need for extensive mining activities, contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future.

Can we reduce the environmental and social impact?

The reality though is all mining activity can have significant negative environmental and social impacts. 

To minimise these impacts, it’s crucial to reduce the overall amount of materials extracted, prioritise their use for climate solutions, maximise the utilisation of recycled materials, and ensure protection of the environment and human rights in the process.

The following guidelines outline ways in which Australia and the world must approach the use of critical minerals more responsibly:

1. Protect the rights of First Nations people

The rights of indigenous people, local communities, and the social wellbeing of workers are vital.

Securing the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations peoples before undertaking any mining activities is essential and project proponents must ensure that the benefits are shared with traditional landowners.

2. Protect biodiversity and climate hotspots

We must not repeat the same extractive model that has contributed to climate change. 

Extraction should be limited to areas far away from biodiversity and climate hotspots such as High Conservation Value areas (HCVs), primary forest and Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL), High Carbon Stock forests (HCS), critical natural wetlands, including peatlands, grassland and shrubland ecosystems, and deep sea areas. 

3. Say no to deep sea mining

Deep sea mining has no place in our oceans. The urgent implementation of a global moratorium on deep sea mining is crucial to conserve and protect our marine ecosystems.

Greenpeace has called on vehicle manufacturers to cease sourcing minerals from deep sea mining, and companies such as BMW, Volvo, Volkswagen, Renault and Rivian have already committed to this.  

4. Adopt circular economy principles

Embracing the reuse and recycling of materials can reduce the environmental impacts of mining and extend the life cycle of materials. 

While fossil fuels are burnt once, major battery inputs like lithium and copper can be recycled multiple times. By 2040, recycled materials have the potential to supply over half of the essential elements for new batteries, even with growing battery demand. Large companies with high use rates of minerals, such as electric car company Polestar, have declared their intention to transition to a closed-loop system. This approach must be scaled and accelerated.

5. Invest in innovative technologies

Governments and corporations must support research and development in, and adoption of,   more efficient battery technology that reduces dependence on mined minerals. 

Battery technology is already improving quickly – wind turbine and electric vehicle manufacturers have been successful in reducing the mineral content of their products year on year. According to WWF’s The Future Is Circular report, the rapid evolution of the sector is likely to lead to a significant reduction in the need for minerals per unit manufactured.

6. Reduce the demand for critical minerals

The world after a successful clean energy transition will not resemble the world we know today.

Significant reductions in the demand for critical minerals can be achieved through societal and policy changes. For example, instead of a one-for-one replacement of internal combustion engines with electric vehicles, we must focus on having fewer cars on the road by investing in affordable and accessible public transport, improving micro-mobility infrastructure, and changing societal expectations to include more shared journeys.

Greenpeace aims to foster an informed dialogue around the responsible use of critical minerals. Join us as we embark on this journey to build a cleaner, greener future for Australia and the world.

Rankings headlines

Greenpeace’s 2023 Electrify Fleets Rankings reveals:

• IKEA topped the list, scoring 9.5 out of 10, while the podium was completed by Bank Australia with a score of  7.5 and Westpac with a score of 6.5
• Bank Australia received an honourable mention for not only its commitments to fleet electrification but also ruling out lending for fossil fuel vehicles
• Major supermarkets have a lot of catching up to do, with Woolworths scoring 3 out of 10 and Coles scoring 2.5 out of 10
• Rental car company Avis took out the wooden spoon, with a score of 0.0, with Aldi, Officeworks, JB Hi-Fi, Myer, and David Jones rounding out the bottom of the pack 
• The national average score of companies ranked was only 3 out of 10, showing Australian companies really need to hit the accelerator on cleaning up transport emissions

Alongside the rankings, Greenpeace Australia Pacific today released a new report, Charging Corporate Action: The Case for Renewable-Powered Electric Vehicle Fleets, which shows that by 2025 electric vehicles will soon be the cheaper option for corporate fleet managers when acquiring and operating new vehicles.

Report findings

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s new report, Charging Corporate Action: The Case for Renewable-Powered Electric Vehicle Fleets, shows: 

• Fleets make up more than 40% of new car sales each year, with approximately 450,000 purchased for business, government and rental fleets annually. 
• Switching to renewable-powered electric cars, utes and vans in corporate fleets could reduce annual climate pollution from cars by up to 10% and light commercial vehicles by up to 30% according to estimates based on the market share of corporate fleets. 
• This will help make a wider range of more affordable electric cars accessible to more Australians sooner, given that fleet vehicles typically move quickly into the second-hand car market. 
• In more developed international markets, electric vehicle uptake has followed a sharp adoption curve that picks up rapidly after hitting 10% of new car sales. As fleets are responsible for over 40% of new car sales each year, businesses have a key role to play in hitting the tipping point of 10% of new vehicle sales to accelerate electric vehicle adoption in Australia. 
• By 2025, the total cost of ownership gap for medium passenger vehicles falls below zero for all utilisation bands.

Quotes

Greenpeace Australia Pacific Senior Campaigner Violette Snow said the rankings and report demonstrated the business and environment case for renewable energy-powered fleets, and shone a light on the uneven progress made by organisations in Australia.

“Transport is the third largest and fastest-growing source of climate pollution. The companies which operate corporate fleets in Australia can play an outsized role in tackling this present and growing threat to the climate, while benefiting their own bottom line.

“Many companies are already seeing the commercial benefits of switching to electric fleets, and by 2025 electric vehicles will be the cheaper option for all passenger vehicles, and in almost all use cases. Switching could also reduce annual climate pollution from cars by up to 10% and light commercial vehicles by up to 30%. 

“Customers, employees, and investors are all crying out for companies to show leadership on tackling climate change. It’s time for Australian corporates to get into the fast lane on fleet transition.

“The Electrify Fleets Rankings shows who is making the right choice today. IKEA stands out for its leadership, setting an example of other organisations around Australia. By committing to 100% renewable electricity by 2025, to electrify all cars and vans including a target for zero-emissions last mile delivery by 2025, and to zero-emission electric trucks by 2040, the company is showing what is both possible and right.

“At the other end of the spectrum, Avis, Officeworks, JB Hi-Fi, Myer, and David Jones are now on the record as being stuck in first gear. Major supermarkets Coles and Woolworths also have a lot of work to do. We hope this serves as a starting gun for these companies to hit the accelerator on greening their car and trucking fleets.”

IKEA Australia CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer Mirja Viinanen said:

“Customers have increasing expectations for the retail sector to reduce the environmental impact of its delivery services, and at IKEA Australia we are leading the way by accelerating the integration of electric vehicles into our delivery fleet. We’ve so proud of the progress we have made with our delivery partners so far, and there is much more to do as we journey towards a zero emissions future.”

