05/12/2018

Big Coal And Friends On Track To Shut Down Your Climate Activism

New Matilda - 

A major case in a Queensland court could have profound implications for climate activists around the country. Julie Macken explains.
IMAGE: Hugh Llewelyn, Flickr
The term, “climate crisis” is now the most commonly used descriptor when discussing global warming. Extreme weather events, firestorms, heat waves, flooding rain, loss of ice, snow and species are rightly seen within the frame of an emergent climate crisis. But if we are really witnessing a climate crisis – one with the potential to destroy our way of life and end our lives – how should we respond as a community?
This is a question being tested in Australia’s classrooms and Parliament right now and later today, in fact. The Queensland Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether, despite this crisis, it is reasonable for a large corporation to dictate how the community should be allowed to use social media to try and prevent this crisis.
The background to the case is this. Aurizon, the rail freight company formerly owned by the Government of Queensland, has been targeted by a number of individuals and communities because it plays a key role in the coal industry managing the 2,670 km Central Queensland coal network. It is also critical to Indian mining company Adani’s plans to ship coal from the proposed Carmichael mine to Abbott Point, as Adani plans to build a 200km line that will connect to Aurizon’s existing Goonyella and Newlands rail network.
Without Aurizon there is no Adani mine.
One of those groups protesting the proposed Adani mine, and Aurizon’s involvement in the expansion of the coal industry, is a small community group called FLAC – Front Line Action on Coal. Unlike the large environmental NGO’s, FLAC is still committed to supporting people who take direct action to prevent the expansion of the coal industry and they have had some serious successes of late.
So much so that Aurizon has taken the extraordinary action of getting interim orders against FLAC. Those orders include prohibiting FLAC from inciting anyone by Facebook, website, and Twitter to enter rail corridors across Aurizon’s network or interfering with any of the company’s coal trains.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk shakes hands with Gautam Adani, Port of Townsville, 6 December 2016. IMAGE: AAP
On Tuesday the Supreme Court will be asked to make these interim orders permanent thus preventing FLAC from using social media to inform people and to be prohibited from going within 20 meters of the entire Queensland rail corridor. That’s a lot of rail corridor.
But there are concerns Aurizon will want more than just clear corridors. For many in the climate movement FLAC has become a touchstone as a moral force and an inclusive community that takes seriously the discipline and commitment to non-violent, safe, direct action. And this is what Aurizon is keen to shut down.
The company wants to prevent this small community group from encouraging, supporting or training anyone to take non-violent action to prevent this crisis. The less there are of these kinds of communities the better things are for large corporations like Aurizon.
These are extraordinary days climatically and politically. On Friday there was the sight of thousands of Australian school kids leaving their classrooms to demand governments – State and Federal – take the action necessary to secure their future. It was an action that happened with blessing of the Australian Senate.
Frontline Action on Coal protestors have been blocking coal trains in Queensland using tripods.
Globally the divestment campaign has seen billions divested from companies involved in the fossil fuel business. While banks with a high exposure to fossil fuel companies have been forced to either rule out further investment or explain their plan to manage the escalating risk posed by stranded assets.
Then there’s the science. According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report the world is confronting the real risk of mass wildfires, food and water shortages, super storms and dying coral reefs by as soon as 2040. The last week alone in Australia has seen Sydney experience a one in 100-year rain event, while Queensland continued to burn.
These are extraordinary times and the science tells us they will get even more extreme as the global political leadership fails to materialise to prevent it. It is in this context that Aurizon’s request to the Supreme Court to gag FLAC must be viewed.
The Supreme Court must decide if Aurizon, an enormously powerful and well connected corporation, should have the power to deny a small community group the right to inform Australians how to help to prevent this climate crisis.
Obviously the people who make up FLAC have a direct interest in the outcome, but should this corporation succeed in gagging free speech to this degree, we will all be the worse for it.
Finally, Aurizon’s action is based on the assumption that if FLAC stops training concerned citizens on how to take non-violent, safe, direct action, people will stop taking action. Unfortunately what may well happen is that people continue to act to prevent a climate catastrophe, but do so without the training, discipline or principles of non-violence.

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David Attenborough: Collapse Of Civilisation Is On The Horizon

The Guardian - 


'Continuation of civilisation is in your hands,' Attenborough tells world leaders

 The collapse of civilisation and the natural world is on the horizon, Sir David Attenborough has told the UN climate change summit in Poland.
The naturalist was chosen to represent the world’s people in addressing delegates of almost 200 nations who are in Katowice to negotiate how to turn pledges made in the 2015 Paris climate deal into reality.
As part of the UN’s people’s seat initiative, messages were gathered from all over the world to inform Attenborough’s address on Monday. “Right now we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change,” he said. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”
“Do you not see what is going on around you?” asks one young man in a video message played as part of a montage to the delegates. “We are already seeing increased impacts of climate change in China,” says a young woman. Another woman, standing outside a building burned down by a wildfire, says: “This used to be my home.”
Attenborough said: “The world’s people have spoken. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now. Leaders of the world, you must lead. The continuation of civilisations and the natural world upon which we depend is in your hands.”
Attenborough urged everyone to use the UN’s new ActNow chatbot, designed to give people the power and knowledge to take personal action against climate change.
Recent studies show the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, and the top four in the past four years. Climate action must be increased fivefold to limit warming to the 1.5C scientists advise, according to the UN.
The COP24 summit was also addressed by António Guterres, the UN secretary general. “Climate change is running faster than we are and we must catch up sooner rather than later before it is too late,” he said. “For many, people, regions and even countries this is already a matter of life or death.”
Guterres said the two-week summit was the most important since Paris and that it must deliver firm funding commitments. “We have a collective responsibility to invest in averting global climate chaos,” he said.
He highlighted the opportunities of the green economy: “Climate action offers a compelling path to transform our world for the better. Governments and investors need to bet on the green economy, not the grey.”
Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, spoke at the opening ceremony, saying the use of “efficient” coal technology was not contradictory to taking climate action. Poland generates 80% of its electricity from coal but has cut its carbon emissions by 30% since 1988 through better energy efficiency.
Friends of the Earth International said the sponsorship of the summit by a Polish coal company “raises the middle finger to the climate”.
A major goal for the Polish government at the summit is to promote a “just transition” for workers in fossil fuel industries into other jobs. “Safeguarding and creating sustainable employment and decent work are crucial to ensure public support for long-term emission reductions,” says a declaration that may be adopted at the summit and is supported by the EU.
In the run-up to the summit, Donald Trump expressed denial about climate change, while there were attacks on the UN process from Brazil’s incoming administration under Jair Bolsonaro.
Ricardo Navarro, of Friends of the Earth in El Salvador, said: “We must build an alternative future based on a just energy transformation. We face the threat of rightwing populist and climate-denying leaders further undermining climate protection and racing to exploit fossil fuels. We must resist.”
Another goal of the summit is for nations to increase their pledges to cut carbon emissions; currently they are on target for a disastrous 3C of warming. The prime minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, who led the 2017 UN climate summit, said his country had raised its ambitions. He told the summit: “If we can do it, you can do it.”

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