We are living in an era of overlapping crises: from climate catastrophe to devastating wars, alongside the age-old ravages of inequality at home and across the globe. As these struggles escalate, many ordinary people are questioning their own responsibility, and possibility their complicity, in these disasters. What prospects are there for responding? What avenues for meaningful action?

With the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, these concerns have come into sharper focus. This panel of experts, with a particular focus on the context of financialised globalisation, will examine some of these uncomfortable questions, and our moral and ethical obligations to address adverse human rights and climate justice impacts.

Professor David Kinley holds the Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Sydney Law School. David has worked for 25 years as a consultant and adviser on international and domestic human rights law in (or with agencies from) China, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Thailand, Iraq, Nepal, Laos, the Pacific Islands, and Myanmar. His particular expertise is in human rights and the global economy, focusing on the respective roles and responsibilities of corporations and states.

Dr Claire Parfitt is a Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney, where she completed her doctorate in 2020. A critical engagement with ethical investing and corporate sustainability, her research contributes to debates in the social studies of finance, moral philosophy, economic geography, cultural economy, intellectual property and interdisciplinary accounting literatures.

Dr Richard Denniss: Executive Director of the Australia Institute. Richard is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and has spent the last twenty years moving between policy-focused roles in academia, federal politics and think-tanks. He was also a Lecturer in Economics at the university of Newcastle and former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. He is a regular contributor to The Monthly and the author of several books including: Econobabble, Curing Affluenza and Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next?

This panel will take the form of an extended Q&A. Please consider sending your questions in the registration form.

This event is hosted by the Sydney Peace Foundation with the support of the University of Sydney and the Australia Institute.

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It is demonstrating in real-time what equality and equity looks like for complete populations, and what happens when vulnerable people in society are set aside for too long. We are living through a global lesson of how we can work together on a whole of society approach.

We must transfer these lessons in a collective response to climate change so that humanity can survive and prosper.

Climate crisis is an immediate threat. The impact of rising temperatures threatens human rights, peace and justice. Climate change and extreme weather events, environmental degradation, and water stress lead to hunger, famine, loss of livelihoods, displacement, and irregular migration. Unless climate change is addressed, millions of people will be denied food, water, housing, health, work and life.

Extreme weather events cause resource scarcity and make land inhabitable, intensifying inequality and conflict. Climate change has a disproportionate impact in conflict-affected and developing countries that depend on agriculture for their prosperity. Climate action is the most pressing peace work of our time.

As we are witnessing, and living through with COVID-19, equality for all needs to be at the centre of our global response to climate change. The virus is reframing our world perspective and it is up to all of us to learn from this experience, support each other through it, and transfer these lessons into our response to climate change. If we collaborate, we can achieve real outcomes on climate change.

When we get through this period, we will know that the changes needed to address climate change are possible – humanity can adapt through innovation and consolidation of our attitudes and behaviors.

Susan Biggs is Executive Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation

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December 12, 2019: Scott Morrison was having a so-so day. He had faced international criticism of the Government’s response to climate change. Bushfires were raging up and down the coast of NSW, and Sydney had been smothered in smoke for days on end.

He got up that day and felt the need to assure voters he really did understand that there was a link between the bushfires and climate change. This was, of course, after some earlier dog-whistling comments that suggested that there was no such link. Nothing to see here. Also, now is not the time. Thanks PM. Nothing a good trip to Hawaii couldn’t fix.

December 12, 2015: 195 nations came to a consensus about how best to tackle climate change and cinched the Paris Climate Agreement. Scott was the Treasurer, serving Malcolm Turnbull as Australia’s still quite new PM. Malcolm announced Australia’s willingness to join the Paris Agreement with aplomb, highlighting the great challenge facing humanity, a challenge that would be met head-on by human ingenuity and invention.

At a global level, the Paris deal was welcomed. There was ambition laid out in these new global plans. There was also a fair amount of hard-negotiated pragmatism. We had a commitment to limit global warming to under 2-degrees Celsius, coming at least close to the 1.5-degree limit that is expected to avoid catastrophic environmental changes. We had days and nights – over years, not weeks – of departmental advisers and UN officials crafting a document that courageously worked out the specifics of this commitment. The result: a final, smiling, hand-shaking photo of leaders in agreement. And a global plan to address climate change.

At the Sydney Peace Foundation, we’re all feeling more than a bit nostalgic for a time when there was positive energy from political leaders – founded on international collaboration and hard-won negotiation – on climate action. Actually, much more than a bit nostalgic. We’re desperate.

All around the globe, the climate crisis is happening right now. And it is an affront to human rights, peace and justice.

The connection between climate crisis and human rights violations is clear. Environmental degradation and water stress lead to hunger, famine, loss of livelihoods, displacement, and irregular migration. These connections are already impacting lives in the Pacific, Middle East, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The IDMC says that since 2008, an average of 26.4 million people per year have been displaced from their homes by disasters brought on by natural hazards. This is the equivalent to one person being displaced every second.

Savio Carvalho, Amnesty International’s Senior Advisor on International Development and Human Rights, draws the line directly:

Unless emissions are reduced significantly, around 600 million people are likely to experience drought and famine as a result of climate change…the right to life, health, food, water and housing are already under threat.

Climate change is also transforming the security landscape. In 2019, for the first time, the Global Peace Index identified climate change as a considerable threat to global peace in the next decade. This is because the impacts of climate change wear away the capacity of states to prevent conflict. Erratic weather patterns and extreme weather events cause resource scarcity and render land inhabitable, intensifying inequality and conflict.

Where there is lower capacity for states to respond, adapt to and recover from climate-induced disasters, marginalization and local grievances intensify. Climate change disproportionately impacts economic development in conflict-affected countries that depend on agriculture for their prosperity.

How will states the world over deal with this challenge in a just manner, at a time when the world continues to get hotter? Australia’s most recent experience with bushfires suggests that we – even as one of the wealthiest countries on the planet – are decidedly not ready. As past Sydney Peace Prize Winner Naomi Klein has said:

Make no mistake about it, it’s not just about things getting hotter and wetter, it’s about things getting a lot meaner and uglier.