Bank Australia Head of Impact Jane Kern said:

“Bank Australia’s commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2035 places us as the most ambitious bank in the country. Transitioning transport, including our own fleet, away from fossil fuels to electric vehicles will be a key part of achieving this target.

“We’ve chosen 2025 to cease funding car loans for new fossil fuel vehicles because the change to electric vehicles needs to happen quickly. We believe it can with the right supporting policies in place to bring a greater range of more affordable electric vehicles to Australia.

“Our customers tell us taking action on climate change is a top priority and we think decisive leadership from businesses and government can help catalyse the action our customers and the wider community want to see.”

Ricky Spencer, EV owner and dad of two from the Blue Mountains, said: 

“As a consumer, knowing a company’s commitment to renewables and achieving net zero is important to me because I believe in being environmentally responsible and supporting companies that share my values. 

“Companies that prioritise sustainability are not only making a positive impact on the environment, but are also positioning themselves as leaders in their industry and demonstrating their commitment to creating a better future for all.

“I’m doing my part to clean up transport emissions by switching to an electric vehicle. I expect the brands I use and buy from to do the same.”

About the Rankings

The Electrify Fleets Rankings is based on an analysis of a range of measures, including commitments to electrify passenger, light commercial and trucking, powering them with renewable energy, progress on a commitment to 100% renewable energy, advocacy behaviours, education and incentive programs to promote electric vehicles and associated supportive policies, and commitments to installing electric vehicle infrastructure for staff and customers. 

—ENDS—

Temperatures in the Pilbara, in the north of Western Australia, soared to a record-breaking 50.7˚C earlier this month. Since then, Woodside and their CEO Meg O’Neill have been ruffling together the financiers and construction partners to begin work on Scarborough: a deep sea gas drilling project that would pump gas back to those same shores, and create more climate pollution than any other Australian fossil fuel project.

Here’s a look at what’s been happening:

Three of Australia’s biggest banks, NAB, ANZ and Westpac, supported a new loan to help bring a US company, Global Infrastructure Partners, on to the project. Community members have slammed the move, which would violate the banks’ own 2050 net zero carbon commitments.

What’s more, a new report released by the Australia Institute has uncovered that offshore gas in Western Australia generates little government revenue, as most gas is exported abroad. In fact, Woodside was found to pay no royalties on its Pluto LNG gas processing facility, which it seeks to expand with Scarborough — underscoring how Woodside is effectively subsidised to extract gas and wreck the climate.

A climate catastrophe brewing

Scarborough is forecast to spew emissions equivalent to 15 coal fired power stations, and lay 430 kilometres of pipeline through pristine whale habitat. The project ignores the International Energy Agency’s warnings that no new fossil fuel projects can go ahead if we’re to stay under 1.5˚C of global warming. Despite this, Woodside plans to pump out climate pollution for many years to come. Scarborough is just the first stage of the full Burrup Hub, Woodside’s planned gas mega-project. If this dangerous fossil-fuel development is completed, it will be operational until 2055 – well past the timeframe we need to phase out fossil fuels for a safer climate.

Woodside is trying to move fast – but we won’t let them. We can still stop construction if we raise the alarm. Share this post and let them know Australians choose #WhalesNotWoodside

You can also sign the petition to tell Woodside to walk away from Scarborough

“As the world continues to decarbonise and turn their back on fossil fuel projects, this investment by Global Infrastructure Partners in one of the biggest carbon bombs Australia will ever know is grossly untenable and makes no financial sense,” said Kate Smolski, Program Director for Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

“Woodside claims there’s a huge international market for their toxic gas around the world, but where is their long list of customers? For a fossil fuel source of this size, where is the demand? Their current customer offtake doesn’t match with the scale of the project whatsoever. The numbers simply don’t add up.

“As countries around the world pledge their commitment to net zero and renewable energy, GIP is risking their stakeholders’ coffers with a deal on infrastructure that will ultimately end up a doomed stranded asset, costing the taxpayers billions in decommissioning.”

The deal is being facilitated by a $4.8billion syndicated loan from financial institutions including National Australia Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Westpac, who were slammed this week by Market Forces for their participation in the investment, which is at odds with the banks’ professed net zero commitments.

Announcing FID towards the end of last year, the Scarborough Gas project, which is set to be the first stage in Australia’s most climate polluting development ever proposed, still has a number of regulatory hurdles to clear, including an uncertain approvals process and an unresolved legal challenge to the primary approvals process in the WA Supreme Court.

A direct threat to some of Australia’s most extraordinary marine life, the Scarborough development involves blasting and dredging kilometers of seabed, driving giant concrete piles into the ocean floor and dumping millions of tons of crushed coral and rock within the Dampier Archipelago – the richest area of marine biodiversity in Western Australia – home to thousands of species of whales, sharks, fish, turtles and corals.

For more information or to request an interview contact Stephen Milton on 0423584423 or smilton@greenpeace.org 

The analysis also ranks the climate policies of Australian banks, finding that the Big 4 banks have inadequate policies in place, with significant loopholes and no reference to lending policies for fossil fuels beyond 2030. Enabled emissions from the Big 4 from 2016-2020 amount to 16.3 billion tonnes, 33 times Australia’s annual domestic emissions.

Glenn Walker, senior coal campaigner for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said that it’s time for Australia’s biggest banks to clean up their acts.

“Australia’s major banks all claim to support the Paris Agreement and global progress to net-zero by 2050, but Greenpeace’s analysis reveals that they’re hedging their bets, with shonky policies ridden with loopholes to enable lending to fossil fuel projects like AGL’s coal-burning arm Accel,” he said.“Despite the IEA and UN warning that Australia’s coal-burning stations must close by 2030, AGL and Accel currently plan to continue burning coal up until 2048, well beyond the timeframe for a safe climate. As current lenders to AGL, at least one of the banks has likely agreed to stump up $800 million to fund this coal-burning behemoth, but so far no one’s owning up to it. So which bank is funding climate destruction?”

“Greenpeace is turning its sights on the banks and investors that are funding AGL, Australia’s biggest climate polluter. If any of the big four banks retain their outdated climate policies and proceed with funding Accel Energy, they will be exposed not only to significant financial risk, but a huge amount of pressure.”

READ THE FULL REPORT 

For more information or to arrange an interview please contact Fiona Ivits on 0487 003 872 or fiona.ivits@greenpeace.org

We’re going back to kindergarten to tackle Australia’s dirty fossil fuel industry and how exactly we, everyday Australians, can take part in making our communities heaps better with renewable energy. Australians are some of the biggest carbon emitters per person around the world, but this also gives us the chance to also be one of the biggest changemakers in our fight to save our planet.

This (and so much more!) is possible together. In this episode, we chat with Simon Holmes à Court, a Director of the Smart Energy Council, and Lindsay Soutar, Greenpeace’s Campaigner for renewable energy and lead of the REenergise campaign. We’re also visiting a carbon neutral kinder and a solar powered brewery. You might be thinking, how exactly can we ditch the biggest coal, oil, and gas giants to fully embrace a renewable transition? We can all do our bit in our homes, schools, and offices, but we’ll also unveil the biggest energy users who need to pull their weight too: big corporations who use a whopping 71% of global emissions!

