Arguably the biggest moment in the Greens' parliamentary history is now upon us. The party’s left-wing climate rhetoric will be put to the test as it decides whether to block Labor’s<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-safeguards-fossil-fuels"> </a>safeguard mechanism legislation—a barely updated policy carry-over from the previous Coalition government that’s <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-safeguards-fossil-fuels">more about greenwashing Australia’s fossil fuel economy</a> than reducing emissions.
Labor needs support from the Greens to get the legislation through the Senate because the Coalition has refused to back it, something that has caused<a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/business-dismay-at-coalition-climate-policy-retreat-20230131-p5cgth"> </a><a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/business-dismay-at-coalition-climate-policy-retreat-20230131-p5cgth">considerable dismay</a> among Australian business leaders.
Labor is the main climate criminal here. It’s the one pushing a policy that is, in effect, a gift to the fossil fuel industry—one which will ensure Australia remains among the world’s biggest contributors to global warming for decades to come.
The Greens are a bit part player in this drama. The party’s role, however, has been massively elevated by the coincidence of two factors. First, that winning serious action on climate change is perhaps its single most important reason for existing. Second, that its success in the 2022 federal election has, by giving it the balance of power in the Senate, put it in its strongest position yet to do so.
How is the party handling the situation? When you’re in as strong a bargaining position as the Greens it would be best, you’d think, not to consistently emphasise how open you are to compromise. Yet that is exactly what Greens leader Adam Bandt has been doing.
Bandt<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/15/greens-will-back-safeguard-mechanism-revamp-only-if-labor-bans-new-coal-and-gas-projects"> </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/15/greens-will-back-safeguard-mechanism-revamp-only-if-labor-bans-new-coal-and-gas-projects">has offered</a> to back the legislation in full if there is a ban on new fossil fuel extraction. To the extent that there’s an identifiable “red line” for the Greens in negotiations with Labor, this is it. Even on this, however, Bandt appears shaky. When<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH5CQYPmbMM"> </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH5CQYPmbMM">pressed</a> by ABC Insiders’ David Speers, he refused to commit to blocking the bill should Labor refuse to accept a ban. Instead, he emphasised that the Greens are in the business of compromising, and a range of alternative proposals are “worth having a look at”.
In the same interview Bandt talked up his party’s record of compromise on other pro-fossil fuel legislation since holding the balance of power. The Greens had “concerns” about the energy price cap bill but passed it anyway, despite<a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/hundreds-of-millions-in-compensation-on-offer-for-coal-fired-plants-20221228-p5c930?fbclid=IwAR3ShESOf0ORIVS2ts-Bka_cPU8ySTsXkgbS3eZAkizmF-YMJG2nQoc8XjM"> </a><a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/hundreds-of-millions-in-compensation-on-offer-for-coal-fired-plants-20221228-p5c930?fbclid=IwAR3ShESOf0ORIVS2ts-Bka_cPU8ySTsXkgbS3eZAkizmF-YMJG2nQoc8XjM">the inclusion of</a> hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for coal-fired power plant owners. The party also passed Labor’s climate bill—legislating a new emissions reduction target of 43 percent by 2030—despite recognising, in Bandt’s words, that it meant “the end of the Great Barrier Reef”.
Beyond this push for a ban on new fossil fuel projects, the Greens appear prepared to accept Labor’s safeguard mechanism without significant further amendment. This is despite the mechanism allowing the 215 biggest polluters (the<a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/two-cheers-for-the-tightening-of-the-safeguard-mechanism/"> </a><a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/two-cheers-for-the-tightening-of-the-safeguard-mechanism/">vast majority</a> being fossil fuel companies) to increase their emissions providing they “offset” these sufficiently by buying up some of the unlimited quantity of carbon credits the scheme allows for.
Worse, the Greens' flagged compromise includes part of the mechanism that financially incentivises increasing emissions. The mechanism assesses emission intensity rather than baseline emissions. So big polluters could double their emissions, and even be financially rewarded for it so long as they do it more efficiently.
