Environment Collective

To preface - I do not wish to simply lay out a list of events in this reflection, but rather put forward what the broad perspective of the Collective has been this year. The climate crisis is reaching a dire stage which warrants serious consideration for what the student union’s outlook should be.

In understanding the achievements of the Environment Collective this year it is worth turning back the clock. In 2020 under a Liberal Party run union the collective was essentially defunct, running few (if any) events, often in collaboration with (and in subordination to) the university proper. Never were these sparse events based around activism. But that was not unique to 2020 or even to Liberal student union years, this was a long standing trend. In my years at uni I cannot recall an active Environment Collective until 2021.

This is important because our work this year in the Environment Collective is humble, but of extreme importance. The last two years that I have been Environment Officer have been spent building a collective from the ground up and turning it into an activist space. A space in which students can express their animosity towards climate inaction and resist it.

This year we began by reaching out to students in O-week and week 1 with the collective hosting a meeting titled “Abolish the Rich to Save the Planet” . For decades destructive industries and companies have tried to shove the blame for climate change on students, workers and the poor. Companies like BP have told us to watch our “carbon footprints” while selling oil for extortionate profits (and spilling 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico!). So we have tried to highlight the hypocrisy of this corporate doublespeak and lay the blame on the true perpetrators of crimes against the planet - the rich.

Taking this as our starting point we have organised a variety of protests throughout the year with demands targeting government approved expansion of the fossil fuel industry and against the companies pursuing these projects.

In March we organised the Brisbane wing of the Global Climate Strike called by Greta Thunberg. In this time QLD and NSW were experiencing extreme flooding, but these disasters are no longer apolitical, unforeseeable tragedies. We know their increased frequency is caused by climate change- in particular greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels. Instead of bracing for these disasters, expanding SES services and flood relief provisions the government is expanding the fossil fuel industry!

This shows we cannot rely on the powers at the top of society to grant us climate action for they are only adding fuel to the fire. This is why activism matters, we cannot trust politicians and CEOs; they have lied to us for decades. We need to build a grassroots movement which challenges them and forces the change that we need. This is the project that the Environment Collective has been focused on building this year. It has been the efforts of not just myself but of the whole Collective in doing this, but we need more activists. So please, get involved.