The best way we can make waves together is by making our government and corporations make changes on a systemic level.

Ep2: How can we speed up renewables?  – TRANSCRIPT

Ash: Why do you like to take care of the Earth?

Will: Well, because it helps you not to die. What? Why aren’t you talking? This is a serious talk about
Earth! If you don’t have Earth then you’ll die! I’m trying to protect the Earth

Jess: Ash, who is this?

Ash: This is Will, he’s just graduated from Australia’s first carbon neutral kindergarten.

Jess: That’s so cool!

Ash: And this is his little sister, Isla, who’s three.

Isla: We don’t punch mother Earth!

Jess: Greetings, inhabitants of Mother Earth. I’m Jess.

Ash: I’m Ash, and we’re two friends who don’t want to punch Mother Earth.

Jess: In Australia, we punch way above our weight in greenhouse gas emissions, especially when
we include our exports. We are the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

Ash: But we’ve just found out that Australia could be a renewable energy superpower.

Jess: So why aren’t we there yet? And what’s holding us back? And what can we do to pack the
biggest punch and speed up the renewable revolution?

Listeners: How easy is the transition from non-renewable, like coal mining and things to
renewables?
Like, it’s a grid network, I’ve heard about a grid, but I’ve never really heard too many details.
I’m a renter, so I can’t do solar panels, although I certainly would like to.
Is solar legitimately a good investment?
I just simply do not understand why there is so much government hesitation to move towards
investing more in clean energy?

Jess: So we are using this podcast to figure out what we can do to make the world heaps better with the help of our planet-saving friends at Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

Isla: I’m trying to save the “flanet”!.

Jess: ‘Cause saving the “flanet” is heaps better together!

Ash: But first, pack your lunch box. Yes, you can have some tiny teddies. We are going back to
school. If you’re in charge of Australia, what would you do to make it heaps better?

Isla: Um, don’t throw garbage in the back garden!

Jess: Oh Ash, I really don’t want to dump garbage in her garden. What’s the carbon neutral kinder
like?

Ash: I mean, it’s in Victoria, so they were in lockdown at the time, which is why we’re doing Zoom
interviews. So I asked director Jenny Whelan to tell me what it’s usually like at the carbon neutral
can be.

Jenny Whelan: If you come to Kinder on a Friday afternoon, you’ll see the children in the garden and
they’re reading the water meter, they’re reading the electricity.

Ash: I’ve seen a video of it, there’s kids who are five with clipboards walking around reading
meters like tiny tradies, and they’re reading the solar metre, not the gas, because they got the gas
disconnected.

Jenny Whelan: The vision has been really powerful to make an actual statement to become carbon
neutral and then to sit back and go, well, what are the steps that will take us there? And for us,
we established very early that solar panels would be the most important factor in reducing our
emissions.

Ash: So she had this dream of going carbon neutral and built a team around her of parents,
children, the local council, even health professionals.

Jenny Whelan: So have a dream, build a team is the way that we achieve all our big, lofty goals.

Jess: “Have a dream, build a team”, I love it, Ash, it’s so good.

Ash: And they worked together on this vision for five years to build a fully certified carbon neutral
kindy!

Jenny Whelan: It is interesting when you have a big, lofty goal and you achieve that goal, there is
what happens next moment. But for us, we did find that, which is to partner with our local primary
school and high school to form a Sustainable Schools Alliance.

Jess: I really want to hear more about this carbon neutral kinder. But can things like a kinder change
the system?

Ash: OK, let’s deal with this. Let’s talk about power and how we can change the power system in
Australia. Our electricity accounts for almost a third of our annual carbon emissions, or footprints.
We are one of the largest emitters per person and the only country that still relies on coal for more
than half of our electricity generation.

Jess: Coal, we are obsessed with the stuff. So, Ash, I wanted to find us an expert who is obsessed
with renewable energy.

Simon Holmes à Court: I’m Simon Holmes à Court and I’m a Director of the Smart Energy Council.

Jess: Simon advises the Energy Transition Hub and the Climate Energy College at Melbourne Uni,
and he started Australia’s first community wind project.

Ash: All right. So he has every finger in the pie of renewable energy!

Jess: Is there anything in the last 10 years that’s blown your mind and really given you hope that,
like, big things can happen in the next five or 10 years?

Simon Holmes à Court: There’s so much, Jess. We were in the process a decade ago of building
this first community wind farm and we had many other communities that wanted to do the same
thing. We’d go up to Canberra and we’d say, ah, you know, renewables are great because, look,
like they might cost a little bit more, but there’s the environmental benefits, there’s the economic
benefit, there’s local jobs. What’s been stunning to me is that about maybe about four years ago, the
economics changed so dramatically that now you don’t have to make that case for renewables. You
speak to anyone in industry and they know their next project is going to be wind or solar or storage
because it’s the cheapest way of getting things done.

Ash: OK, great. So we want our whole country to be powered by renewables. How does Simon think
we’re tracking?

Jess: So he told me we’re about a quarter of the way already and we’re on track to have 30 per cent
of our energy coming from renewable sources by the beginning of 2021.

Simon Holmes à Court: Almost all of that is coming from wind and solar. And so far, the majority of
the solar has been from the roof of households in Australia. So just from everyday people. We have
the highest rooftop solar uptake per capita anywhere in the world.

Ash: Well, I did not know that! Way to go households of Australia!

Jess: And where we headed, what’s the most ambitious but really achievable future for, say, 10
years or 20 years?

Simon Holmes à Court: One of the most interesting studies comes from the Australian Energy
Market Operator (AEMO), and it has us at 96 per cent renewables in 2042. Fast forward to then and
almost all of our electricity will come from wind, solar, a bit of hydro and a bit of storage.
Ash: So we could be almost entirely renewable by 2042?

Jess: Yeah, but we don’t even have to wait that long, we could be 75 per cent renewable by just 2025.

Simon Holmes à Court: What they’re saying is that in the moment we’ll be able to handle up to 75
per cent using current technologies. And that that report was basically saying, hey, if we want to go
above 75 percent, we’re going to have to invest a bunch in the technology to help us integrate.
Jess: So basically, like a challenge to this 75 per cent thing is if we can get that grid set up and
strong enough to handle all this new stuff.

Ash: Hang on – why do we need new technology?

Jess: The grid was built for fossil fuels with old technology, so it’s kind of like it needs an upgrade.

Ash: So it’s like old speakers that can’t handle that bass? OK, so what’s the grid?

Jess: Let’s think of it like a dance floor at your school dance. Fossil fuels got us here, so they like
your parents dropping you off, but then they stay on the dance floor –

Ash: Aw Daaaad, this is so embarrassing! And his music sucks.