So: there can be no choice. We must act now to curb climate change. We – and most importantly our political leaders – must act with the speed and drive of knowing that climate action is the most pressing peace work of our time.

The Sydney Peace Foundation will focus exclusively on this core challenge to global peace and justice in 2020.

Christiana Figueres is one woman who has risen to the task. It was her leadership of the UN climate body the UNFCCC way back in 2015 that saw a global climate deal become a reality. Her profound commitment to the principle of peace enabled her to effectively negotiate a deal with multiple nations harbouring a multiplicity of interests.

Today, she and her organisation Global Optimism remind us that we need to maintain both the outrage that leaders are failing to act, and the optimism to believe that change really is possible. Because

Outrage without optimism leads to defeatism, and optimism without outrage leads to unacceptably incremental approaches. Instead, they should be forged into effective action.

Action like the current call for a national Climate Act in Australia, that is gaining traction and would mandate a positive and transparent response to this challenge.

Today we will award the Gold Medal for Human Rights to Christiana Figueres, for forging the Paris Agreement and her ongoing global leadership, and for maintaining the pressure and the belief that change can happen. Christiana Figueres shows us that when it comes to the climate crisis, peace is possible.

Written by Susan Biggs, Dr Susan Banki, and Joy Kyriacou. Susan Biggs is Executive Director, Joy Kyriacou and Dr Susan Banki serve on the Governing Council of the Sydney Peace Foundation

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Her task was to bring the leaders of 195 countries together to negotiate a binding agreement to stop the world warming beyond 2 degrees celsius – no easy task after the disastrous failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit.

In an interview with Hack‘s Avani Dias about her new book, she hit out at the Australian Government’s response to the bushfire disaster.

“I am deeply pained by the attitude of the current Australian Government, that still after the worst disaster that has ever hit the planet, the bushfires in Australia, that this government is still denying climate change and denying the fact that there is a lot that Australia can and should be doing,” Figueres said.

Australia at the coalface of climate change

A common argument against Australia doing more to reduce emissions and transition away from fossil fuels is that as a country, Australia is only responsible for around 1.3 per cent of global carbon emissions.

Figueres also criticised that defence, saying Australia is at the frontline of climate change.

“I see it the following way: we now know because of the consequences of the bushfires, that Australia is actually one of the most vulnerable countries to unmitigated climate change,” she told Hack.

“We also know Australia cannot single-handedly solve the problem.”

Labor has recommitted to its 2019 election policy of zero net emissions by 2050, saying Australia should pull its weight.

“Seventy-three countries, including the UK, Canada, France and Germany, many with conservative governments, have already adopted it as their goal. Australia should too,” Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said on Friday.

Mr Albanese said the Morrison Government had been “complacent” about the risk of climate change, even as bushfires tore through the country.

Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor told RN Breakfast on Monday that the Australian Government would not follow Labor’s net zero emissions, as the plan was “uncosted and unfunded“.

Mr Taylor was reticent to give an emissions target beyond 2030 ahead of the global climate meetings in Glasgow in November.

“We said by November we’ll have a long-term strategy with technology as a centrepiece… That work is going on.”

Minister Taylor’s office responded to Hack’s request for comment by citing a quote from Scott Morrison’s National Statement to the United Nations General Assembly: “Australia is doing our bit on climate change and we reject any suggestion to the contrary.”

Christiana Figueres called on the Morrison Government to lead by example when it comes to cutting carbon emissions and averting runaway global warming.

“Australia needs all other countries to help in solving what is a global problem, not a national problem. If Australia doesn’t put a firm foot forward, it stands in no position to actually ask all other countries to also put their best foot forward.”

Australia depends on the best efforts being put forward by all countries, but for that, Australia has to do the same.

However, Figueres acknowledged every country is falling short of what she regards as necessary to stop the world warming beyond 2 degrees.

“No one is doing enough. Frankly, we should all be moving much faster than we are.”

Carryover targets criticised

When it comes to meeting our Paris commitments, the Federal Government has kept open the option of using a “loophole” to reach the 2030 target of reducing emissions by 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels.

It’s often referred to as carryover credits – put simply, Australia’s record on the previous Kyoto Treaty targets would be used as credit that’s deducted from our Paris goal.

Christiana Figueres said that undermined the purpose of the Paris Agreement.

“I think it’s very dangerous to act as though this were a game of cards. This is not a game, we cannot play with emissions or emissions reductions of the past,” she said.

“It’s not about looking back and beginning to get credit where credit is not due, this is about looking into the future.”

However, she acknowledged the challenges facing Australia’s coal industry as the world transitions away from fossil fuels.

“It is definitely a complicated issue, I’m not going to underestimate how you transition those jobs out of coal into the present and the future.”

We cannot shy away from a challenge by simply admiring the problem.

Since leaving as the chief UN climate diplomat, Figueres founded the Global Optimism group, and has co-authored a new book, The Future We Choose, which focuses on what can be achieved if climate change is addressed in the coming decade.

She said there are many reasons to be optimistic about what’s in store.

“Yes we are facing the most important challenge that humanity has ever faced, but we have everything that it takes to address climate change! We have the technologies, we have the finance, we know what the policies are, we absolutely have all the tools in our hands.”

“Right now we’re holding the pen of history in our hands, it’s up to us to write what the history or humanity and of this planet will be.”

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Critics ask, “Can we afford it?” and complain that Green New Deal proponents confound the fight to preserve the planet, to which all right-minded individuals should agree, with a more controversial agenda for societal transformation. On both accounts the critics are wrong.

Yes, we can afford it. But more importantly, we must afford it.

Yes, we can afford it, with the right fiscal policies and collective will. But more importantly, we must afford it. The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war.

