Climate Activism

This is a quick video I produced of Quit Coal’s ‘Big Brother Ferguson Is Watching’ action:

Big Brother Ferguson Is Watching! from Quit Coal on Vimeo.

I recently wrote this letter to a hero of mine Tim Decristopher. If you don’t know who Tim is, please check out his website at www.bidder70.org

Dear Tim,

I am a social justice (especially climate change) activist from Melbourne, Australia who has been an admirer of yours since I first came across your case in 2010. In fact I wrote a piece in Adbusters last year which discussed your case and the psychology behind the Edward Abbey quote you’ve often mentioned, that sentiment without action is ‘the ruin of the soul’. I’ve been meaning to write you for a while now, but as I’m sure you’re aware, when you’re a climate activist it can be hard to find time for many things in life.

But today I’ve finally decided to do it. It’s New Years Eve, and also my birthday, so I figure my own activism and work can take a back seat for once.

There are a lot of things I’d like to tell you, the first is just a thank you. Thanks for being the inspiration and moral beacon that you are. You are a hero to me, and a hero to thousands of others. I also believe in time you will be a hero to millions.

I believe, too, that history shows that any social movement needs uncompromisingly principled beacons such as yourself to be successful. These are the people who don’t back away from confronting ugly situations for what they are, who are willing to speak the truth about injustice, and to act strictly in line with their conscience rather than in line with the norms of the society around them. These are the people that take moral arguments to their logical conclusions.

In essence I think that the actions taken by people are the cornerstone of social change, for the inspiration and moral compass you provide to people of conscience. And while no one can ever prove it, I have strong doubts whether all those people would have found the courage required to travel to Washington and brake the law outside the White House, finally forcing a concession from Obama on the Tar Sands pipeline (however small a victory it was) If it wasn’t for you and what you have done,. I know I myself, all the way on the other side of the world, was motivated to take one arrestable action this year for climate directly because I read your speech to the judge, and because I knew you were behind bars where you do not belong.

I really want you to know that, because I know activists, and I know that what you have done and who you are challenges them to the core. I know that you are going to meet (if you haven’t already) a horde of them whose competitiveness and insecurity will lead them to act like they stayed out of jail because they wanted to use their time more ‘productively’. They will say things such as ‘if we were in jail we couldn’t organise Tar Sands rallies’. They won’t admit that if you weren’t in jail no ne would be showing up to get arrested at their rallies and actions in the first place. Not now or ever will these activists admit this, because admitting that would mean that what you have done is a vital part of the movement and that more need to follow in your footsteps.

And that, let’s face it, is a scary thing.

But I admit it. You’re probably the most valuable person the climate movement has in the entire world right now. You have inspired me. And when, as I expect will happen, I follow you to jail for standing in the path of climate catastrophe, the people inspired by me will actually have been inspired by you too.

It is in this way that what we do for good, and what you have done, has a way of resonating far beyond comprehension. So no matter what anyone ever tries to tell you or insinuate, know that not a single second you spend behind bars is wasted.

With respect,

Paul Connor

I wrote this letter to the Magistrate sentencing me for last year’s office occupation of Cygnet Capital. I was a bit nervous about it and my Lawyer recommended I didn’t use it because of its lack of repentance.

The Presiding Magistrate,

Melbourne Magistrates Court

Your Honour,

In September this year I chained myself in an act of protest to three other people in the office of the finance company Cygnet Capital. When asked to leave I refused, and was subsequently arrested for trespass.

The reason I undertook this action was to protest and draw attention to the actions of Cygnet Capital, who are underwriting the operations of another company named Mantle Mining, which plans to establish a brown coal export industry in Victoria.

The reason I oppose these companies’ actions is simple: on the authority of the world’s leading scientific authorities, a failure to adequately reduce manmade greenhouse emissions will be very likely to produce dangerous and even catastrophic climate change, leaving the members of both our species (bar perhaps a privileged few) and others to suffer the consequences of ecosystem collapse. I therefore believe that seeking to profit from exporting brown coal from Victoria – home to enough brown coal to single-handedly push the planet past the so-called ‘2° guardrail’ often spoken of by governments as the barrier beyond which climate change becomes ‘dangerous climate change’ – is deeply immoral.

