An environment of solidarity
As Australia emerges from the proverbial frying pan of COVID-19, we are leaping straight back into the fire of anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation. IE journalist Angus Hoy writes of the challenges and opportunities facing the union movement as we tackle this global threat. Growth of the movement The global environmentalism movement is at a crossroads. By any measure, the state of the Earth has never been more dire. While the volume of conversation around environmentalism and sustainability has never been louder, and environmental organisations are larger and more sophisticated than ever before, the state of the environment continues to degrade. Modelling has shown that the 2020 Coronavirus response is set to cause the largest ever annual fall in CO2 emissions – a reduction of a whopping… 5.5%. This meagre reduction is still greater than during any previous economic crisis or period of war. While the COVID-19 pandemic response has led to massively reduced emissions by the transport sector, research has shown the same cannot be said for the electricity sector in Australia. In releasing The Australia Institute’s
National Energy Emissions Audit, the report’s author Dr Hugh Saddler said, “Given the disruptive nature of the pandemic and its effect on sectors like transport, it might surprise some that the carbon emissions from electricity – the polluting sector in Australia – have been so small.” Despite this, there are reports that coal generators and retailers are using the health crisis to lobby to slow down reforms to the National Electricity Market that would allow renewable energy to compete against them. The reality is that, according to the United Nations Environment Program and IPCC modelling, emissions need to be cut by 7.6% every year to keep global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels – the threshold at which the most dangerous climate threats become realised. “The main issue is that people focus way too much on people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In other words, as summed up in a viral Facebook post, “the people of earth accidentally did a global experiment to see if every individual could course correct climate change through a mass personal change of habits, and it
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turns out, no! We can’t! It was massive corporate activity all along!” The myth of individual personal responsibility for climatic outcomes appears to have been thoroughly debunked. To conclude that there is no place for individuals to engage in grassroots action, however, is a dangerous misinterpretation and abdication of responsibility. Isolated individuals acting alone cannot achieve the necessary change, but individuals coming together to create a collective movement and voice are in with a fighting chance. Unionists have long known the power of organising like this. Green bans: Jack Mundey and Joe Owens On 10 May 2020, the Australian union movement mourned the passing of an icon, Jack Mundey, who died at the age of 90 in Sydney. Mundey was an environmentalist, a social justice activist and a staunch union leader, widely celebrated for his internationally pioneering role in the ‘green bans’ movement of the early 1970s. Mundey, Secretary of the NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) from 1968 to 1973, was followed as Secretary by an equally strong campaigner, Joe Owens, from 1973 to 1975. During the period of the Mundey and Owens leadership, the union forged alliances with local residents across Sydney and NSW to impose
