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As we pare back more and more, I have started to realise that there is a risk in taking things too far. The consumer orgy of the past may have been unsightly, but gift giving itself also serves a valuable social function, and we may be at risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Some have argued we shouldn't discuss climate change during this bushfire emergency. Yet when children previously tried to protest climate change they were told to 'stay in school'. The statement denies the evidence that our normal routines are already being disrupted by climate change.
These strikes aren't solely sites of protestation but rather a chance to step out of the individual grey loneliness to come together for our collective future in intergenerational solidarity. There is something powerful and visceral about putting your body on the street, in the public forum, with other bodies and being vulnerable together.
In an age where destruction of eco-systems is occurring at a fast rate and sanctioned by governments, these absurdities are lethal for collective humanity. Non-Indigenous support for the Embassy and trees reflects a desire to reverse the absurd lie that human culture and nature are not in a continual, intergenerational relationship.
The widespread despair about climate change, and the seeming inability of progressives to offer a solution, provides fertile soil for ecofascism to grow. In a sense, given the scale of the crisis, their apocalyptic vision of an environmental race war can sound more realistic than the pallid centrist nostrums that everyone knows won't work.
A Green New Deal in Australia would mean a stronger commitment to a government-led rapid transition to renewable energy and cleaner transport, with clear programs to support transition to well-paid green jobs in places that previously relied on resource extractive industries. This isn't necessarily as expensive as it sounds.
Historically, a declaration of emergency, whether in response to war, civil unrest or natural disaster, allows the state to suppress debate to enable a militarised response to an urgent problem. You can see why that might appeal as a solution to the environmental crisis. But addressing climate change requires more democracy, not less.
Researchers have been documenting the rise of 'eco-anxiety' or 'eco-angst' for some time, and these feelings of despair and powerlessness are common. But we need to become the heroes of this dystopic film plot. Somehow, in the face of all our anxiety and despair, we need to locate our capacity for hope and our courage to take action.
'We are the joy, the sadness, the anger and the peace.' With these moving words, Elders Aunty Enice Marsh and Geraldine Anderson opened a significant gathering in Port Augusta, as people from the Flinders Ranges and the Kimba, still threatened by the federal government's plans to deposit the nation's radioactive waste, met again.
It is in the interests of companies and the people who compose them to see the relationships that constitute work more broadly than the image of transaction allows. In a good enterprise work is a form of self-transcendence through relationships with other workers, with the people whom they serve directly and with the broader society.
In January, the tailings dam of a deactivated iron ore mine in Brumadinho, Brazil failed, releasing toxic mud that caused devastation, 117 deaths and intergenerational ecological and economic consequences. It should, and could, have been prevente by the company, Vale, who was also responsible for past tailings dam destruction.
'We can do this better by breaking down the silos and binding together our concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.' Opening Keynote Address by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the Catholic Social Services Australia National Conference, Port Macquarie 19 February 2019.
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