Farms Not Fossil Fuels Op Ed (and comment war!)

September 9, 2011 in Climate Activism, Opinions | 1 comment

This Op Ed was published on Crikey’s ‘Rooted’ blog on Tuesday, giving rise to the War-And-Peace-Epic 11,000 word comment war I’ve included below for shits and giggles.

Don’t be fooled, Mantle are in it for the money

Few could accuse Mantle Mining company director Ian Kraemer of lacking rhetorical ambition. Attending a public meeting in Bacchus Marsh last week to explain his plan to turn local farmlands into a brown coal mine, Kraemer was keen to talk up his environmental credibility. ‘Brown coal’, he told locals present, ‘has the ability to be the saviour of the planet’.

Now, given brown coal’s status as one of the world’s most polluting fossil fuels, this seems an odd statement. Yet Kraemer is adamant it can be defended. Mantle, he says, plans to use a special technique developed by another company, Exergen, to remove moisture from the coal, thereby reducing its greenhouse emissions by up to 40%. Given that countries such as China and India are likely to use brown coal for some time to come, he argues, it makes good environmental sense to help them to burn it in a cleaner way.

But can we trust Kraemer’s reasoning here? To begin, let’s examine the claim that Exergen’s coal-drying technology will reduce greenhouse emissions from burning brown coal by up to 40%. A quick review of the company’s very own promotional material shows how deceitful that figure really is. Read the rest of this entry »

Farms Not Fossil Fuels Sit-In

September 9, 2011 in Climate Activism | No comments

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 »

Wildcat General Strike Logo

September 5, 2011 in Design | No comments

I recently watched Dig! on Youtube. I reckon you can probably tell. This was the design the band ended up settling on.

Stop HRL DA Pledge Video

August 18, 2011 in Climate Activism | No comments

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):

Go Count Your Money

July 22, 2011 in Songs | 1 comment

Listen: Go Count Your Money

Take me from this violence
Trampled in a stampede
Millions of acquaintances

Drowning in the shallows
Please don’t live in shadows
Let me see you small and frail

I’ve been thinking so long
Of what I’ll say to you
As I save you

What are you worth?/Who do you work for?
What do you do?/What is it to you?
When do you get out of here?

So count your money/Don’t rock the boat
Have some mercy/Along with your hatred
I’ll be waiting here for you

Go count your money I’ll get the Vaseline
I’ll give you a smile if you bark like a dog for me
And if you want a smorgasbord we’ll get one for your decadent horror show

You can never know
What’s in store for you
What’s in store for you

Let it go
Let it fall
Let it go

Stop HRL Snap Rally Speech 24/5/11

May 26, 2011 in Climate Activism | 2 comments

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 »

I’d Love To Have Sex With You

May 5, 2011 in Songs | No comments

Click to listen: I’d Love To Have Sex With You

I’ve decided everything I ever did was wrong
I’ve been undercover, covering my arse

And I wanted I wanted I wanted to touch you
But I’m probly, I’m probly, I’m probly gonna drop it,
‘Cause I’m clearly, I’m clearly, I’m clearly on my last legs

And she’s always a woman
I’m always a man
And it’s much of a muchness
But I’d love to have sex with you

I’d love to have sex with you

O World where I live, so achingly stupid.
I walk you alone and try to make sense of
My fumbled attempts at propitiation
And at sex with you

Sow the seeds and reap the fields
Take your daily bread

O World where I live, so achingly stupid.
I walk you alone and try to make sense of
My fumbled attempts at propitiation
And at sex with you

All these years of pain and tears,
Blood and sweat and toil

All these years of pain and tears,
And blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood motherfucker!

Climate hero facing 10 years in jail – Support Tim DeCristopher

March 16, 2011 in Climate Activism | 1 comment

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 23rd.

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.