Jess: Our energy grid dance floor was built for fossil fuels, and for so long it’s been full of these coal
burning power stations. All these oldies taking up all the space while we just watch along patiently
from the sidelines. However…

Simon Holmes à Court: What’s basically happening is our coal power stations are reaching the end
of their technical life and the end of their economic life is a bit like an old car. You can keep throwing
money at the maintenance, but eventually gets to a point where you realise it’s cheaper just to get
rid of it and get a new one.

Jess: The Hazelwood Coal Power Station in Victoria and the Liddell Coal Station in New South
Wales, for example, were at the end of their lives and needed 400 million dollars just to keep
operating.

Simon Holmes à Court: And the owners said this is just not worth it. We’re not going to ever get
that money back. It’s reached the end of its technical life and it’s just not economic to keep it going.
So they’re closing it down.

Ash: So our daggy old parents are finally shuffling off the dance floor anyway?

Jess: Let’s say they’re retiring.

Simon Holmes à Court: One by one, our coal power stations and closing down. We’ve closed 13 in
the last six years and we’ve got 19 to go. They’ll just fall over one by one as they reach the end of
their life.

Ash: OK, 19 to go, 19 old coal power stations still boogin’ on the dance floor…

Jess: But! We’ve all got rooftops and on those rooftops we can put solar panels and then any
excess power that we generate goes back into the grid. So we don’t actually need coal anymore
because we’re making the power ourselves and we’re flooding onto the dance floor!

Ash: Yeah, it’s like thanks for bringing us this far, Mum and Dad, but it’s our time to dance!

Jess: And all this technology and solar panels and batteries to store all the excess power that we
generate, it’s all getting cheaper, too.

Ash: Oh, my gosh. Renewables is like the hottie on the dance floor, radiant like the sun, hair blowing
in the wind turbine takes me in their arms, and – and yes.

Jess: Yes! So with all these new dancers, the grid needs a little bit updating. We have about two and
a half million households with solar on the roof, and that requires more technology.

Ash: So we need to demand a better sound system?

Jess: Yes, but the more of us dancing on that dance floor, plugging renewables into the grid, the
larger the flow of investment and jobs and technology to improve that grid, and the less room there
is for boring, outdated, old and dirty coal.

Ash: OK, so what I’m hearing is we’re actually trying to reduce our emissions, right?

Simon Holmes à Court: It’s not right to say that we’re trying to reduce our emissions. Sadly, we
need we need policy for that.

Ash: Oh… we’re not trying.

Jess: Well, the government isn’t prioritising reducing emissions for reducing emissions sake. But
Simon says it’s happening anyway.

Simon Holmes à Court: So it’s almost like it’s a sideshow what’s happening in the politics and
media. If we look at any of the statistics on where we’re going in the electricity sector, it’s rapidly
moving. We’ve built more renewables in the last three years than we did in the 30 years before. This
transition is well underway.

Ash: OK, just so I’m actually really psyched on this, when Simon says that the transition is already
happening just because it makes more economic sense, I read up and Australia’s most respected
economists are talking about how Australia could be a renewable energy superpower, like, globally.
Even our Chief Scientist Alan Finkel is saying that we should be aiming for 700 percent renewable!
Jess: 700%? How does that work?

Ash: Right? And then my brain just explodes and coats the walls, and then when I scrape it back to
my head, I’m like, that’s not how math works. And then I say, no, it is! Because we get 100 percent
renewable energy here, and then we sell our excess energy overseas. We export it. We lay down a
giant underwater extension cord and plug in Southeast Asia, for example, and pump the excess
on a wind power out to their grids. We’re exporting renewables instead of coal. And the more I look
at it, it’s like, OK, so more countries are setting renewable energy targets, which means they’re no
longer going to be needing our coal. And China is like one of our biggest buyers and they’ve just
announced their plan to go carbon neutral. So I guess we can’t really keep being a coal superpower.

Jess: Buuuut there’s a little problem…

Simon Holmes à Court: We don’t have a coordinated plan in Australia of shutting these power
stations down, the transition is happening, it’s locked in, but it’s either going to be, you know,
disorderly chaos or a managed transition. Both and both start from where we are and both end up
at the same place. But the managed transition is cheaper, more reliable power and workers will get
looked after and won’t be disruptive. Whereas the chaos? People will get hurt and it’ll cost more
than it should.

Ash: I mean, this is the thing I don’t get. The whole world is basically saying that we need a green
recovery from the pandemic. We can use those funds that are being mobilised to stop economies
from collapsing, to build a better future. But I keep hearing so much about gas in Australia.

Jess: Well, I asked Simon about that…. Simon, can we talk about gas? Because there’s been all
this talk about, you know, the Covid gas-led recovery and the Prime Minister referring to gas as a
transition fuel. What does it mean? Do we need gas? Is gas really a transition fuel? Is this going to
help our transition or hinder it?

Simon Holmes à Court: Yeah, yeah. So that phrasing that gas is a transition fuel is what people
used to say a decade ago. So a couple of a couple of things. In Australia, we have some of the
world’s best resources for wind and solar, which means that we have some of the cheapest
renewable energy production in the world. Meanwhile, we don’t have cheap gas. Our gas costs
two, three, four times as much as US gas, because when we go fracking, we don’t pull out any oil.
We frack and pull out gas. And it’s much more expensive operation if that’s all you’re getting out
of it. So we’re in the middle of a crisis. A lot of people have been advocating that we should use
this opportunity for, you know, to decarbonise our economy. But Australia, which, you know, our
politics are significantly in the throes of the fossil fuel industry. The industry has seen this crisis as
an opportunity to extend it to further their interests. So, yeah, there are no technical or economic
reasons why we should be looking at gas right now. The technical and economic case is actually
very, very weak. Yeah, no, it’s just politics and vested interests. This gas, it’s really just a missed
opportunity, I think, to you, an opportunity we could be using to decarbonise. But we’re going to faff
around the edges, debating gas for the next six months or so. And nothing major is really going to
happen on that front.

Ash: Hold up. Who is the Government actually dancing with here?

Ash + Jess: We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a message from your hosts, Ash and Jess.
Every now and then it’s important to take a break, find a buddy, have a movie night, make a bowl of
popcorn! And learn about the vested interests slowing your country down from flicking the switch
and turning off fossil fuels. Tonight’s film, Dirty Power comes courtesy of Greenpeace.

Dirty Power documentary: While much of the world is taking decisive action on climate change,
Australia is going back.

Ash: We’re not going to play the whole thing right now, but for a taste, his own parts that made us
gasp.

Ash + Jess: * Gasping in shock many, many times *

Ash: You know, I think a lot of us have a feeling that there are these dirty dealings, but watching
Dirty Power shows you how it’s actually all connected. It’s like a map.