When the US was attacked during the second world war no one asked, “Can we afford to fight the war?” It was an existential matter. We could not afford not to fight it. The same goes for the climate crisis. Here, we are already experiencing the direct costs of ignoring the issue – in recent years the country has lost almost 2% of GDP in weather-related disasters, which include floods, hurricanes, and forest fires. The cost to our health from climate-related diseases is just being tabulated, but it, too, will run into the tens of billions of dollars – not to mention the as-yet-uncounted number of lives lost. We will pay for climate breakdown one way or another, so it makes sense to spend money now to reduce emissions rather than wait until later to pay a lot more for the consequences – not just from weather but also from rising sea levels. It’s a cliche, but it’s true: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The war on the climate emergency, if correctly waged, would actually be good for the economy – just as the second world war set the stage for America’s golden economic era , with the fastest rate of growth in its history amidst shared prosperity. The Green New Deal would stimulate demand, ensuring that all available resources were used; and the transition to the green economy would likely usher in a new boom. Trump’s focus on the industries of the past, like coal, is strangling the much more sensible move to wind and solar power. More jobs by far will be created in renewable energy than will be lost in coal.

The war on the climate emergency, if correctly waged, would actually be good for the economy.

The biggest challenge will be marshalling the resources for the Green New Deal. In spite of the low “headline” unemployment rate, the United States has large amounts of under-used and inefficiently allocated resources. The ratio of employed people to those of working age in the US is still low, lower than in our past, lower than in many other countries, and especially low for women and minorities. With well-designed family leave and support policies and more time-flexibility in our labor market, we could bring more women and more citizens over 65 into the labor force. Because of our long legacy of discrimination, many of our human resources are not used as efficiently as they could or should be. Together with better education and health policies and more investment in infrastructure and technology – true supply side policies – the productive capacity of the economy could increase, providing some of the resources the economy needs to fight and adapt to the climate breakdown.

Some changes will be easy, for instance, eliminating the tens of billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies and moving resources from producing dirty energy to producing clean energy. You could say, though, that America is lucky: we have such a poorly designed tax system that’s regressive and rife with loopholes that it would be easy to raise more money at the same time that we increase economic efficiency. Taxing dirty industries, ensuring that capital pays at least as high a tax rate as those who work for a living, and closing tax loopholes would provide trillions of dollars to the government over the next 10 years, money that could be spent on fighting the climate emergency. Moreover, the creation of a national Green Bank would provide funding to the private sector for climate breakdown – to homeowners who want to make the high-return investments in insulation that enables them to wage their own battle against the climate crisis, or businesses that want to retrofit their plants and headquarters for the green economy.

The mobilization efforts of the second world war transformed our society. We went from an agricultural economy and a largely rural society to a manufacturing economy and a largely urban society. The temporary liberation of women as they entered the labor force so the country could meet its war needs had long-term effects. This is the advocates’ ambition, a not unrealistic one, for the Green New Deal.

There is absolutely no reason the innovative and green economy of the 21st century has to follow the economic and social models of the 20th-century manufacturing economy based on fossil fuels, just as there was no reason that that economy had to follow the economic and social models of the agrarian and rural economies of earlier centuries.

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Now Figueres and her strategic advisor, former Buddhist monk Tom Rivett-Carnac, have penned a book that shepherds climate activism from changing mental states to changing the world.

“Throughout our lives we have found that what we do and how we do it is largely determined by how we think,” Figueres told me via email. “While there is never a guarantee of success at any challenge, the chances of success are predicated on our attitude toward that very challenge….

“It is a lesson we learned as we prepared the Paris Agreement, and is a valuable guide for the urgent challenge we are facing this decade.”

In “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis,” published today by Alfred A. Knopf, the authors recommend a mindset for climate activism that rests on three attitudes: radical optimism, endless abundance and radical regeneration.

Radical optimism echoes an organization the authors formed, Global Optimism, to combat pessimism and denialism. Endless abundance is the sense that there are resources enough for all, to combat competitiveness and tribalism. Radical regeneration means caring for both nature and oneself, to combat exploitation and burnout.

Then the authors get to action.

“We have discussed the mindset everyone needs to cultivate in order to meet the global challenge of the climate crisis, but on its own, this is not enough,” they write. “For change to become transformational, our change in mindset must manifest in our actions.”

“While there is never a guarantee of success at any challenge, the chances of success are predicated on our attitude toward that very challenge….

Many of the recommended actions also occur in the mind, at least initially, constituting a transformation in priorities. In a chapter titled “Doing What Is Necessary,” Figueres and Rivett-Carnac propose these ten actions:

1 Let Go Of The Old World

First, the authors propose that we honour the past—for example, it’s okay to acknowledge that fossil fuels have improved quality of life, for some—and then let the past go. Let the change come that is necessary to transform the world. That means not only pragmatic change like allowing offshore wind development but, they say, psychological change like resisting the urge to engage in tribalism and the illusion of certainty.

2 Face Your Grief…

but hold a vision of the future. The world under climate change will not resemble the world many us knew in our youth. “We cannot hide from the grief that flows from the loss of biodiversity and the impoverished lives of future generations,” the authors write. They advise readers to face this grief, rather than turn away from it—an approach that borrows from their Buddhist influences—and then to embrace an optimist vision of the future. “A compelling vision is like a hook in the future. It connects you to the pockets of possibility that are emerging and helps you pull them into the present.”

3 Defend The Truth

Here the authors defend objective science and warn readers not to give in to pseudoscience. But they also urge readers not to vilify those who embrace denialism. “If you reach them, it will be because you sincerely listened to them and strove to understand their concerns. By giving care, love, and attention to every individual, we can counter the forces pulling us apart.”

4 See Yourself As A Citizen…

not as a consumer. Here the authors depart from the usual approach of urging people to stop buying stuff. Instead, they focus on the psychology behind consumption. “Much of what we buy,” they say, “is designed to enhance our sense of identity.” Instead, they say, envision a good life that does not depend on material goods.

5 Move Beyond Fossil Fuels

As pragmatic as this action sounds, the authors depict fossil-fuel reliance as an attachment—an attachment to the past. “Only when this mindset is challenged can we migrate our thinking, finances, and infrastructure to the new energies.”

6 Reforest The Earth

Here the authors urge the most pragmatic actions: plant trees, let natural areas go wild, eat less meat and dairy, boycott products that contribute to deforestation. They mention palm oil in an example but not pork, beef or chicken—major products that drive deforestation. Instead they stay positive, emphasizing the benefits of a plant-based diet. “The future we must choose will require us to pay more attention to our bond with nature.”