Ketan Joshi<a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/labors-safeguard-policy-is-a-mirror-image-of-fossil-industry-greenwashing/"> </a><a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/labors-safeguard-policy-is-a-mirror-image-of-fossil-industry-greenwashing/">explains it well</a> in Renew Economy. “Let’s say you’re a coal mining company”, he writes. “You double your production of coal from one year to the next. Normally, your emissions from doing that would also double, but you find some efficiencies and you reduce the intensity of your emissions a few percent. That would meet the demands of the Safeguard Mechanism, but your actual, total emissions would still increase by just under half.”
This company could then be “granted a special kind of in-policy carbon credit, called a ‘Safeguard Mechanism Credit’, which can be sold to other companies that find themselves above their baseline”.
The standoff over the safeguard mechanism is set to escalate in the lead up to the Senate sitting later this month. The Greens’ concessionary, even defensive, tone so far has been taken by Labor and the big polluters as an invitation to press home their advantage. Instead of the focus being on the safeguard mechanism’s utter inadequacy as a means to drive down emissions, Labor has<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/15/albanese-government-rounds-on-greens-sabotage-of-emissions-reduction-plan"> </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/15/albanese-government-rounds-on-greens-sabotage-of-emissions-reduction-plan">been able to claim</a> it’s the Greens that are holding back “progress” by threatening to block it.
At least five Labor ministers have already taken digs at them, with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek arguing the party is yet again aligned with the Coalition to “vote against action on climate change”.
The accusation refers to a similar dispute in 2009, when the Greens twice blocked the Rudd Labor government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) in the Senate. At the time, Liz Walsh<a href="https://www.sa.org.au/node/2950"> </a><a href="https://www.sa.org.au/node/2950">wrote</a> in Socialist Alternative magazine that under the CPRS “it would be possible to outsource the entirety of [a company’s] emissions reductions by buying carbon credits on the market”, meanwhile big polluters would receive billions of dollars in handouts.
The Greens were right to block the CPRS in 2009, and they should do the same with the safeguard mechanism today. This isn’t, as Labor claims, a matter of “making the perfect the enemy of the good”. The CPRS wasn’t “good” climate policy. It was a policy that (like <a href="https://www.foeeurope.orghttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/publications/foee_ets_failing_to_deliver_1010.pdf">similar schemes around the world</a>) would have achieved little in the way of emissions reductions—meanwhile lending a green veneer to the “business as usual” of the big polluters.
The safeguard mechanism is the same. It’s not good policy. It’s not “progress”. It’s a bad policy that if implemented will entrench the fossil fuel industry’s role at the heart of the Australian economy and make winning real action on climate change even harder to achieve.
It’s clear however that Labor’s smear campaign has the Greens on the back foot. The more Bandt talks about the party’s openness to compromise, the more any move in the other direction can be painted by Labor and the mainstream media as unreasonable intransigence. They are backing themselves into a corner.
There is an alternative way forward: protest. An origin story of the Greens demonstrates the power of activism. In the early 1980s the Tasmanian Greens’ predecessors led a grassroots campaign to stop the damming of the Franklin River. They organised mass protests in Hobart and a four month blockade of the dam site, with 2,500 activists participating and 1,400 being arrested. The campaign won.
There is no evidence to suggest a large campaign against new fossil fuel extraction and for genuine and rapid emissions reductions can’t be built under Labor.<a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/most-australians-want-coal-power-phased-out-and-no-new-fossil-fuel-projects/"> </a><a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/most-australians-want-coal-power-phased-out-and-no-new-fossil-fuel-projects/">Opinion polling</a> conducted by the Australia Institute in 2022 found 57 percent of Australians oppose new fossil fuel projects, and Australia’s largest environmental NGOs have been critical of Labor’s bill. The Greens could, conceivably, use their power in the Senate to provoke a political crisis for the government that would be conducive to building a mass movement on the streets. Unfortunately, the Greens have shown little inclination to do this nor to use their considerable resources and national platform to mobilise people.
The party’s reluctance even to make an attempt at something like that shows how far it has shifted from its radical origins in pursuit of acceptance within the political mainstream. The Greens have been able to win increased influence inside parliament in part by sacrificing the party’s commitment to building movements for change outside it. But if that increased influence amounts to almost nothing when it comes to something as central to Greens’ policy as climate action we might justifiably ask: what was the point?