Jess: Yup. Everyone should watch Dirty Power. It is 15 minutes long and you will find out so much
about just how deeply our political parties and certain media organizations, and even sneaky
nonprofits with innocent names like the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, are all deeply tied to each
other and to fossil fuel groups. The link to watch Dirty Power is on Heaps Better website, and you
can get that via the show notes. So back to Simon. If this is genuinely slowing things down, what do
we do about it?

Simon Holmes à Court: OK, so it’s frustrating that we could do this faster and cheaper if there was
federal coordination, if we were, you know, if we didn’t have the feds trying to trip us up at every
point. But this transition is absolutely happening. And, you know, we’ve got to keep fighting the
forces that would want to slow that down. But I think success is assured in that sector, not fast
enough. We’ve got to make sure these coal power stations close in the next 10 years. Right now,
they’re on a path to close in 20 years.

Ash: So these 19 coal stations are already set to close in about 20 years. But we’ve got to get them
shut down in the next 10.

Jess: So all righty, lessons: What is in your experience or your mind is the one thing that I can do
as an average Australian to contribute to speeding up this transition, and to support the renewable
industries?

Simon Holmes à Court: So on the home front, if you own a north facing roof in Australia, put solar
on your roof. You’re throwing away money if you don’t. But what you’re doing is every day as the
sun comes up, you’re going to be pushing coal out of the system and the solar is coming on at such
a fast rate, it’s pushing coal out. And we’re going to see two or three coal power stations pushed
out of the grid over the next two years and that’ll be significantly because of the householders of
Australia.

Ash: So Jess and I are both renters, so it’s kind of a little tricky for us to get solar panels installed.
Jess: But our parents own their rooftops and I found out that a big barrier for my Dad to getting
solar panels installed was the cost and hearing stories about people getting sold poor quality
panels.

Ash: So while Jess was doing the research for her Dad, I stumbled upon a random website. I was
like, well, how do I get a solar quote? Getting a quote takes like ten minutes. I spoke to a lovely guy
called George. I was like, Dude, do you mind if I start recording this conversation? Because me and
my friends all want to get involved with solar, but a lot of us are renters and we don’t know how to
do this.

George: We do install on rental properties as well. A lot of the time, you know, the quote will be for
the landlord and they’ll send it over the landlord and they end up paying for it or, you know, they go
halves on it and things like that. So, yeah.

Ash: And so, you know, to take that economic case to a landlord, like, how would you say it if it was
your landlord and you were renting the case?

George: The case you could really put forward is the sort of like the value that they can add to the
house if they were going to sell the house or, you know, if you if you if you were to leave the property
they could potentially bump up that rental prices because the property then benefits from having
solar.

Ash: And so, like, it’s not like, oh, I’m a renter, therefore, it doesn’t make sense for me to have solar.
It can make sense for you and your landlord. But that’s a negotiation that you have to enter into.
That’s kind of like a bit of coeducation. It feels weird and but yeah, I’m doing that now.

Jess: That’s amazing! Wait, you’re sending it to your landlord. Really?

Ash: Yes.

Jess: Ash! High five!

Ash: Well, I’ll let you know how it goes. Like, ideally, by the end of, you know, all of this, they’ll be like,
oh, yeah, dude, solar sounds like a great idea.

Jess: So there will be an upfront cost, but the Australian Federal Solar Rebate is still going. Just as
an example, a six kilowatt system will get about $3,300 in rebates as of the time we are recording.
That’s going to go down year by year as this is being slowly phased out. But there are also different
state level rebates. So when you get a quote ask what’s available for your postcode.

Ash: And once you’ve got solar panels, your electricity retailer will pay you a small amount for each
kilowatt hour you export back to the grid. And on top of that, if you use most of your power during
the day when the sun’s shining, then you’ll have cheaper bills and you could make a payback of your
system in about five years.

Jess: And one more thing, until we get to 100 percent renewable energy here in Australia, you’re still
going to be using some energy from the grid, even when you have solar panels, especially when the
sun ain’t shining. So you can switch to greenpower for the rest.

Ash: We found some really great resources for getting your head around the whole rooftop solar
thing. So we’re going to chuck them in the show notes and it’s easy as pie.

Simon Holmes à Court: But that’s kind of like the personal hygiene thing, that’s like getting out of
bed and having a shower. You’ve done the basics. That is kind of a ticket to play to be putting the
pressure for societal change or systemic change, and that’s where the heavy lifting comes in. If we
can get one one coal power unit to shut down, that has a massive impact on everyone who used to
take power from that power station.

Ash: Right. Well, I’m all about shutting down coal plants.

Jess: Oh, can I give you another reason, another reason to shut them down? So I’m going to share
my screen and show you this thing that Simon tweeted. OK, look at this. So he put together this
nifty little graph, ‘Greenhouse gas emissions for the financial year of 2019’, and check this out.
See this on the left, that giant amount, six point eight million tonnes, this is the Vales Point coal
power station. That’s just one coal power station in New South Wales. And it emits as much carbon
dioxide as the entire Australian domestic aviation sector! So, like you can see, Qantas and Virgin.

Ash: Whoa. OK, wait, hold on. That’s crazy! Six point eight million tonnes? So this is just Vales Point,
one power station?

Jess: Yeah. And just to put that into perspective, I did a carbon footprint calculator for myself and
my personal emissions is like 12 tonnes, 12 tons versus six point eight million tonnes. So from
Simon’s helpful graph, I then calculated that shutting down this one coal power plant is the same
impact as more than 560,000 me’s completely offsetting my carbon footprint. That is more than
the population of Tasmania!

Simon Holmes à Court: You might convince, you know, 20% of people to reduce their flights by
20%, but that doesn’t move the needle. What really moves the needle is when we change our power
system to use renewables rather than coal, or we change our aviation sector to use clean fuel
rather than the kerosene they currently use.

Ash: Also, the Vales Point one is only the tenth dirtiest? Excuse me!

Simon Holmes à Court: So if we can push that power station for early closure, it’s like we’ve just
taken a whole sector of emissions out of the economy. So this systemic change, you get to reduce
the carbon footprint more than you could ever do for yourself and all of your neighbors and the rest
of society at the same time.

Ash: Yes, Simon speaking our language with the systemic change! And the thing I love about this
kind of change is it’s basically easier for everyone than the alternative, either (A) we all fret forever
about every single carbon emitting decision we make, or (B) not fret, because you’re running on
renewable energy.

Jess: So we were wondering what is the easiest and fastest way to get heaps of solar onto our grid
and kick coal off our dance floor completely.

Ash: And that led us back to our buddies at Greenpeace Australia Pacific and specifically to Lindsay
Soutar. Lindsay runs REenergise, which is Greenpeace’s renewable energy campaign. And what
they’re doing is targeting the biggest polluters in Australia to get them to go renewable.