7 Invest In A Clean Economy

Here the authors mean much more than putting money into wind and solar. They mean moving beyond a model of economic growth that rewards extraction and pollution, toward “a clean economy that operates in harmony with nature, repurposes used resources as much as possible, minimizes waste, and actively replenishes depleted resources.”

8 Use Technology Responsibly

Artificial intelligence has the potential to solve problems that have so far remained intractable, the authors argue, such as any attempt to shift from an extractive economy to a circular one. But that will happen only—they say—if AI is used responsibly. “If we make it through the climate crisis and arrive on the other side with humanity and the planet intact, it will be largely because we have learned to live well with technology.”

9 Build Gender Equality

When women lead, good things happen, the authors say, citing a wealth of studies. “Women often have a leadership style that makes them more open and sensitive to a wide range of views, and they are better at working collaboratively, with a longer-term perspective. These traits are essential to responding to the climate crisis.”

10 Engage In Politics

The authors are not just talking about voting. Mentioning Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela, Figuera and Rivett-Carnac urge civil disobedience.

“Civil disobedience is not only a moral choice, it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics.”

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The effects of climate change represent the single biggest threat to peace with justice.

The Sydney Peace Foundation has chosen to honor the leadership of Christiana Figueres with the presentation of the 2020 Gold Medal for Human Rights because of her collaboration and influencing skills, her persistence in ensuring a global agreement on limiting climate warming (the Paris Agreement), her relentless drive to ensure we don’t sleepwalk into an environmental nightmare by keeping our outrage alive, and importantly for the reminder that we must be optimistic and hopeful about the possibility of a much better world.

‘We must spark the imagination and the creativity that comes with understanding that we have this incredible agency to create something completely different. Whatever we hold as being possible, and whatever values and principles we live by, determine the actions that we take. Whatever we hold to be near and dear to us is what we’re willing to work toward. And so to shift from doom and gloom to a positive, optimistic, constructive attitude is very important because it is what gets us up in the morning and says “yes, we can do this, we’re going to work together on that”, rather than pulling the blanket over our head and saying “it’s all too difficult”. So that change in attitude inside ourselves is critical’.

Ms Figueres is a Costa Rican citizen and was the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-2016. During her tenure at the UNFCCC she brought together governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and NGOs to jointly deliver the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, in which 195 sovereign nations agreed on a collaborative path forward to limit future global warming to well below 2C. For this achievement Ms. Figueres has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy.

Ms. Figueres is a founding partner of Global Optimism Ltd., a purpose driven enterprise focused on social and environmental change. She is currently the Convener of Mission 2020, Vice-Chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, World Bank Climate Leader, ACCIONA Board Member, WRI Board Member, Fellow of Conservation International, and Advisory Board member of Formula E, Unilever and ENI.

Christiana Figueres has co-authored a book called The Future We Choose, Surviving the Climate Crisis and is in Australia in March to promote it.

The Foundation is delighted that Ms Figueres has agreed to accept the Gold Medal, which will be awarded during her upcoming visit to Sydney.

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‘The risks associated with climate-related disasters do not represent a scenario of some distant future. They are already a reality for millions of people around the globe ……. We cannot lag behind. We must act now, with a sense of urgency and a commitment to place people, especially those most marginalized and vulnerable, at the centre of our efforts.’ (UN political affairs chief DiCarlo).

Where there is lower capacity for states to respond, adapt to and recover from climate-induced disasters, marginalisation and local grievances will intensify. Climate change disproportionately impacts economic development in conflict-affected countries that depend on agriculture for their prosperity.

The impacts of climate change wear away the capacity of states to prevent conflict. Erratic weather patterns and extreme weather events cause resource scarcity and render land inhabitable, intensifying inequality and conflict.

Climate change is transforming the security landscape. The 2019 Global Peace Index factored in, for the first time, climate change as a considerable threat to global peace in the next decade. ‘Research is clear that changes in the natural environment impose stress on human societies.’

Environmental degradation and water stress lead to hunger, famine, displacement, migration and conflict. These connections are already impacting lives in the Pacific, Middle East, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. ‘Since 2008, an average of 26.4 million people per year have been displaced from their homes by disasters brought on by natural hazards. This is the equivalent to one person being displaced every second. The number and scale of huge disasters creates significant fluctuation from year to year in the total number of people displaced, while the trend over decades is on the rise’. (Global Estimates 2015, IDMC).

Climate change is not a future problem. It is already destroying ecosystems, livelihoods and lives. Imagine a future where these impacts are even more profound!

Inaction on climate change is an affront to justice and the most severe risk to peace in our time. In commitment to our goal of promoting peace with justice, in 2020, the Sydney Peace Foundation sheds light on solutions to address this crisis, and on the need to act immediately.

To provide peace and security, strengthen governance and justice systems and ensure a future where peace is still a possibility, we need to act now. Climate change is an urgent threat and we are not acting fast enough.

If we do not act, then change is coming by design or by disaster. We must forge alliances and work together to demand change and build a better system before it is too late.

Change is something we must demand from our leaders to support peace. We need to act – together, now.

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Greta Thunberg has excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating.

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“I have long considered climate change the principal issue facing the world.  It is a first-order issue.  Refugees are a second-order issue.  Here is the speech I gave.”

Climate change is the single biggest issue facing the world today.

Perhaps the biggest issue that has ever faced the planet.

Climate change resists simple solutions. To begin tackling it, we must first begin undoing the complex web of of factors that have existed for centuries and have brought us to this point.

These include:

• Global structures that have been based on fossil fuels and the exploitation of cheap energy and labour for centuries
• The inequalities and power dynamics that are the legacy of colonisation
• Giant corporations that have more power now than ever before in history and will do anything to protect their profits: The East India Company once ran India: global corporations today make the power of the East India Company look modest.
• And a new global economic system that has eroded the power of nation states to set and effectively enforce policy.

This complex web of factors makes it more difficult to solve the climate change issue: more interests are involved than, for example, in banning the use of CFCs in order to reduce the hole in the ozone layer.

