Save The Fucking Earth Already: Why I’m Probably Getting Arrested In Newcastle This Weekend
People aren't turning to civil disobedience over climate change because they like it. They're doing it because they have no other choice.
I was born into a world of rapid and unprecedented change – the end of the Cold War, a globalising economy, expanding US popular culture, and the advent of the technological era. Global leaders heralded a new period of peace and stability and an air of optimism emerged where no problem seemed too great to address.
On a warm summer night in late January 1991, my parents had their first of four children. Only a week later, the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC) was held in Washington, D.C.
This meeting laid the basis for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: a body which, 25 years on, still hasn’t achieved the necessary commitment and action from nations around the world to avoid the catastrophic climate change we are speeding towards.
2015 won the title as the hottest year on record and the 39th consecutive year of above- average global temperatures. In 2016, we’ve already seen communities face climate change-related displacement, from the Native American Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe to those living on the Carteret Islands and Atolls Temarai in Papua New Guinea.
Yet in the face of all of this, our leaders, many of whom will never face the full impacts of climate change, remain stuck in a rut of inaction and mediocrity. While many nations such as Scotland and Belgium are moving away from coal mining, one of the dirtiest ways to produce electricity, Australian state and federal governments are approving leases for new mines, like the gargantuan Adani mine in central Queensland.
As I became aware of the serious threat of climate change in our world, I started to wonder why our leaders weren’t taking it seriously. I mean, this is our future, right?
It took me some time to realise that there is a web of powerful interests, corrupt practices and huge profits to be made from the continued extraction of fossil fuels from the Earth, and that to change the situation we need to target those behind it all – the fossil fuel corporations.
So, despite my uneasy relationship with authority and aversion to breaking rules, I began participating in acts of civil disobedience. Actions that would physically disrupt the work of conservative MPs, fossil fuel corporations (and the big banks that fund them), and those profiting from climate change through investment, like our universities.
While we should recognise the steps taken with the 2015 Paris Agreement, we cannot forget that Australia remains the highest per capita emitter in the OECD and even the seemingly progressive state government in Victoria has failed to deliver strong action on climate change in its recent budget.
When governments fail, we must act.
From May 4-15, people all over the world will stand against the corrupt and destructive practices of the fossil fuel industry in a global wave of mass actions. The movement to Breakfree from fossil fuels in Australia will see hundreds, possibly thousands, converge on Newcastle Port in NSW to stop massive black coal carriers from departing. Lead by First Nations peoples from our region and communities on the frontlines of extraction, the action will remind politicians and the public that climate change is affecting people on a daily basis.
Many other young people like me, who have only ever lived in a world affected by climate change, will risk arrest to protect their future by sending a message to our leaders.
Yet it will be those same leaders — who refuse to act on climate change, who are responsible for and profit from Australia’s high emissions, who have passed harsh new laws to punish protestors and will leave our generation to fix this mess – that will condemn us. Brand us ‘troublemakers’, ‘ignorant and unknowing’, and ‘selfish’.
Credit: Kieran Jairath.
I am taking action on May 7-8 in Newcastle because, like so many others, I don’t want to look back in another 25 years and wish I’d done more. We may be attacked by conservative politicians and the media, but we know we have power, and so do they.
I was born into a world of rapid change, and today I find myself at a similar juncture in world history. Yet this time, with the power of grassroots mass movements, I am hopeful the change we experience will not be for the benefit of the rich, the powerful, and the profit-hungry. Rather, this change, our change, is for the people.
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Samuel Dariol is a social and environmental activist based in Melbourne. He writes, drinks coffee, and tweets from @sdariol