Jess: We wanted to specifically know how does the residential impact of all of us switching our
homes to renewable power stack up against big business doing the same?

Lindsay Soutar: Yeah, it’s a good question. So large corporations make up about 70% of emissions
from electricity in Australia. Even if we get every single Australian to make the switch without
getting those companies to shift as well? We’re not going as far as we need to go.

Ash + Jess: 70 per cent! 70 per cent of Australia’s emissions comes from large corporations. So
don’t be mad at yourself. Be mad at them.

Lindsay Soutar: You, of course, might be able to install 12 solar panels on your roof, whereas Aldi,
the supermarket company, has just announced that it’s rolling out a solar program with 102,000
solar panels on rooftops around the country, so on their stores and distribution centers.

Ash: OK, so a big supermarket chain like Aldi switching that power is really huge. I mean, like,
remember our dance floor story? When Aldi generates excess electricity from all those massive
supermarket rooftops covered in solar panels, they feed back into the grid and they’re helping to
push out coal.

Lindsay Soutar: So Australia’s biggest emitters have to report how much they’re polluting to the
government and that information becomes publicly available in a database. So that’s how we’ve
got this data. We’ve pulled it down off the Clean Energy Regulator’s website and trolled through it to
look at, I guess, in particular, which are the big brand companies, because they’re the ones we can’t
we know as as consumers and as members of the public that we can really have an influence over
and and the companies we’re targeting initially with this campaign.

Jess: So we’re rolling through the list of big businesses on the REenergise website right now. OK,
so that’s REenergise.org. And we’re scrolling through the list of the dirtiest businesses in Australia.
Let’s find out which companies. Lion… Oh, JB Hi-Fi!

Ash: Oh, yeah?

Jess: No, no good. Hmm, make some demands.

Ash: You would think that Apple would have done better.

Jess: So Woolworths is ranked 6th on the list of the largest electricity users in Australia. They do
have onsite solar, but they have no renewable electricity commitment.

Ash: OK, so Coles is ranked 12th. So how do we take action? So: ways to make change. You can
message a company, share the campaign, sign a petition. Easy. OK, email CEO! Oh my gosh.
There’s a link right here. Hello. OK, I’m Ash Berdebes, I am a Coles customer because you know
it’s everywhere. I’d like to know, when will Coles commit to 100 percent renewable electricity? Aldi
has committed to a hundred percent renewable energy by 2021, Telstra has committed to 100 per
percent renewable energy by 2025. What is standing in your way? Let me help you.

Jess: So listeners, we’re going to make this real easy for you. There’s a link to REenergise on our
website. You can get to it from the show notes.

Ash: I mean, if you’re working in these companies sure, you can say, I want you to go renewable,
but would they listen to us? It just feels weird being like, do you Woolworth’s? Could you please go
renewable and put lots of solar panels on your roof, then I will shop with you. Thank you very much.
Cheers. Ash and Jess.

Jess: Yeah, what’s the best way to be calling them out or asking them to make the switch?

Lindsay Soutar: I think what you’ve outlined is exactly what we want to be doing. They are very
sensitive to customer pressure and expectations, especially on issues like climate change, which
they know have been rising in public concern and public attention.

Ash: OK, so that was me doing a record scratch. It’s me. Hey, future Ash talking to past Ash, to let
you know that they did listen to us. We’ve got some good news! Since this interview with Lindsay,
Woolworths announced they’re going 100 percent renewable by 2025.

Jess: And why is this so epic? Because Woolworths represents one percent of Australia’s entire
electricity usage. They have a power bill of like over a million dollars every day. And instead of
supporting fossil fuels, soon that money will be going towards clean, renewable energy. Only two
weeks before Woolies announced this, our maate Lindsay here and David from our first episode
went along together to meet the CEO of Woolworths because thousands of people just like us
had sent a message to Brad Banducci through the REenergise website. So they have a chat
with CEO Brad about the REenergise campaign. And then two weeks later, Woolies makes this
announcement: that they’re going 100 percent renewable.

Ash: Who knows, by the time you’re listening to this podcast episode, maybe Coles will have
flicked the switch too! It shows just how quickly things can change right now. So let’s keep that
momentum going.

Jess: You can go to the REenergise website and call on Australia’s biggest electricity users to go
100 per cent renewable. It is a win for a minute.

Ash: I guess this is something that Greenpeace probably has seen a lot in the past is just knocking
on someone’s door, I mean, that’s someone being a big company who’s not doing the right thing,
is enough sometimes for them to go, oh, maybe we don’t want this kind of attention. Maybe we’ll
change ahead of time before you have to launch a campaign against what we’re doing.

Lindsay Soutar: So, yes, we absolutely are seeing companies, I guess, get trying to get ahead of
some of the attention of scrutiny. And interestingly, we were launching a renewable beer or a sun
powered beer campaign just before Christmas at the end of last year, asking Asahi and Lion, the
two other big brewers in Australia, to match Carlton and United, who’s the third big brewer who had
already made the commitment to 100 percent renewable electricity. And so we had a whole lot of
little coasters printed that we were going to be distributing in pubs and stickers that were going
on, you know, cases of beer in bottle shops all around the country. But we never got to use any of
it because in the end, once we told the company that these, you know, all these volunteers were
going out all around the country with with these stickers and posters, those big companies were
like, oh actually, you know, we can say this makes sense what you’re asking us to do. We’re already
on this path. We’re already investing in renewable energy. Let’s just go the whole way to 100 percent
renewables. And so they ultimately decided to make the commitment before we even really got
going!

Ash + Jess: Oh, that’s so good!

Lindsay Soutar: I mean, but I think it also speaks to how doable this is. Like it is it is now at a point
where switching to renewable electricity for these companies does just make sense.

Jess: So Christmas 2020, one of the silver linings will be we can have sun-powered beer?

Lindsay Soutar: So by 2025, all beer in Australia will be 100 percent renewable powered. So these
companies have made the commitment to make the switch, to make the transition. But that’s not
something that can just happen overnight. They have to do the work to, you know, sign those deals
with the wind and solar farms and get all those solar panels up on their facilities. That takes a bit
of time, but certainly making that commitment and sending that clear signal about where they’re
going as a company and also where the world is heading is is really important.

Ash: I’m looking forward to sinking a few frothies with a clean conscience!

Jess: Speaking of solar powered beer, Lindsey gave us a pretty great solution for people who are
locked out of rooftop solar, like us, who are renters or people who live in apartments and have small
rooftops or who don’t get a lot of sun… and the solution involves beer!

Ash: So Lindsay’s a renter just like us, and she has invested in a solar community project on the
rooftop of a brewery in Sydney called Young Henry’s.