I also believe that the current laws of our society have fallen far out of step with the demands of morality when it comes to climate change. As it stands, our laws hold it perfectly legal for companies such as Cygnet Capital and Mantle Mining to seek profit by knowingly contributing to the foreseeable catastrophic consequences of climate change, and make it illegal for people such as myself to attempt to prevent them doing so. To me, this indicates that our current laws regarding such matters are wrong and in urgent need of regress.

Of course, in a democracy such as ours one can always use legal channels to change the law. In a basic way this is true. But to this basic truth I would attach two important caveats.

First, in the case of climate change the picture is more complicated. Greenhouse pollution diffuses across the globe, so the actions of any democratic society produce consequences that affect more people than just those able to participate in its democracy. Australian adults, for example, are able to campaign to change Australian law, but citizens of other countries cannot realistically do so, nor can members of other species, anyone still too young to have a public voice, or future generations. If the justification for democracy is that people deserves a say over decisions that effect them, then climate change presents us with a case in which this very justification may call for people within a democracy to step outside the bounds of their current law in order to protect the interests of those who cannot affect those laws, but who are nonetheless affected by them.

Second, I have tried legal channels. I have spent countless hours volunteering, campaigning, leafleting, letterboxing and doorknocking to promote responsible action on climate change. In 2009 I even went about as far as one can go via legal forms of political protest, starving myself two thirds (give or take) of the way to death on a 43 day water-only hunger strike outside our Parliament House in Canberra calling for climate action.

All these legal forms of political participation make a difference, and I do not repudiate them. I believe, however, that history shows civil disobedience to have an important and vital role to play in achieving social change.

People with a conscience have been violating what they see as immoral laws for millennia, and I personally believe it is a damn good thing that they have done so, for our civilization would not be where it is today if they had not.

I also believe, in the context of climate change, that it is only by people continuing to stand up for what is morally right, rather than what is simply legal, that our species stands a chance of getting ourselves out of the mess we are creating for ourselves.

But ideology and rhetoric aside, I do recognise that you have a job to do, and I only ask that when sentencing me you keep in mind the nature of my actions – that they were peaceful, that they harmed no one, and that they were born of nothing but compassion and a sense of moral duty to the victims of climate change, present and future.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Connor

December, 2011

This is a quick video I put together of a Christmas-themed media stunt/day of outreach by Quit Coal.

We Don’t Want Coal For Christmas! from Quit Coal on Vimeo.

This is a video I made of my anti-coal collective’s recent peaceful direct action out in Bacchus Marsh. It took me a while to finish whilst simultaneously learning to use Apple’s video editing software Final Cut Pro rather than the more easy to use but limited IMovie. The song is a short version of Go Count Your Money by my band Wildcat General Strike. Enjoy!

On Monday this week a small group of Stop HRLians woke before dawn and drove 60 kilometers West of Melbourne to Bacchus Marsh. I rode shotgun, filming everything for a video I would like to make about the day. Neil drove. Shaun, Maude and Maddie were in the backseat.

We made the trip to perform a peaceful direct action against Mantle Mining, who are currently undertaking exploratory drilling in the area and hoping to dig an open cut mine in order to establish a brand new international brown coal export industry.

It’s hard to explain how crazy it would be for Victoria to start exporting brown coal to the world, but I’m willing to try. If you already know that it’s crazy to start exporting brown coal from Victoria, I don’t know, skip over this bit.

In Victoria, we have a lot of brown coal. That’s why almost all of our electricity is generated by digging it up and burning it, which boils water, spins turbines, and voila, electricity. And that’s also why Victoria’s per capita greenhouse emissions are among the highest in the world, what with brown coal being so dirty and all.

But now, thanks to Australia’s new carbon price legislation, Victorian power is being dragged kicking and screaming away from it’s dirty brown coal-flavored teat and into the mid-20th century. Yes, you heard correctly. The Labor government’s tragi-comically inadequate one-fifth-the-scientifically-accepted-minimum carbon pricing legislation is actually going (eventually) to price brown coal out of the electricity market. That’s just how polluting brown coal is – you can’t even burn it in Australia anymore.

