More direct action against coal
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Last year, over 150 people were arrested for engaging in civil disobedience and direct action to stop the expansion of the coal industry. In the tradition of Martin Luther King, Ghandi and the Suffragettes, people the world over are increasingly taking to the streets and putting their bodies on the line to help force real action on climate change.
This morning, a team of Greenpeace activists chained themselves to one of the massive coal excavators at Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe valley. Hazelwood is a brown coal polluting dinosaur, built in the 60′s with 1950′s technology, it was due to be closed this year before being granted a new lease of life. Under the CPRS, International Power, the owners of Hazelwood, will be given millions of dollars in public handouts so that they can keep the plant operating for longer.
With an emissions trading scheme designed to protect the big polluters it is no wonder that more and more people are getting frustrated with Government inaction and are taking matters into their own hands.
Civil disobedience has played an important part in democracies the world over, and as Government failure on climate change becomes more accute, it is destined to play an increasing role in forcing change once more.
I reckon most people wouldn’t be up for this sort of thing – from the photo it looks pretty cold and desolate – but there are lots of ways that people are expressing their dissent. There were over two thousand people who peacefully and happily formed a human chain around Parliament on the first sitting day this year, in open disregard of police instructions. It was a beautiful, fun and friendly way for people to raise their voice. We sometimes forget that it is ultimately people who are powerful. We give our power to politicians to weild on our behalf – but if they fail to act in the public interest we can always take it back.
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Hazelwood looks like something out of the Soviet Union. At least this time the climate protesters went there rather than Loy Yang (which is significantly more efficient).
However it can’t be shut before new capacity is built. Peak demand in Vic was 10500MW last summer (10% more than forecast), nothing new can be built by next summer or possibly even 2011 summer. There is no reserve in Victoria in the event of a hot summer.
Note that International Power proposed an alternative to CPRS where the generators would be paid to shut-down (and replaced by gas/renewables) in rank order of their emissions intensity. Basically a centrally planned approach, rather than the market approach.
Really? I’d be very interested to hear about the International Power proposal for a phase out.
In IP’s submission/response to the CPRS Green Paper:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/greenpaper/consultation/pubs/0633-international-power-australia.pdf
An orderly euthanasing of the highest emitting power stations. No loss of asset value to the owners. No wind-fall gains to other market participants. Probably no major price rise to consumers (this does dampen the energy efficiency, consumption reduction signal).
Hazelwood is run on fairly thin margins. It has relatively high maintenance costs, but very low SRMC.
Bullsh*t, more along the line of “I’m gluten intolerant, No you’re not, you’re just attention seeking”
Apols to real Gluten challenged folks.
“people the world over are increasingly taking to the streets and putting their bodies on the line to help force real action”
Ahem, so why is the Green vote dropping in Tassie? (that’s rhetorical BTW)
The answer is that Tassie being the leader in many things has been “green” but realised that unless we all get our horses out it’s total and utter carp.
Note that International Power is a private electricity company, who owns and operates some of the La Trobe Valley power stations, so they have a vested interest, especially when it comes to Hazelwood.
So basically they’re asking the government to upgrade their equipment for them, and in exchange generously offering not to pass on the costs of the upgrade to the consumer.
Much nicer for them than having to pay a CPRS.
Anyway, back to the post:
Martin Luther King, Gandhi and the suffragettes weren’t against something full stop. They each had carefully laid out solutions to the problems they had identified.
Civil disobedience might be fun but it has to have a real purpose. The form of c.d. indulged in has to have not only a symbolic but a practical aspect to be effective – so Gandhi’s salt tax protest demonstrated the fact that people prepared to go down to the beach and boil seawater to obtain salt were breaking the law. The Civil Rights movements actions demonstrated that blacks could be jailed for eating at the same tables as whites. The suffragettes demonstrated that, without the vote, women could be subjected to inhumane treatment with no redress in law.
How does forming a ring around parliament (in defiance of police orders – how brave!- scarcely up there with a fractured skull from a British baton, being castrated by the KKK or being forcefed during a hunger strike), or chaining oneself to a power station send any kind of practical message?
Now, if they’d walked to Parliament House from their homes, or to Hazelwood, to the protests, that might have demonstrated commitment. Turning off all electricity in their homes for a week and sharing the experience with the media would have demonstrated commitment.