Even If Your Voice Shakes – Egyptian Revolution Tribute Song

March 15, 2011 in Songs | 1 comment

Friend I swear that I will kill you if I see you on the other side
Of this barricade

In the dark I heard an ambulance rush past but I would not admit
Its significance

Touch me
With everything you have left
With everything you pray for
With everything your life has come down to

Say it
Even if your voice shakes
Even to your children
Say you’re going to have your God damn rights now

And in my life I had no choice
And in my nights I had no rest
And in my hands I held
This country I was born

And if I ever let you down
And if I ever gave you hope
In my life I was pull-
I was pulling at the seams to see it, to see it come down tonight

To see it come true tonight

To see all the world turn around

Friend I swear that I will kill you if I see you on the other side
Of this barricade

Die Like A Man

February 2, 2011 in Songs | No comments

Listen: Die Like A Man

And for good measure, here is a new song.

Die like a man

I need a lover
To get me out of bed
I need a purpose
I need to feel that something you promised to promise could actually come

Your reflection
In eyes alight with shame
And in the paper
You see them frame their questions as answers that answer the questions they gave

All the world is a housefire
“Ah…” the angels sigh,
“How we yearned to live,
“To die like a man,
“With blood on our hands,
“And never look down,
“And never admit what we’ve done”

Glued together
By the reading light
She was ready
And though our hearts were heavy we did it we did it to fill up our lives

All the world is a housefire
“Ah…” the angels sigh,
“How we yearned to live,
“To die like a man,
“With blood on our hands,
“And never look down,
“And never admit what we’ve done”

Cyclone Yasi – A Facebook Message

February 2, 2011 in Climate Activism, Musings, Opinions | 1 comment

Whoah.

I haven’t posted anything here in a looong time. After finishing my thesis the sight of microsoft word tended to induce me to rock back and forth in the fetal position and sweat profusely. But I’m OK now. I’m back. I think.

This is just a note I put on facebook tonight, reflecting about the terrifying cyclone that tonight is smashing into the north-east of my country. I have a number of facebook ‘friends’ who really aren’t very environmental, and I was wondering if perhaps this cyclone might be a way to reach some of them and engage them in a discussion of climate change. It started as a status update, but I then just kept on typing. There’s a lot that needs to be said.

Anyway, it went like this:

Hi, facebook friends.

Any of you not sure what you should do with your life? Well, I want you to look at the cyclone hitting Australia now. Cyclones are more intense now, and more frequent, as a result of climate change. But here’s the thing – the climate hasn’t even CHANGED that much yet. Read the rest of this entry »

Books (and one documentary) that have changed me

December 1, 2010 in Musings | 1 comment

Having now finished my university degree, I find myself in the unusual position of having some spare time with which to read books and watch films, and am wondering where to begin. So I would like recommendations! I want to be inspired, and educated, and moved. Below is a list of the 6 works that have probably had the greatest influence over my life so far. What, in your opinion, should be added to it?

1. Dead White Males by David Williamson

Assigned to my year eleven literature class, I read this play half-stoned on my old bunk-bed while on a visit back to Wangaratta. Living away from home for the first time and running off the rails, I had convinced myself I was undergoing some kind of heroic rite of passage into manhood, and Williamson’s take on the resilience of gender roles in post-modern society seemed full of just the long-hidden secrets I was searching for. Never again would my machismo be natural or un-analysed. Read the rest of this entry »

Autonomy as Choice-Responsiveness

November 24, 2010 in Philosophy | No comments

With this essay I will propose an account of autonomy that contrasts starkly with the majority of current philosophical discourse on the topic. Much of this discourse, I will suggest, has been misguided by an assumption shared by virtually all of its influential contributors – that agents are capable of actions that are within their power to avoid but nonetheless are not the result of their own autonomous agency. I will argue, however, that this in fact represents a mistake, and that autonomy is actually far simpler than this discourse suggests. By dispensing with this assumption, I will set out an alternate view – ‘autonomy as choice-responsiveness’ – that I believe allows us far greater clarity on the concept. Read the rest of this entry »

