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ENVIRONMENT


Adani Carmichael Megamine: the Franklin River of our times?


Everybody loves an epic light vs dark battle – this one’s happening right now in our backyard! One reignited ex-activist talks about his return for ‘the fight of our generation’.


by Michael Cauce


IMMEDIATE SPHERES For me, if the climate movement was a sci-fi movie, what’s happening right now in Australia feels a bit like Star Wars: The New Hope or, better yet, maybe Return of the Jedi – because, let’s face it; that’s when, with the odds against them and things looking bleak, the little guys step up and really stick it to the man/empire/ multinational coal mining giant. But I’m getting ahead of myself... I’ve always considered myself a


caring, considerate human (don’t we all?). But aside from a bit of RSPCA volunteer work in my youth (which had the cute fluffy animal drawcard), and attendance at the global 2003 peace rally (which I joined upon the suggestion from my partner when we stumbled across it in the street), I’m not sure that,


up to that point, I had ever really been particularly concerned with, or lifted a finger for, anyone or anything outside my immediate sphere. There’s nothing like a big relationship


break up to make you pause and take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror. Youthful looks aside, I didn’t really like what I saw. So in the midst of this soul searching that spanned most of 2005, I happened to pick up Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, No Logo. Quite simply, this book changed the trajectory of my life. Perhaps it was just my time and another book would have done the job, but I’m giving Naomi the props here. It’s an insightful and inspiring call to action against the deeply disturbing damage that insidious big corporations are doing to our communities and our world at large. It’s funny but no coincidence that she


got me fired up about social justice and now we’re both big into climate change. You don’t have to look very hard to see huge overlaps between the two issues.


SIMMERING BELOW THE SURFACE In 2006 at age 32, I found myself back at uni studying IT and working in a bank – could I BE any more regular corporate


Joe? I was still generally doing very little for anyone or anything outside my immediate sphere. The inspiration from Naomi was simmering just below the surface but had not yet fully materialised into focus or clear direction. Luckily, that’s when I started hanging out with young, passionate, idealistic uni students hell-bent on saving the world. Although I was looking for a social justice group to join, I stumbled upon the campus enviro group first, which piqued my interest. After rocking up to a few meetings, I felt compelled to do some reading about this ‘climate change’ business. So it was, that one sunny April


afternoon, on a computer in the La Trobe University library, I was casually reading some reports and news articles on climate science, when I had what is known in climate activist circles as my first ‘OH F#@K’ moment. That moment when the penny drops. That moment of deep realisation and horror of just how catastrophically dangerous climate change is for all life on the planet…(yay!)


INTO THE FRAY It quickly occurred to me that if our planet were a neighbourhood street, humankind was acting like the stereotypical foolish


JUNE 2017 7


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