For many people climate change is a relatively new issue. It was brought into public focus in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It was reiterated by Kevin Rudd, who in 2007 called it the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’.  And he went to Copenhagen in 2009 but somehow he lost his way after that.

But scientists have known for a long time that climate change was happening.

In the 1820s, the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier was trying to understand the various factors that affect Earth’s temperature. But he found a problem – according to his calculations, the Earth should have been a ball of ice.

The Sun did not seem to provide enough energy to raise the temperature of Earth above freezing. Fourier’s initial ideas, that there must be additional energy coming from the Earth’s core or from the temperature of outer space, were soon dismissed. Fourier then realised that the atmosphere, which at first seemed transparent, could be playing a crucial role.

In 1861, the Irish physicist John Tyndall demonstrated that gases such as methane and carbon dioxide absorbed infrared radiation, and could trap heat within the atmosphere. He recognised the implications and said that these gases “would produce great effects on the terrestrial rays and produce corresponding changes of climate.”

He was right.  But in 1861 the amount of CO2 which was being released into the atmosphere was a tiny fraction of what happens today.  Although CO2 levels started to rise with the industrial revolution, when Tyndall drew attention to the subject, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was less than 300 ppm.  It now peaks at something like 410 ppm.

In the 1890s the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius identified the warming influence of water vapour in the atmosphere.  This was the first indication of a positive feedback loop: more CO2 meant a warmer atmosphere; a warmer atmosphere can hold more water as vapour; more water vapour in the atmosphere traps more heat, and so on.

In the 1950s the Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass confirmed that doubling the level of  CO2 in the atmosphere would lead to an increase in global temperatures of 3-4 decrees Celcius.

In the 1970s, Exxon knew that burning fossil fuels was warming the planet. This was years before it became a public issue.   Exxon understood what this would mean for its business, and has since spent an estimated $30 million promoting the denial of climate change and questioning the science.  Gosh: that’s how the tobacco industry defended itself: deny the science, create doubt, attack your opponents.

22 years ago the first UN Climate Change conference was held in Berlin.  World leaders came together to work out what to do about climate change. In 1995 there was about 358 ppm of CO2 in the air.

Now, 22 years later when the first global climate agreement is finally in place, the figure is more than 400 ppm. That has locked the planet into 1 degree of warming even if we stop burning all fossil fuels right now.

Burning fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas is the leading cause of increased anthropogenic CO2; deforestation is the second major cause.

The rate of increase in the release of CO2 into the atmosphere is startling. In the 150 years from 1751 to 1900, about 12 gigatonnes of CO2 were released from fossil fuels and cement production worldwide. In the 112 years from 1901 to 2013 the figure was about 1,400 Gigatonnes: an average of about 12 gigatonnes of CO2  per year, but the rate has been accelerating. In 1990: 22.5 gigatonnes of CO2. In 2010, 33.5 gigatonnes of CO2.

Half of the greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere were released after 1988. If fossil fuel companies were honest about the damage fossil fuels cause, we wouldn’t be in the situation where we have a 5 year window in which to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But, thanks to the work of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies who put their own profits above the future of the planet, we’ve suffered through 21 years of policy inaction. Even worse, their climate denialism has muddied the water so much that people now believe climate change is a conspiracy dreamed up by the Chinese or a corrupt UN that wants to take over the world meaning that effective national policies that will have the least cost impact are often difficult or impossible to achieve.

In democracies, these tactics pose a very real threat.

At a time when entire nations are at risk of sinking below the seas, Donald Trump has committed to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement because quote: The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

Here in Australia, we are no better!

The Australian Government continues to block any real action on climate change and our former Prime Minister claimed that ‘coal is good for humanity’ and our current Prime Minister seems largely beholden to the far right’s agenda on the issue: more coal and gas and no national strategy to reduce emissions or plan for a transition from fossil fuels.

This is compounded by the fact that developed countries like Australia, the UK and the US – whose centuries of reliance on coal, oil and gas have caused this climate crisis – are increasingly turning into national fortresses, leaving the most vulnerable to a changing climate stranded, quite literally, at sea.

Let’s take a moment to look at what Australia is doing — or not doing — on climate change.

A report in the Guardian Australia on 30 November illustrates the problem.  An expert advisory panel reported that Coal-fired Queensland, with just 7% of its power generation from renewables, could lift that to 50% by 2030 with little appreciable cost to electricity consumers.  The Queensland government would subsidise renewables.  The federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg criticised the report.  The Guardian article continues:

Coal companies like Rio Tinto have called on Queensland to abandon its own renewables target to simply align with the commonwealth’s 2020 goal of 20%. But Bailey says it’s clear the state’s plan was “developed in the absence of federal policy” and with doubt that even the 2020 commonwealth target will be achieved.

He says the failure of the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to put policy daylight between him and his predecessor, Tony Abbott, shows conservative politics in Australia will be dragged kicking and screaming towards energy sector reform.

Antipathy towards renewables and acting on climate change among the hard right of the Coalition stands in contrast to moves by “conservative parties in other parts of the world”, Bailey says. He cites Germany and California as advanced economies already boasting more than 30% renewable power.

“You go to Europe, this is not an issue,” he says. “It seems to be a particular LNP [Liberal National party] Australian thing but they seem extraordinarily intransigent on it and, while we see more and more extreme weather events occur, they are stopping us from dealing with some of those big issues around climate change. …”

We are a uniquely embarrassing case on the global stage, in that early on, we put in place a fairly comprehensive domestic climate policy with a carbon price by the minority Gillard Government that was then dismantled and replaced with an impotent measure that pays polluters and has seen our emissions rise every year since.

Watching Malcolm Turnbull fade into the shadow of what he could have been is like watching the slow destruction of a man the country once respected on so many of our most important issues. He has been so unwilling to lead his party, and has granted so much power to the fringe right of his party – particularly on the issue of climate change and asylum seekers – that Australia’s global reputation on climate change has gone from global leader to global threat.