Kripke and Descriptivism: Why We Know What We’re Talking About

November 24, 2010 in Philosophy | No comments

When we use names, we pick out things in the world. When I say ‘Barrack Obama’ for example, I use words to refer to a certain person. And it is often assumed that it is the beliefs I possess about Obama – that he spent time in Indonesia as a child, that he beat McCain, and so on – that make this possible. When we find the man who grew up in Indonesia and beat McCain, this view goes, we will have found my reference. This is ‘descriptivism’: the idea that the reference of names is fixed by their descriptions. It was this view that Saul Kripke sought to deny in his Naming and Necessity. Via numerous examples, Kripke argued that the beliefs a speaker associates with names are neither necessary nor sufficient to fix their reference. I will here examine Kripke’s claims, and suggest that while they do illuminate certain key modifications that should be made to descriptivism they do not ultimately damage its standing as the best available explanation for the way in which the reference of names is fixed. Read the rest of this entry »

Science and Common Sense

November 24, 2010 in Philosophy | No comments

This essay is about the relationship between science and common sense. I would like to admit at its outset, though, that it will lack any particularly strong arguments or points to prove, and will, as much as possible, avoid taking a position on any major philosophical disagreements. Instead, I will here take on a different mode of philosophical work, which while perhaps not as exciting as more direct argumentation, is nonetheless something that I believe needs doing – a thorough analysis of the concepts that are at play within the subject. By so doing, I will try to shed light on what I believe are some important and perhaps under-appreciated distinctions that are shaping current debates. Hopefully what results will have some value for that. Read the rest of this entry »

Leaving Some Behind: Utilitarianism, Trade-Offs and Preferences

November 24, 2010 in Philosophy | No comments

There is a common reaction I receive when I tell people I am partial to the moral theory of utilitarianism; it tends to occur when my interlocutors have a surer-than-average footing in the humanities, and is something quite like indignation. Utilitarianism is well known to these types; it is the villain of moral theories, and they exhibit great pride in their ability to recite its flaws. Utilitarianism ‘leaves some behind’ they say. It is ‘unfair to minorities’. It ‘justifies anything’. A recent Internet video shared amongst a number of my friends captures this mood well. ‘We are not’ it informs us, ‘soft-wired for aggression, violence, self-interest, utilitarianism…’[1] Public intellectual Clive Hamilton fans the flames. ‘The utilitarian model,’ he writes, ‘in which agents calculate the best means of maximising social welfare without regards to its effects on individuals, is a sociopathic one…’[2] But this, I believe, has gone too far. In fact, I think that philosophical academia has done public moral discourse a great disservice by promoting the notion that these common charges against utilitarianism stand upon a firm theoretical ground. They do not. With this paper I will examine what are possibly the two most widely accepted moral arguments against utilitarianism, and contend that contrary to common belief, these arguments find virtually no theoretical support in any plausible philosophical doctrine. By so doing I will attempt to show how far I believe our discussion of utilitarianism has gone off the rails, and how a fresh look at some old arguments may be able to right its course. Read the rest of this entry »

Sentiment With Action

August 17, 2010 in Climate Activism, Opinions | 3 comments

This article was published in Adbusters #91, the  ’I, Revolution’ issue. Right at the back. But that’s cool, because I read magazines back-to-front. Don’t know why, just do. :)

It’s late. Maybe 2, or 3am, and I’m scanning my email inbox for anything important I might have missed. Eventually I notice a message that lists the names of two famous activists – Bill Mckibben and Naomi Klein – in its subject header.

The email is a ‘call to action’ soliciting support for Tim DeCristopher, a climate change activist who faces 10 years in jail after disrupting an auction of oil and gas leases in Utah.

I’m interested in this, and not just because of the facts – that by his fake bidding, DeCristopher prevented the Bush administration selling off 14 parcels of land for fossil fuel extraction – and is being prosecuted despite the new US administration ruling that the land had been inappropriate for sale. I’m actually interested largely because I’ve recently been thinking a lot about jail, and wondering about what role it might play in the peoples movement for just action on climate change. So I want to know more about Tim DeCristopher.