Yet like any kicking and screaming little brat, the Victorian brown coal industry is refusing to go to bed peacefully. Instead, a new plan is emerging – if we can no longer make money here out of the stuff, maybe we can make money elsewhere out of it? After all, there are countries out there whose poverty and low historical emissions means they don’t have to do as much on climate change as us, which as a result of our ineffectual efforts means they really don’t have to do anything. So…maybe we can sell them our brown coal?

To date, this kind of thinking has been thwarted by a lucky happenstance in physics. You couldn’t export brown coal simply because it would catch fire if it came in contact with air. And air is fairly ubiquitous in the majority of our trading partners. But rather than recognise what seems to have been a fairly blatant hint from the Gods regarding the favor with which they view brown coal exports, a company named Exergen has now devised a method of drying out brown coal, rendering it capable of being transported vast distances and burnt in countries with less ‘ambitious’ emissions targets than our own. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday I was arrested for trespassing at the office of a Melbourne finance company named Cygnet. Myself and three other protestors chained ourselves together in Cygnet’s foyer to demand a meeting with their director to discuss their decision to finance Mantle Mining’s plans to establish a brown coal export industry out of Bacchus Marsh in Victoria.

Me on the phone chained up in Cyget's office. The bearded copper behind us made a point of saying he agreed with what we were doing.

We did so alongside Bacchus Marsh locals, under the banner of ‘Farms Not Fossil Fuels’, a campaign title devised by the Stop HRL collective and put into the graphic form below by yours truly. A funny moment occurred during the protest when the managing director of Cygnet told these locals that ‘this is our area, you can’t be here!’ The locals, who are being told that they have no power to stop mining companies drilling on their properties and possibly taking their land, completely sympathized.

Read the rest of this entry »

What have I been up to lately? A lot of rehearsing with the band, a bit of getting dodgy hipster haircuts(!), a fair bit of hand therapy for my broken hand (long story) and a fair bit of this (it’s a video I wrote, scored and directed for the Stop HRL crew I’m in here in Melbourne):

I’m here today as a representative of the Stop HRL collective, a grassroots community group working alongside our partners at Environment Victoria, Greenpeace and Friends Of The Earth to stop HRL.

Our group are all volunteers, choosing to put our own time and effort towards stopping HRL. Since we got together earlier this year we’ve been spreading awareness of HRL in communities, a events, and in the media after occupying Ted Ballieu’s office last month and after pulling 60 to the EPA’s office last Friday with only two hours notice to protest their approval of HRL.

The reason the Stop HRL collective is doing all this is simple. James Hansen, the chief climate scientist of NASA in the USA, has said that ‘coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet’.  Now that is a pretty amazing quote, and it probably bears repeating. James Hansen, the brilliant scientist. Often called ‘the grandfather of climate science’. That is what he has said. Coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet. Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago Tim DeCristopher, the US climate activist charged with disrupting an auction of land parcels for fossil fuel exploration by entering the auction and bidding for land, was found guilty in a Salt Lake City courtroom.  He now faces up to 10 years imprisonment, with his sentencing scheduled for June 23^rd.

During his trial, Tim’s defence was not allowed to mention that the auction he disrupted was itself illegal, and that all of its sales were later overturned.

They were also not allowed to mention that he had in fact been able to raise enough money from supporters to afford the initial deposit on the land he had bid for.

And finally, they were also not even allowed to mention Tim’s motivation for entering the auctions – to stand in the way of the enormous threat of climate change, and to protect his future.

Tim took a courageous stand. As Naomi Klein has noted, it is ironic that he stands to be imprisoned because he had no intention of paying for his bids, while oil and gas companies are free to profit from the use of fossil fuels with absolutely no intention of paying the costs of the climate change they cause. Bill Mckibben has said of DeCristopher ‘he should be getting a medal, not a sentence….He was brave by himself; we need to be brave in quantity.’

Tim is a complete bloody hero, and just what each of us needs to be as members of what Simon Sheikh from the Australian group GetUp calls ‘the last line of defence for mother nature’ – the very last generation with a chance to act on climate change.

Tim needs our help and solidarity right now. Please go to his website to donate towards his defence fund and find out how else to help him, and join this facebook cause calling for Obama to pardon him.