As a case in point, here is a short but non exhaustive list of what the Government has done since the world signed the Paris Agreement a year ago:

• Fast-tracked the Adani coal mine in Queensland – one of the biggest coal basins in the world that if developed would blow any chance the world has of remaining below 2 degrees of global warming. This is more than just a climate fight. It is also a fight over land rights and how the government has granted mining leases on indigenous land and repeatedly refuses to acknowledge the claim by the traditional Wangan and Jagalingou owners on this land.
• Attacked environmental groups standing up for our climate and to protect our natural environment. The Turnbull Government has launched a two pronged attack on environment groups – the first attack is by seeking to amend the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act — or the EPBC. This act allows groups and individuals to legally challenge resource projects if they are a threat to water or the environment. This is an incredibly important provision – introduced by the Howard Government – that allows for a check and balance on Government’s power. The second attack is on the tax deductible status of environmental not-for-profits. This is an attempt to silence groups like 350.org and others who are standing up against fossil fuel projects.
• Recently, investigative reporting discovered that the government censored a UN report on the extent of bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and how much of a role climate change had to play in it. Even though the health of the reef recently got a “D” on the Australian government’s annual report card for the fifth year in a row and large-scale bleaching in the northern part of the reef threatens to see it never return to a productive state.
• The Government has launched an ideological war on renewable energy after the recent South Australian blackout. This culminated in Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg attempting to bully the states out of their ambitious renewable energy targets and pushing them instead to focus on promulgating onshore gas production. As you, probably know, gas is in fact a non-renewable fossil fuel that releases methane into the atmosphere that is 86x more potent than carbon at warming the planet.
• And then there was Tony Abbott’s asking the mining industry to “demonstrate its gratitude” to the retiring Federal Resources Minister – Ian MacFarlane – who dismantled the mining tax. The Industry duly listened, and MacFarlane broke a Parliamentary code of ethics by accepting a $500k per year job with the Queensland Resources Council — on top of his $140k Parliamentary pension — so that he can spruik for the Adani Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.
• The Australian government actively resisted and watered down restrictions on financing of coal plants by OECD export credit agencies last year because the government wants more coal plants to be built so that there are new markets for Australian coal.
• The Government has slashed the budget of ARENA — Australian Renewable Energy Agency — by $500 million– after trying to kill it off entirely. ARENA provides grants to innovative new renewables projects and is essential to keeping Australia at the forefront of research and development. If Turnbull was serious about ‘innovation’, ARENA would be the flagship organisation of this push. Instead, the Government created and funnelled money into a new major national fossil fuel research program called the Oil, Gas & Energy Resources Growth centre. You couldn’t dream this stuff up!

Australia’s political donation laws are outdated and not up to the task, so it is hard to get a clear view of how much is actually donated. But in the three years leading up to the 2016 election the fossil fuel industry donated almost $3.7 million to the major parties in direct donations.

In return, the industry saw $7.7 billion in subsidies comes its way, priority access to any land they desired to develop and unbeatable access to the ears of our decision makers, including some of the most plum and influential roles in the country on retirement.

Indirect donations and the revolving door of jobs — such as that of the former Minister Macfarlane — would show significantly more influence. Brad Burke, the former Corporate Affairs Director of Santos, is now Malcolm Turnbull’s senior strategist. Senator James McGrath is now a QLD Liberal Senator. Patrick Gibbons was the corporate affairs manager of mining company Alcoa was Greg Hunt’s senior adviser as Environment Minister. Josh Frydenberg’s current adviser previously worked for Shell and then Energy Australia.

That our Government is awash with former fossil fuel executives goes a long way to explaining why we are currently a global embarrassment on climate change. And as to why we are not addressing our biggest contribution to climate change: that Australia remains the world’s biggest coal exporter. To use a crude analogy: if fossil fuels are the drug, then Australia is the pusher.

This is a nice little arrangement between the fossil fuel industry and our Government. By exporting our coal, we are exporting our emissions to other countries that we are not required to take responsibility for under our UN climate commitments. Just Australia’s domestic emissions equate to 1.5% of the world’s carbon emissions – 16th in the world.

However, if we add emissions from our exported coal to our domestic emissions, Australia’s carbon footprint trebles in size and we become the 6th largest emitter after China, the USA, Russia, India and Indonesia – all of which have populations over 250 million.

Even worse is that if the above mentioned the proposed Adani coal mine and development of the Galilee Basin supported by the QLD and Federal Governments, we would be responsible for 705 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Opening up the entire Galilee Basin would see Australia become the world’s seventh largest contributor of emissions in the world!

This is at a time when reports are telling us that if there is any chance of avoiding the ‘safe’ two degree warming scenario, NO NEW FOSSIL FUEL PROJECTS can go ahead, and that current ones need to be scaled back.

Fundamentally, we have to do better. Globally Australia is under extreme pressure to lift its game on climate.

At the recent UN climate meeting in Marrakesh, we got more questions than any other country. Including questions from allies like the US and NZ. And from countries like China that want to know why we have no credible climate policy and what we are going to do about it.

BUT, the Turnbull Government, like the Abbott Government, is impervious to international pressure.

So, it is therefore up to us – Australian citizens – to lead the way on climate and make the moral case for climate change leadership.

We need to emphasise that by refusing to act we are missing out on the new jobs that the transition to clean energy is creating. China, Europe and the US are investing billions into this burgeoning industry, while Australia is cutting its funding to that same source of new jobs.

We need to emphasise that global warming is real, and if we let it run away from us we are mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren.  The Federal Treasurer emphasises that we must avoid creating inter-generational debt.  He says this in connection with the Federal budget.  He needs to speak to Josh Frydenberg: climate change is the biggest inter-generational debt imaginable.

We need to emphasise that climate change provides the biggest existential threat to our neighbouring Pacific Islands and across Asia. At least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise. The rapid changes in the Solomon Islands has already seen whole coastal communities have to relocated. These are communities that have in many cases lived in these areas for generations.

Historically, Australia has been looked to as a leader in the Pacific region. Our recent approach to climate policy has severely weakened this view.

