Sydneysiders joining the global 350.org movement that’s rising to the challenge of the climate crisis. Undermining the fossil fuel industry. The political power of the fossil fuel industry is the key obstacle to government action on climate change.In Australia it’s either prevented or diluted domestic climate policies, and obstructed all efforts to reach international agreements on climate, since the 1980s. Until that power is reduced all efforts to lobby politicians are hamstrung, because there is a richer and more powerful lobby on the other side pushing in the other direction, so far very successfully.
We work to reduce their influence by removing their social licence, on the one hand, and by showing how their business plans make no financial sense, on the other. Our main tactics are fossil fuel divestment and non-violent direct action. We know even rich industries can lose political power when public opinion shifts against them: we have seen this with the asbestos and tobacco industries. And we know that movements can systematically shift public opinion by removing the social license of destructive industries: we’ve seen this with the movement to divest from companies supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa, and more recently with the Australian campaign against the asbestos industry, lead by the labour movement.
Strengthening the movement for climate justice.
We are focused on climate justice. We want a just transition away from fossil fuel use, and we support the fights of communities currently affected by fossil fuel extraction and by the climate change it causes. The climate is already changing, and in ways which magnify disadvantage and injustice. In Australia drought, bushfire and flooding affect rural communities historically neglected by city-based governments. In the cities heatwaves hit hardest on the poorest and the oldest in the community; since women earn less and live longer than men this impact is concentrated on women.
Outside Australia it is affecting poorer countries earlier and more severely than richer countries, and countries which have contributed the least of the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere harder than those which have contributed the most.
The push to ever more extreme forms of fossil fuel extraction, too, hurts indigenous and rural communities by destroying existing ecosystems and leaving behind pollution, with impacts on health and livelihood. Once fossil fuel extraction begins in a community the ecological base for other industries like agriculture or tourism is gradually lost; this can put communities in a lose-lose dilemma where they choose between entrenched poverty and destroying the country they depend on. A just transition away from fossil fuels also means supporting communities which currently depend on fossil fuel extraction, so they can transition to other industries.