On his website (www.bidder70.org) there is a video of DeCristopher speaking at a climate rally in Salt Lake City last October. An athletic-looking 26-year-old with a shaved head and intense eyes, he speaks loudly and succinctly, like a charismatic churchman in full swing. At times he even breaks into gospel song.

There is more than a hint of spirituality in his speech, too. He tells the crowd of his personal awakening – that every day since his action, despite knowing he may soon be behind bars, he has walked a little taller, and felt a little more free. He also offers them a form of salvation, promising that it will be the social struggle for a safe climate and sustainable future that will make us the truly noble beings we were meant to be. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kids And The Nation

August 5, 2010 in Songs | No comments

Listen: The Kids And The Nation

Wake at night time
And say your prayers
You are the kids and the nation
You are the ultimate friends
I want to live in your future
I want to die in your arms
And I want to be naked
Like I never was

This life’s not good enough for our life
This time we kill deserves to die
And as we danced in circles we were brilliant
Like a burning star

So chase the fireworks
Through your dreams
Jumping over the fences
Tearing up your jeans
And for the love of your family
You would stand and fight
They can take your freedom
But they can’t take your life

This life’s not good enough for our life
This time we kill deserves to die
And as we danced in circles we were brilliant
Like a burning star

You’re so good, in the field where they lay you out
You’re so good, the community’s up in arms
You’re so good, and I’m not going to let you die
You’re so good, lift your hands up into the sky

The nation x32

Great News: Ted Glick Avoids Jail

July 7, 2010 in Climate Activism | No comments

Fantastic news today for all climate activists around the world: Ted Glick, Climate Justice Faster and policy director of the US NGO Chesapeake Climate Action Now was spared the ordeal of a jail sentence for peacefully unfurling banners reading “GREEN JOBS NOW” and “GET TO WORK” inside the U.S. Senate Hart Office Building last September. Hundreds of fellow activists and climate concerned citizens from all over the world wrote letters in support of Ted to his judge, and packed out his courtroom in solidarity, and it seems to have some effect. What was looking almost certainly like at least a few months, and quite possibly years, of jail time became simply a good behavior bond and community service, as Ted walked free from the court amongst friends and supporters.

Here is the poignant and powerful statement Ted read out in court:

Ted Glick’s Sentencing Statement, July 6, 2010

Your honor, I’d like to focus my statement on the “why” of the September 8th action, about which I was not able to testify at my trial. I’ll begin with a quote from a March 4th, 2010 press release from the U.S. National Science Foundation. It concerns the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas 70 times as strong as carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. This release begins: Read the rest of this entry »

Court

June 17, 2010 in Climate Activism, Musings | 1 comment

Yesterday I appeared, clean shaven and underslept, in the Melbourne magistrates court to answer the charge of trespass which I incurred last year at a protest calling for the closure of Hazelwood power station. It was quite an experience.

This was the second time in my life that I have been to court. The first was after I dented a car with a drunken teenage kick outside a pub in suburban Melbourne. A long time ago now, I can’t remember much about the hearing, except being slightly annoyed that the judge involved made an incorrect assumption in his statement about his decision to fine me, which I was unable to correct. It wasn’t of great consequence, and his decision was fair, but it still irked me slightly that there could be anything even slightly arbitrary in the execution of such an authoritative role.

And yesterday, again, the same thing seemed to occur. I was denied a ‘diversion’ – an odd construct at the very bottom of an overly complex hierarchy of legal consequences – on the basis of my previous conviction. The dented car.

Now, fair enough, I suppose, but again, it was all just so hopelessly vague and disempowering. I was first given a long form to fill out, which included a question asking if I had ever been convicted of an offense before. Helpfully, it included details about my previous case, which had written underneath in capitals: NO CONVICTION. Naturally, I answered no. Read the rest of this entry »

« Older entries § Newer entries »