Responding to the scrapping of the carbon tax and the defunding of climate science research bodies, the Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum said this:

“It just does not make sense, it goes against the grain of the world. Not only [is Australia] our big brother down south, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and Australia is a Pacific island, a big island, but a Pacific island. It must recognise that it has a responsibility. The problems that have befallen the smaller countries are also Australia’s problems. You cannot remove Australia from the life and blood of the Pacific.”

For our conservative politicians climate change is a ‘wedge’ issue they can use against the Labor Party and the Greens to prove to their fringe right constituencies and their cheerleaders in the Murdoch press that they have the right mettle for the job.

We need to emphasise that climate change provides the biggest existential threat to the identity of Australia itself.  What sort of country are we?  Are we really a country that would do nothing to save the planet?  Are we a country willing to destroy our region and mortgage the lives of future generations so we can continue to live prosperous, self-indulgent lives.

What we need to do is consider the precautionary principle.  More particularly, we need to force our politicians to consider the precautionary principle.  About 97% of the world’s scientists accept that climate change is real, anthropogenic and dangerous.  Deniers would point out that science is not decided by popular vote.  True enough, although it is often useful to listen to people who know what they are talking about.  But let’s accept it: the scientists may be wrong.

Let’s give odds of 80% against the scientists: that is, let’s assume there is an 80% chance they are wrong.  But if they are right, if the 20% chance comes in, the result will be catastrophic and could have been avoided.  20% chance of a catastrophic, avoidable result is worse odds than Russian Roulette. So next time someone argues the denialist case, ask them if they are willing to play Russian Roulette with their children or grand-children.

And let’s face it: if we spend the money to avoid climate change, and if the denialists turn out to be right, the worst you can say is that we cleaned up the planet for no reason…

In my opinion we have to make sure it never gets to this. We cannot trust the lives of millions of people to the whims of inward-looking fortress nation states.

That is why the current moment in history is critical. Until recently, the fossil fuel industry had a firm grip on the levers of power. They have been able to manipulate governments around the world to ensure that they could continue to drill, dig and frack for oil, coal and gas. But the world is rapidly changing.

A powerful global movement against fossil fuels is building. It is helped by the internet and a determination to build a better world.  It includes local communities, first nations people, university students, farmers, politicians, business leaders, even politicians.

This movement is forcing a reckoning on the future of fossil fuels. It was behind the success of the Paris Agreement last year. It is why BP walked away from drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight. It was the cause of the ban on unconventional gas in Victoria. It is behind the states and communities announcing ambitious renewable energy targets despite every Federal Government effort to undo these targets.

The potential is huge. But its power rests with you.

Yes, 2016 has been a bad year for progressive causes and particularly for climate change at a time when we can least afford it.

But politics is like a pendulum and we need to be ready for when it swings back. Donald Trump will stumble. In Australia, the Turnbull Government has already lost the faith of the people just five months after the Federal election.

But, as Shakespeare said, When they fall, they fall like Lucifer – never to hope again.

They will resist.

We need to be resolute.

We need to be strong.

We need to be ready.

We need a robust and diverse movement of Australians ready to prove to our politicians that climate change matters. The movement against fossil fuels doesn’t have money or vested interests on our side. But we have the science, the evidence of the impacts already happening, and the liveability of our planet, our very future, as our authority.

Now we need to use it.

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We live in times whose signature is violence – from the killing of 134 innocent children in Peshawar to the massacres of 2000 by Boko Haram in Nigeria and the 17 in Paris just in the last month.

We must condemn this violence. But we must do more and understand its roots. Violence erupting in unpredictable places against innocents is growing and when any process grows in society, humanity needs to reflect on what is feeding it, from where does its nourishment come, and what can we do to stop the future explosion of violence overtaking the serenity and stability of everyday life, everywhere in the world.

Most analysis essentializes violence and makes it intrinsic to particular cultures. The dominant analysis based on fragmentation and reductionism, separates actions from their consequences. It allows no responsibility for the structural violence done to societies through wars and a globalized economy that has all the features of a war.

But violence is not essential to human beings or a particular culture. Just like peace, it is cultivated – its seeds are sown. We as humans across our cultural diversity and across our histories have potential to be both violent and peaceful.

The nourishment to the epidemic of violence in our times comes from structural violence of war, dispossession, uprooting and exclusion. It comes from robbing people of meaning, dignity, self-respect, security. This robbing of meaning, rights and dignity rooted in the diversity of cultures humanity has shaped, creates an inner vacuum which is filled with manufactured identities of a fundamentalist kind. Instead of identities growing positively and holistically from a sense of place and culture, identities get engineered into negative identities, defined only as the negation of the other.

The spread of wars and ecologically and socially disruptive globalization is uprooting people everywhere. The ultimate unfolding of this logic based on negative identities is extermination of the other. Powerful actors who have unleashed wars in Afghanistan and Syria do not take responsibility for the uprooting and brutalization of communities. In just one year, from mid 2013 to mid 2014, 3 million refugees have been forced out of Syria, 2.6 million from Afghanistan, 1 million from Somalia, and .5 million from Sudan. And even those who could not leave their homes as refugees have been made cultural and economic refugees by robbing them of their security and stability. Brutalized human beings spread brutalization.

Samuel Huntington, famous for his ‘Clash of Civilizations’, got it wrong when he said ‘we can only know who we are, when we know who we hate’. In India, the exercise of breathing with consciousness, ‘pranayam’, invokes ‘so hum’ – ‘you are, therefore I am’. We sow the seeds of peace every time we remember and celebrate our dependence of the ‘other’. Being open to the ‘otherness’ of the other creates conditions of compassion, peace, and wellbeing of all.

This article first appeared in the Huffington Post Italy on 19 January 2015.
Source [Italian]: http://www.huffingtonpost.it/vandana-shiva/semi-di-pace_b_6487600.html

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Shiva, who grew up in the Himalayan foothills, spent subsequent university breaks as a volunteer with the Chipko movement, a local women’s group famous for hugging trees to protect them from being felled. The forest women taught her ”practical ecology” and inspired a change of direction. Despite training as a nuclear physicist at an elite Mumbai research reactor and then gaining a PhD in quantum physics from a top overseas university, Shiva switched her attention to environmental activism.