These two demonstrations weren’t even good media stunts (I’ve run a few). Until I read this article, I’d never heard of them.
I’m all for closing down the brown coal industry. I’m all for making pollies more accountable. If anybody thinks either of these protests will in any way lead to change in either of these areas, they are seriously deluded.
On reflection: their best form of protest would be to disconnect from the grid and demonstrate practically to the rest of us that it is possible to survive without brown coal fired energy.
They could then explain to their neighbours, friends and relatives how easy it is to do, convince them all of the need for it and create an effective grassroots movement that way.
This would put real pressure on power companies (I’m assuming their message would spread, because of their commitment and passion) to change.
The more I think about this article, the crosser I feel.
Honestly, do you really think linking arms around Parliament House or chaining people to Hazelwood power station is in the tradition of Gandhi, King and the suffragettes?
The American negroes protested against the laws that said that they had to sit at the back of the bus by refusing to use buses and walking everywhere. This was a practical response to the problem and underlined the bus company’s dependence on them as clients.
Gandhi demonstrated his rejection of British values by weaving his own cotton and making his own clothes. Every aspect of his life was meant to serve as a moral lesson. (I find him a bit self centred, but that’s not the point).
The suffragettes chained themselves to fenceposts, went on hungerstrikes, were beaten and imprisoned. Finally, one threw herself under a horse, giving her life for the cause. To take these actions, they made themselves social pariahs and outcasts, often facing rejection by their families and friends.
Do you really think a couple of thousand people meeting in the city for an hour or so compares with this? Do you really think a couple of gentlemen getting slightly chilly is in that tradition?
I think you’re cheapening the real, ongoing, lifechanging sacrifices made by Gandhi, King and the suffragettes (in some cases, including facing death for their beliefs).
Zoomster, sorry that you feel cross about it. I’ll explain why I think there is a historical connection with these other movements.
The civil rights movement and the indian independence movements, like any social movement, took place in a particular social context. In both cases, people were routinely killed by the aggressors. As you may know, some of the tactics of both of these movements were consciously chosen in order to provoke an extreme response from powerholders in order to galvanise popular support behind the movement. The beatings that people willingly provoked and took were part of a wider context of violence that they were trying to stop.
We don’t have this kind of context today. Activists occassionally get beaten up by police in logging protests in the middle of nowhere, but the last time there was widespread police violence against protesters in Australia was S11 in Melbourne in 2000, and before that was probably Aidex. We don’t live in a context of open, state sanctioned violence against activists – thankfully. So I think you need to put todays climate change protests into the current social context.
The other issue relates to escalation. In most social movements there is a gradual radicalising of people as they build their confidence in challenging what they see as illegitimate authority. This happened in the civil rights movement through the Martin Luther King training school, the Highlander centre and other training programmes. And it happened in the Indian liberation movement. It is now happening in the climate movement. For many hardened activists, the encircling of parliament house was not considered to be civil disobedience – it was just a morning in a nice sunny place. But for others, it was the first time they had been part of anything that openly challenged authority. It is a sign of the obedience and deeply engrained respect for authority within our culture. You may trivialise this experience, but as someone who was encouraging people to do it, i was surprised by the level of fear among some people, many of whom had never been to any kind of protest before. Hoperfully it was a radicalising event for these people – one small step towards something more powerful.
Regarding the kind of activism that has seem people blocking coal train lines and coal power stations, if you have ever done this, you would know that it can be a very dangerous thing and people actually put their lives at risk. They get arrested and charged. They get fines and criminal records. I agree it isn’t the same as being beaten to death – and am grateful for this.
A lot of people are choosing to protest about climate change by getting off the grid and living low impact lifestyles. You don’t hear about these people so much because it is often an individualised form of activism that plays out privately.
And the very nature of climate change as a problem makes it difficult to identify coherent points of intervention if you want to solve the problem. Yes you can make positive changes in your own life but voluntary action isn’t going to solve the problem. The thing that will solve this problem is political action.
Where people choose to focus their efforts depends on their world view, and how they think change happens.
