Groundswell Journal

A significant part of the fossil fuel industry’s soft power is advertising and sponsorships, where companies position themselves as part of Australia’s identity and essential to the economy. This advertising gives the industry undeserved social licence and further entrenches its damaging practices. Momentum has been growing both internationally and domestically against fossil fuel promotion, with secretary general of the United Nations António Guterres last month calling on all countries to ban advertising for coal, petroleum and gas companies.

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Farmers for Climate Action (FCA) started in 2015 with a meeting of 30 farmers in the Blue Mountains, NSW, who had spent decades voicing their concerns about climate change to no avail. Today. they have more than 8,000 farmer members as well as more than 45,000 supporters and are one of the most influential climate groups in Australia, ideally positioned to influence governments to implement strong economy-wide climate policy.

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If we want our leaders to make good decisions and take more ambitious climate action, then the public must be perceived as wanting change. Which is where the Climate Media Centre (CMC) comes in. As Australia’s go-to bureau for climate stories, they connect journalists with more than 5,000 trained climate spokespeople, driving a constant drumbeat of media stories which reinforce the message that climate change is an urgent priority.

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As the climate crisis intensifies, it’s become clear the only meaningful way to turn things around is through action taken at a structural level. This means redesigning our laws, institutions, policies and services so they work for all of us, not just some of us. Enter the Climate Justice Legal Project, a collaboration between the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Environmental Justice Australia and the Climate Council.

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Young people and future generations will live longest with the consequences of decisions made today, despite having done the least to cause the climate crisis and being shut out of decision-making spaces. It’s this injustice that sparked the creation of the Australia Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) as a way to mobilise and organise young people to step up and demand more action from our elected leaders to protect the future they will inherit.

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By 2030 total global greenhouse gas emissions need to drop by 43% to align with the latest science and keep global warming to 1.5C. This is a massive target and to reach it, Australia’s largest emitters cannot be ignored. Enter ACCR. While you might not have heard much about this shareholder advocacy organisation, they’re behind some the most exciting climate breakthroughs in recent years, including the huge climate shake-up at AGL, Australia’s biggest carbon emitter.

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Rikki Dank/Lhudi Noralima is a Gudanji and Wakaya person from the Barkley tablelands area of the Northern Territory, an area more widely known for being part of the Beetaloo Basin. With this Country at risk of fracking, Rikki recently launched Gudanji For Country Bush Trips for small groups of people to witness the impacts of fracking on First Nations communities up close. Here’s what happened.

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Sometimes climate change shows up in our lives in extraordinary ways, such as with extreme weather events. But most of the time living with climate change comes down to the most ordinary of moments, like trying to sleep through the night during the heat of summer. This is one of the reasons Better Renting – a community of renters working together for stable, affordable, and healthy homes, climate justice – recently won a Groundswell grant even though they aren’t a climate organisation.

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Tomorrow Movement call themselves a group of “ordinary young people…fighting for a tomorrow that works for everyone, not just big business.” And yet, there’s nothing ordinary about what they’re doing. Working together as a 5,000 member strong organisation Tomorrow Movement is climate advocacy at its strongest.

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As a parent of two kids with a background in environmental campaigning, Nic Seton knows that while parents are a powerful constituency for progress on climate, they’re usually so flat out managing everything at home and work there’s little time for anything else. So In 2021 he became CEO of Australian Parents for Climate Action, an organisation made up of 17, 000 parents who together are proving to be an unstoppable force for climate action.

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Groundswell will support writing ‘Yes’ in this year’s referendum and advocating for transformative change beyond this. We believe empowering First Nations people to shape national policies will result in better outcomes for all, and that the momentum generated by a ‘Yes’ vote will increase pressure on the government to ensure reforms endure across First Nations land rights, justice, treaties and truth telling.

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We are being warned by climate experts to expect more ‘disasters’ as governments fail to mitigate climate change, but what is it like to live through these events? Lucy Norton compassionately reflects on living through the 2022 Lismore Floods and how colonial frameworks misplace our grief in light of climate events, that instead of blaming Country we must begin listening to her to create holistic First Nations-led climate solutions. 

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As we see the climate crisis progress, the majority of media reflecting on climate events tend to emphasise a physicality of harm or suffering - impacts on buildings, infrastructure and physical health. While this may be important, Southern Arrente and Arabana person Lauren Scott highlights how climate change impacts intangible cultural property such as language and that this must be protected to ensure the continuity of First Nations peoples. 

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There are a number of issues, domestically and globally, that are demanding just attention to their cause and rightfully demanding an exercise of solidarity. ‘Solidarity’ is a term that has emerged within multiple political spheres but remains very loosely defined. Within this current social landscape, Tyberius Larking’s journey of his own understanding of solidarity is remarkably timely and is beautifully distilled in reflections of his Mirning Country.

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Here’s a question that gets directed our way pretty regularly: ‘What’s the one thing I can do to help stop climate change?’ The thing is, there is no one thing. Instead, there are many things each of us can do to make a difference. We know this can make it tricky to know where to start, so here’s a list of five actions to get you started.

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As post-industrial nations around the world position themselves as leaders in the climate crisis through pushing ‘sustainable development’, Andrew McIlwraith considers whether historically colonial powers are best placed to ‘solve’ the problem they started in the first place. He argues for the implementation of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People as a necessary step for the long term rehabilitation of people and Country from colonial interference. 

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When we talk about taking action on climate, we hear a lot about renewable energy, climate finance, sea walls and sustainable agriculture. In other words, we hear a lot about our external worlds. But what about our internal worlds? For Beth Hill, program developer at Psychology for a Safe Climate, climate action begins with understanding our feelings about climate change and what we can do with them.

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After the horrific bushfire season of 2019-20, conceptual artist Tony Albert invited audiences to rejuvenate the landscape differently. Titled ‘Healing Land, Remembering Country’ for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Albert asked audiences to write an alternative narrative for children and young people who are incarcerated in Australia onto paper filled with Kangaroo grass seeds, before being planted back into the earth as a healing, holistic rejuvenation project.

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Environmental issues have always been central to Emma Pocock’s work, but after the bushfire season of 2019-20, this took on a whole new focus. Having spent a decade embedded in the rugby world alongside her husband David Pocock – former Wallabies captain and now politician – she knew the impact sport could have on our national conversation about climate change. So she started FrontRunners, a small but mighty organisation working behind the scenes helping athletes feel more confident to talk about the impacts of climate change.

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Despite a global awakening to climate change over the last few years, temperatures are still on the rise. While the strategies needed to tackle this challenge are fast emerging, so too are extreme weather events. This means we need to move faster before climate change crosses thresholds that are much more dangerous and harder to respond to. So, what’s the state of play in 2023 and what can we do to make sure we succeed?

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