”I went from nuclear science to quantum physics and then to being a natural philosopher,” she says. ”I would describe my vocation as a combination of natural philosopher – the old, old notion of trying to understand nature in all its complexity, which is the original form of science – and as a protector of the earth.”

Shiva’s attempts to protect the earth have brought her into regular conflict with big corporations, especially those patenting genetically engineered seeds.

Shiva, 57, says this ”bio-piracy” is an attempt to hijack the global food supply. In response, she sued one of the seed firms, Monsanto, and also founded Navdanya, a national network of ”seed savers” and organic farmers. It has helped set up 55 community seed banks to preserve traditional seeds and trained more than half a million farmers in sustainable agriculture. Those wanting to learn about organic farming can sign up at the Bija Vidyapeeth or School of the Seed.

”For me seed saving became a way of defending freedom in the face of patents and trade rules which to me sounded like a totalitarian regime,” says Shiva. ”We can’t have freedom if we don’t have seed freedom.”

Shiva met The Age at an organic cafe run by Navdanya inside a popular New Delhi crafts market. On the menu were dishes made from ”forgotten” crops such as amaranth, jhangora and ragi. Navdanya promotes the use of little-known pulses and grains in a bid to promote biodiversity.

”So many foods have gone out of use and often they are very nutritious and good for conservation,” she says.

Shiva’s campaign to save traditional seed varieties is one reason she will receive the Sydney Peace Prize on Thursday. The jury awarded it to her for ”courageous leadership of movements for social justice – the empowerment of women in developing countries, advocacy of the human rights of small farming communities and for her scientific analysis of environmental sustainability”.

Shiva grew up in Dehra Dun, a bustling town in the foothills of the central Himalayas. She says her parents were feminists, even though the word didn’t exist at the time. ”That was their thinking and practice and I think it seeped into us,” says Shiva. ”My inspiration for life is our parents; so many of the values we have come from them … they told us that if you live by your conscience there is no reason to be afraid. That’s how I have been able to take on the likes of Monsanto, never having an equation of fear in my head to assess what I should and should not do.”

Social activism runs in the Shiva family. Her sister Mira is a medical doctor and well-known Indian health activist, and her brother, a retired air force pilot, does voluntary work for Navdanya. Shiva also has an adult son named Kartikeya who is a photographer in Mumbai.

The Shiva sisters have recently campaigned jointly on some issues including GM food. ”Even though we have walked very different paths – my sister in health and me in agriculture – we now work very closely together,” says Shiva.

Shiva’s mother, Jagbir Kaur, was a committed Gandhian. She once visited the mahatma when he was jailed in Pune and insisted that the family wear clothes made of locally spun cotton. Before her seventh birthday, Shiva asked for a nylon dress in a popular style. Her mother told her that buying a nylon garment would help ”get the next Mercedes for a millionaire” but buying one made from locally spun cotton would ”provide the next meal” in the house of a poor woman. ”She asked me to make a choice – it was my first lesson in political economy.”

Shiva also draws heavily on Gandhian philosophy to guide her work. She says he showed that people have ”the freedom to say no and the duty not to co-operate with unjust laws”.

What Gandhi did with salt ”we do with seeds” says Shiva in a reference to the mahatma’s famous salt march of the 1930s that marked the beginning of the end of British rule in India. ”I draw a lot of energy from my work because it’s what my conscience is telling me to do,” she says. ”If you do the right thing, you don’t deplete yourself.”

Shiva’s work with the women of Chipko shaped her first book, Staying Alive, which was published in 1988 to international acclaim. It drew parallels between the oppression of rural women and environmental destruction in India and established Shiva’s reputation as a leading eco-feminist thinker. She later co-wrote a book called Ecofeminism with sociologist Maria Mies. Shiva describes eco-feminism as a ”philosophy of inclusion” and is critical of what she calls a ”catch-up model” of feminism where women are in a battle to simply mimic men.

”Combining nature’s liberation and women’s liberation shows a different path that is good for all beings on earth,” she says. ”Eco-feminism is about giving both nature and women their rightful place.”

Shiva is also well known for her criticism of the ”green revolution”. Many in India argue the fertilisers, pesticides and genetic engineering that combined to create the green revolution rescued the country from regular famines and a reliance on food imports.

However, Shiva believes high-tech agriculture is only a short-term solution that will ultimately destroy farmers and the land. She warns that the threat of violent conflict over basic resources, especially water, is increasing thanks to the subcontinent’s unsustainable farming practices.

”When you run out of water it’s a recipe for killing,” she says. ”Water really makes people desperate.”

She also rejects orthodox economic analysis that says India must prepare for the massive migration of rural workers to the city as the country industrialises.

”If you take people and climate change seriously it’s just the wrong way to go,” she says. Shiva estimates that about 40 per cent of the world’s climate problem ”is related to industrial, globalised agriculture”. Therefore, she argues, 40 per cent of the solution requires labour-intensive forms of ecologically sustainable farming.

Shiva is disappointed that the debate about climate change is too often limited to temperature increases. She claims there is clear evidence that glaciers in the Himalayas are receding, and snowfall dwindling. She also believes India is experiencing more extreme weather.

”Focusing on temperature alone is not good enough. I never talk global warming, I talk about climate chaos,” she says.

Shiva has written a swag of books with gloomy titles including The Violence of Green Revolution, Biopiracy: the Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, and Water Wars: Privatisation, Pollution and Profit. But she is surprisingly optimistic about the prospects for change.

”There are huge reasons for hope,” she says. She cites many successful protests, including one that recently stopped plans to privatise water in Delhi, as proof that non-violent resistance can work. ”If you look at the negative things that have been stopped there’s reason for hope. But even more importantly, look at all the seeds that have been saved, the half a million farmers who have been trained in organic, and the growth in alternative movements all saying we will not go down the industrial path.”

Dr Vandana Shiva is the recipient of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. She will speak at a free Melbourne event next Friday, 6.15pm, at Collins Street Baptist Church. Bookings via wheelercentre.com

Written by Matt Wade, this article first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 30, 2010. 

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