It seems to me that the tradition of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience celebrates a number of principles. One is obviously non-violence. Another is standing up for your own values/ideals/beliefs and in so doing either breaking the law or openly disregarding authority. Another is risking some kind of personal loss or damage (physical, social, economic or emotional). I’m starting to see all of this in the climate movement – although it is growing far more slowly than I would like.
Thanks for your response, John.
I do understand where you’re coming from – and had similar experiences when organising anti Kennett demonstrations in the late 1990s, with passionate, articulate people turning into gobs of jelly when confronted with a TV reporter or actually being asked to challenge THE PREMIER in person.
My biggest point would be that the level of commitment shown isn’t the same. The negroes boycotting the buses at Montgomery didn’t expect that their protest was newsworthy; they were simply doing what they felt they had to.
Similarly, I organised an anti Pauline Hansen protest – the first one, to my knowledge, ever staged, at a time when people thought she did represent a majority view. You would have enjoyed it. We had a picnic, live music, statues (I kid you not) and then marched to the gates of the event, where we staged a silent vigil.
Although – in the event – the number marching blew us away, at one stage I was fully convinced that it was just going to be me and the dog walking. I was prepared to do it anyway.
My concern is that the protests – as you described them – sounded very dilettante. I got the impression that the participants were catching a train into the city or driving to Hazelwood, spending an hour being-not-very-uncomfortable and then going home.
In other words, a token protest.
Comparing this to what King/Gandhi/the suffragettes endured seemed to me to be trivialising their sacrifices.
So celebrate what’s happening, keep on doing it and encouraging others to do it, but don’t over egg the pudding. Use Gandhi and King and the suffragettes experiences as examples to your protestors (as we did at our Hansen protest) to point out that what you’re asking them to do is actually quite a small, achievable thing – and the lengths to which they could go to if they’re really committed.
Again, thanks for your response.
Zoomster, thanks for your considered reply.
I agree with you that comparing these steps of direct action do seem trivial in comparison to the sacrifices made by people in other social movements. And in all honesty, I expect that the climate movement will only really start to become more effective when people are willing to make much larger sacrifices. The problem, again, is that the issue is so large, broad and nebulous that any intervention is always going to seem trivial and arbitrary – making it more difficult to really draw a line in the sand – unless you see individual protests as part of the growing global phenomenon of climate activism.
Where do we get our power from if not from places like Hazelwood?
I was really looking forward to joel23 making a substantial point, but it never happened. I wanted him to nail the point that demonstrations, protests and civil disobedience are simply tactics…and that tactics are blind without a cogent strategy aimed at actually achieving objectives, y’know? That political action must be tied directly to facilitating specific outcomes and NOT the delusion that a bunch of people joining hands and feeling euphoric about ‘the moment’ are actually changing a goddam thing.
Personally, I desperately ache for some meaningful progress away from over-consumptive, un-sustainable lifestyles fueled by non-renewable energy, toward the exact opposite…but this isn’t advancing the cause one bit. The great, self-destructive failure of contemporary green activism is this mypoic view that just ‘feeling the energy’ moves the agenda forward. I oughta know; I was a member of Resistance too when I was 16.
It’s quite simple, people: the government, the energy corporations and any other ogres you care to list are NOT the battleground. No matter how loud you shout nor how many enthusiasts you encourage to link arms in The Struggle…they’re not listening; you’re too easy to ignore. The sooner the green movement unchains itself from the trees and visions of a pre-industrial utopia and focuses on speaking in calm, rational terms to the broad, unaligned political middle ground whose primary concern is their own happiness and loved ones…the sooner they’ll shake this lunatic-fringe stigma that, sadly, is currently pretty well an accurate assesment, by-and-large. Governments and businesses live and die by the tide of POPULAR OPINION. Or more specifically, popular behaviour. So base your strategy on shifting that. Not on demonstrations. Not on symbolic street theatre. And not on joining hands and singing from the green activist hymn book.
It’s called Marketing. And perhaps the fact that’s been such an irretrievably dirty word amongst the green left over the last few decades might have something to do with why the message could be taking longer than expected to sink into the mainstream. And even then, I’m more inclined to believe the ‘mainstream’ are slowly figuring it out for themselves, without thoroughly un-persuasive gestures like linking hands around parliament house and marching down city streets waving placards.
Just a thought.
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