Jess: These community projects – that are sometimes called solar gardens – basically work like
a community vegie garden. You can buy a plot of panels in a huge community solar farm and,
you know, they’re an awesome way for local businesses with large rooftops, like this brewery,
to make the most out of them. The local community get the financial benefits of solar and any
excess energy from the solar gardens gets fed back into the grid. You get dividends, in the case
of this Young Henry’s Brewery, or in the case of things like solar gardens, you get savings on your
electricity bill just the way you would if you had your own rooftop solar. So we’re going to chuck a
little link on the Heaps Better website and in the show notes of this episode so that wherever you
are in Australia, you can check out what’s happening around you. And if you too are locked out of
rooftop solar, you can still get a slice of the pie.

Jess: Hi, Richard, how are you doing?

Ash: Where are we Jess?

Jess: Well, Ash, we’re sipping on a delicious solar powered beer at the Young Henry’s Brewery in
Sydney, that one with the community solar project that we’ve invested in.

Ash: And we’re walking through the back of the brewery with the owner, Richard Adamson, past
these giant vats of green algae that grown from the CO2 from the brewing process.

Jess: Richard tells us that each batch of algae here produces the same amount of oxygen as a
hectare of forest. So thanks to this algae and the solar panels, the brewery is aiming to be carbon
negative.

Ash: Jess really loves seaweed, but we’re here to talk about solar.

Jess: Is it expensive for you as a business to have done this? I know it gives dividends back to the
community who’ve invested in it, but as a business has it been costly?

Richard Adamson: That was the beauty of it, that there was actually no upfront cost on our part.
We just signed an agreement that we would lease the space over the period, I think it’s 10 years,
and that was it. I think that money is much better in generating electricity now than it is probably
getting interest out of the bank because the interest rates are so low. So even my dad is a bit of a
skeptic, and he has gone OK, I’m putting solar panels on the roof. It’s like, wow, that’s amazing!

Jess: I love that. I want to get my Dad to put solar panels on his roof! That’s my goal.

Richard Adamson: I mean, I think if you put the economic case to him he might just go, well, alright!
Because that’s where it stands at the moment. It does make more financial sense to invest your
money in solar panels for, you know, for home generation.

Ash: I was sort of surprised that Young Henry’s was doing so much, but then I thought again and I
was like, oh, well, like being a brewer is just kind of like being a scientist, but you get to wear like a
T-shirt rather than a white coat.

Richard Adamson: Yes! I did say to my science teacher from high school, if I knew I’d be using
all this science in brewing, I might have paid more attention! We’ve had some we had a science
teacher bring these students down to say, hey, look, these guys use science every day. There’s a full
lab up upstairs but they’ve just got tattoos and beers and look really cool! So maybe, maybe that’s
why you should pay attention in class! And I was like, that’s cool.

Ash: Okay, that’s a real cool teacher. Imagine your teacher taking you on an excursion to a solar
powered brewery.

Jess: Yeah, kind of reminds me of a solar powered kinder from the beginning of this episode that
you were going to tell me more about Ash.

Ash: I didn’t forget! OK, so let’s bring Jenny Whelan back.

Jenny Whelan: We talk at the Kinder a lot about curious questions, it’s like an ongoing thing. What’s
the curious question? And I just really encourage everyone to just keep asking those curious
questions, like why do our schools not have solar panels on every roof? Why would we build a
school today without a full solar installation on the rooftop? And it’s not just thinking about making
that specific school sustainable. We’re thinking beyond that. We’re thinking of, what can happen
when, as a Sustainable Schools Alliance, our roof is covered with solar panels and then we unite
that energy, combine that energy and then deliver it to our communities in term break?

Jess: Oh, I love this story so much.

Ash: Right? And the cool thing is the kids are going home and talking about solar panels and
renewables to their parents, so that message is spreading into the community and encouraging
everyone to ask these big questions, like, if the kids know what’s up, why haven’t we done this
already?

Jenny Whelan: Action is a great panacea for anxiety, and that’s why I think we’ve got to show our
kids that there’s things that we can all do, there’s numbers between 1 and 10 and they can make a
difference without having to march to Parliament House to do it. There’s just a lot of things that we
can do, particularly within a school setting, because you actually you’ve got hundreds and hundreds
of young adults and you’ve got teachers that are passionate to support the voices of those
students. And you’ve also got a connection with hundreds of families, and through that connection
with hundreds of families, you’ve got a connection with hundreds of workplaces. So the capacity
for schools to show leadership and transform how we live in our homes and how we work in our
businesses, it’s very powerful. There’s a great opportunity there. And I think it’s important not to
miss the opportunity.

Isla: On Monday I cleaned up the park!

Ash: Really? You know what, thank you for cleaning up the park. Some people leave things behind
and make things dirty and other people make things better and you’re making things better.

Jess: Ash, I refuse to leave it to the three year olds to clean up our parks and our backyards and our
atmosphere. Can we kick dirty old coal off our dance floor?

Ash: Yes! I mean, I don’t think we have a choice not to anymore. So what are we going to do?
We’re going to go back to our renewables 101. Get solar panels on your roof! You can look into
community solar gardens if you can’t do the whole rooftop solar thing.

Jess: You know how I was going to try and convince my Dad to get solar panels on his roof? Well,
he got wind of my plan and he and Mum started doing the research themselves.

Ash: Oh he got wind of it, did he? Was that a renewable energy pun?

Jess: It was an accident, I swear! But he’s getting it done, which is cool!

Ash: I think I’ll pass that on to my Mum. OK. Then think bigger picture, go right for those big
polluting businesses that are responsible for 70% of our electricity emissions. You can go to
reenergise.org and call them out to flick that switch. Greenpeace has literally done all the hard yards
for you, so this is now the easiest action.

Jess: And if you’re feeling really gung ho, then channel Albert Park kinda or the Young Henry’s
brewery and get your workplace, school, university, whatever, to flick the switch to renewable power.
All those things will get more fun, renewable dancers onto our dancefloor grid and kick old fuddy
duddy coal out.

Ash: The power is ours! and one final word from our future PM:

Will: Solar panels save the world!

Jess: To make this hella easy for you, the Greenpeace team have put together a step by step action
plan. It’s on the website at greenpeace.org.au. Everything you need is in there, and there’s a link
in the show notes too. Ash, I got another big tip from Simon Holmes à Court that I was holding
off telling you. He said that one of the biggest things that we can do to stop coal and fossil fuel
projects is actually to switch our banking in super.

Ash: Oh… I’ve been meaning to do that, but it seems like a big effort.

Jess: In the next episode, we’re going to work out whether our money is actually financing the
climate crisis and if it is, how we can fix that stat and use it as a tool for good, instead.

Ash: 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!

Jess: 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 Conolley, EP is Kate
Montague and the Creative Lead at Greenpeace is Ella Colley.

Ash: We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands this podcast was
created, and their enduring legacy of sustainability and caring for country. A huge thank you to the
Greenpeace team for getting us out of the weeds and showing us the bigger picture, especially
Lindsay and the team behind the REenergise campaign and the Dirty Power doco.

Jess: Thank you to Simon Holmes à Court and the many experts who wrote books, papers and
guides that helped us make sense of all of this and who are all chipping away every day to bring on
the renewable revolution.

Ash: And thanks to Jenny and Lesley from Albert Park Kinder and of course, to Will and Isla for
cleaning up our parks and dreaming big. With kids like you, we know the future is in good hands.
And thank you for coming with us! Together we are heaps better.

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.

Are you feeling overwhelmed, alarmed and powerless in the face of the climate crisis? For the majority of us who aren’t climate scientists or full-time activists — we know that things can be heaps better, but how do we get there? 

Welcome to our new podcast series — Heaps Better! Join Jess Hamilton and Ash Berdebes; two mates on a mission to discover the most high-impact, zero-fluff things we can do to take meaningful climate action. If you want to make things heaps better, but don’t know where to start — this podcast is for you!

 In this 4-part podcast series, we’ll be diving into the basics of climate change and asking big, bold questions, like… 

• How can we be better planet savers?
• How can we speed up the renewables revolution?
• How can we stop funding the climate crisis? 
• How can we make leaders listen?

 And most importantly: what the heck can I do about climate change, and can I even make a difference as an individual?

 To answer these questions, we’ll pick the brains of experts at Greenpeace — plus climate scientists, financial experts, and everyday Aussie legends. 

Introducing our hosts, Jess & Ash

Jess and Ash both know what climate anxiety feels like – the fear, the frustration, and the feeling of utter hopelessness. Last summer especially, we all witnessed the devastation of the climate-fuelled bushfires.  

Jess Hamilton

“I feel guilty for not doing enough, and overwhelmed by challenge and choice. I want to make a difference but I feel like I’m wasting my time. I need hope for the future!” says Jess.

Ash Berdebes

“I feel a real sense of urgency. I’m afraid for the future, and am aware of the critical timeline, but I’m time poor and don’t know the best course of action,” says Ash.

 

Upon making a very special pinkie promise to protect the planet and their sanity, Jess and Ash have embarked on a journey to turn their climate anxiety into climate action – and, hopefully yours, too. 

In this podcast series, Jess and Ash, together with Greenpeace will question the the impact of individual actions: Do we need to buy new lightbulbs? What about KeepCups? Should we all go vegan? Do we need to stop flying? Is the world going to end in 10 years?!?

We’ll also unpack some of the heavier stuff: how we can speed up the renewables revolution, how we can divest our money from funding coal, oil and gas – plus, the awesome power of collective action to produce systemic change!

Heaps Better is a climate change solutions-focussed podcast (for everyday Aussies, like yourself!)

You’re ready to act… but you need the motivation, knowledge, skills and confidence to take effective climate action – does that sound right? To arm you with knowledge, we’ll be speaking to experts and trailblazers to figure out what we need to do and how we can do it. 

In Episode 1 | We’ll explore the big question: What can we do to stop climate change? Plus, we discover our superpowers for climate action, especially when we work together.

In Episode 2 | Hear about what we can do to kick coal out of the system, speed up the renewable energy revolution, and encourage big business to do it too.

In Episode 3 | We’re talking about money: Is your bank account financing the climate crisis? Join Ash and Jess as we learn about how easy it is to make sure your money is clean and green!

In Episode 4 | Prepare to be inspired: For collective action to succeed, we need to influence the influential. Hear amazing and empowering stories of everyday people making big changes.

Want to be HBFF’s? (Heaps Better Friends Forever)

 Subscribe to Heaps Better on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to it on the way to work, on the couch, or in the shower – we don’t really mind! Make sure you sign up here to get notified when each episode drops. 

Sign up

 Heaps Better is produced by Greenpeace and made possible by people just like you! We’re 100% independent and don’t accept any funding by governments or corporations. If you’d like to support this amazing podcast (and our other campaigns), you can donate to help us make things Heaps Better– together!

Donate

 Don’t forget to rate Heaps Better on your favourite podcast app and share on social with the hashtag #heapsbetter.

Don’t get me wrong, of course there is still money for coal. Liberal donor Trevor St Baker is in line for a taxpayer funded upgrade of his ageing and increasingly unreliable Vales Point power station on the NSW Central Coast. 

But Morrison is a political pragmatist and coal is so 2017. If it wasn’t a security risk the PM would more likely bring a bottle of gas to Question Time to show where his priorities lie, rather than the lump of coal he fondled not that long ago.

At the urging of gas man Neville Power’s Covid Commission, and ignoring energy industry experts, the Coalition is proposing a gas-led recovery from the pandemic. It’s a misguided approach that will do little to create jobs and nothing to address the climate crisis that brought us last summer’s bushfires. In fact, increasing the use and export of gas will make things much worse. 

Gas is a destructive fossil fuel that has already made a massive contribution to the climate crisis. Spending on new gas infrastructure is irresponsible and could see public money wasted on polluting, expensive stranded assets that will push up electricity prices and fuel more climate disasters.

Money is said to be tight but the government still found more than $52 million to help speed up the development of gas projects, research gas and re-establishing the east coast gas market.

Treasurer Scott Morrison hands Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce a lump of coal during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING

Instead of wasting more public money on the dying gas industry and resisting global trends to ditch fossil fuels, the Morrison Government should be supporting infrastructure that boosts the supply of renewable energy. If Scott Morrison, Angus Taylor and their ilk really are “technology agnostic” then they can’t look past renewables, which are already the cheapest source of new-build power with prices still falling.

Right now Australians need stable, future-proof jobs to help us rebuild our economy and the Federal Government should be prioritising jobs in future-facing industries like renewable energy rather than the polluting industries of the past like gas.

By pledging to help unlock five new gas basins, the Morrison Government is opening a Pandora’s box that could lock in decades of emissions increases that will undermine pollution reductions elsewhere and make the climate crisis worse.

Instead of co-opting the government’s green banks, ARENA and the CEFC, for gas and carbon capture and storage (CCS), the Morrison Government must heed the advice of leading economists, scientists and policy experts around the world calling for renewables to be at the heart of the economic recovery.

Carbon capture and storage for fossil fuels has never been viable anywhere in the world at scale and Australia alone has already thrown away more than $1 billion chasing the coal industry’s carbon capture and storage pipe dream. It’s time to wake up and smell the renewables, figuratively speaking of course. Wind and solar are zero emissions technologies, they don’t poison communities and blight the skies like coal burning power stations.

The Morrison Government can make decisions right now that will lead us away from dangerous fossil fuels of the past like coal and gas, and put us on a path to a clean and modern electricity system, powered by thousands of future-proof jobs.

Clean energy projects can deliver those jobs, plus a myriad of other environmental benefits and should be at the centre of this budget, even more so as the world turns it back on fossil fuels.