Jamiel Deeb

The Greens, the climate and the politics of compromise

Federal Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen <a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/energy-insiders-podcast-chris-bowen-on-gas-batteries-evs-wind-and-targets/">believes</a> that reaching 82 percent renewables in the power generation industry and delivering a 43 percent reduction in emissions would be “arguably” the biggest Australian economic development since before World War Two. 
Labor’s climate agenda is certainly receiving positive coverage in the liberal press, praise from union officials, increasing public support and little opposition from the left. This is bad news for the future of our planet. 
Since the ALP took office in May, it has been difficult to keep up with the announcements of new power projects around the country, including solar and wind farms, transmission lines, battery storage and pumped hydro. 
Bowen wants us to believe that this is all down to his government’s commitment to the “strongest possible action” on climate change. But the reality is that the changes to electricity generation taking place are being driven by economics more than by political will. Coal is fast becoming uncompetitive in the Australian energy market, and the unprecedented rise of residential solar is shortening the lifespan of coal-fired power plants. 
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2022 Integrated System Plan (ISP) predicts that up to 60 percent of coal-fired capacity could be retired by 2030—four times faster than predicted two years ago.
There is actually nothing left wing about Labor’s climate agenda. The powerful fossil fuel industry is largely in favour of decarbonising domestic electricity production, rather than transitioning to gas, because gas companies such as Woodside, Santos and Beach Energy can make bigger profits selling gas on the international market.
Indeed, Labor is planning the largest expansion of fossil fuel extraction projects in Australian history and has accommodated the Business Council of Australia’s <a href="https://www.alp.org.au/policies/powering-australia">request</a> not to force emissions-intensive industries to decarbonise if that undermines their “competitiveness”.
Solutions to the climate crisis must be seen in a global context. Australia is wealthy, developed and solar and resource rich. The people who run the country have a moral responsibility to export green energy, infrastructure and critical materials to poorer countries, with no strings attached. 
Instead, Labor is helping the coal and gas barons export the apocalypse to the rest of the world while it celebrates marginal emission cuts at home. If all of Labor’s 114 planned coal mines and gas extraction facilities are approved, the combined carbon emissions from them will be nearly 67 times greater than the 180 megatonnes of carbon dioxide to be cut from the power sector by 2030—a figure calculated from Labor’s own climate modelling data by <a href="https://www.reputex.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/REPUTEX_The-economic-impact-of-the-ALPs-Powering-Australia-Plan_Summary-Report-1221-2.pdf">RepuTex Energy</a>, a consultancy, and the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/P1163-Undermining-climate-action-the-Australian-way-WEB.pdf">Australia Institute</a>, a think tank. 
Even if we consider only domestic emissions, the new projects will release almost six times more emissions than Labor claims to be cutting in the power generation industry. Reputex’s modelling assumes that fossil fuel companies can offset emissions rather than eliminate them. But, as I explained in a previous Red Flag article, “<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/politics-behind-climate-models">The politics behind climate models</a>”, carbon offsets at this scale are a sham. 
If offsets are excluded from calculations and the projects go ahead, Labor’s policies have little chance of preventing a rise in national emissions this decade. Even if Labor meets its inadequate 43 percent emissions reduction target, Australia—being the third highest exporter of fossil fuels in the world—will remain a disproportionate contributor to global greenhouse emissions. 
Labor’s prized target of 82 percent renewables in the power grid does not go far enough anyway. If the government sticks to the 2022 ISP, it will double gas-fired plant capacity from five to ten megawatts. Already, two additional gas plants are being built in NSW. Labor wants gas in the power grid beyond 2030 because it is cheaper at grid firming than hydropower or battery storage charged by renewables. Once again, profiteering comes before our planet. 
Further, Labor’s “green” power grid will be primarily owned and run by companies that want to profit from our essential services. To entice investors, billions of dollars in public money are being used to subsidise privately owned power generation, storage, transmission and distribution. The rational alternative—a planned and publicly owned and run national energy grid that puts people and planet before profit—is not even part of the ALP’s discussion.
Yet reliance on the private sector risks dragging out the transition because its profits-first approach cannot be relied on to respond to the looming green infrastructure bottleneck. State intervention could expand supply through public works and develop cradle-to-grave recycling systems for critical materials. But Labor has no such plans.
Despite the federal government’s climate crimes and its gifts to big business, it is winning sympathy from organisations that have historically played an important role in the environmental movement. 
These include our unions. Australian Council of Trade Unions President Michele O’Neil, for example, issued a nonsensical media release that claimed: “With the Albanese government and a new parliament, we can finally work towards the future”. 
School Strike 4 Climate, which has led the climate movement since 2018, is another example. Since Labor was elected, the group (like a number of other organisations) has shown little interest in organising against the new government’s betrayals on the environment. 
Then there’s the Greens. The party criticises Labor’s new fossil fuel projects, yet Greens MPs nevertheless <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/hundreds-of-millions-in-compensation-on-offer-for-coal-fired-plants-20221228-p5c930?fbclid=IwAR3ShESOf0ORIVS2ts-Bka_cPU8ySTsXkgbS3eZAkizmF-YMJG2nQoc8XjM">backed</a> pro-fossil-fuel legislation in the parliament, including hundreds of millions of dollars in wholesale energy price cap compensation for coal-fired plant owners. Outside of parliament, the Greens appear to spend more on ink for press statements than they do on trying to rebuild a grassroots movement. 
The Albanese government has packaged its plan to partially decarbonise the power grid as a historic moment for climate action. This greenwashing presents a challenge for activists determined to rebuild the climate movement. However small the movement may be, the need to challenge Australian capitalism’s love of fossil fuels has never been more pressing.

Labor’s green power dwarfed by fossil fuel boom

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely considered the scientific authority on climate change. It informs government policy, and its predictions about the likely consequences of global warming are frequently invoked by environmental activists to highlight the urgent need for climate action. The IPCC’s contributions to environmentalism are largely positive, but this obscures the fact that even the IPCC is not entirely dedicated to the pursuit of truth, science and environmental protection. Rather, its structure and operation are shaped by the political ambitions of world governments, most of which are determined to delay a transition away from fossil fuels. 
Instead of being run by scientists as you might assume, the IPCC is in fact governed by a panel of 195 representatives appointed by governments. The panel elects a bureau of scientific and technical experts, who then appoint and oversee the scientists contributing to the IPCC’s reports within the framework set for them. The panel’s decision making relies on consensus, so it is beholden to countries most committed to the fossil fuel economy, like Australia, Saudi Arabia and the US. It involves hundreds of officials from member countries, whose vested interests determine the body’s activities and procedures, and the scope and structure of its reports. 
The IPCC’s various reports are collated into its Summary for Policymakers which is widely read. This is not determined by science or the scientists involved. Instead, government representatives negotiate the summary report’s content line by line. 
Recent <a href="https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/04/28/how-vested-interests-rewrote-the-ipccs-latest-report/">leaks</a> comparing the final and original drafts of the latest summary report highlight how panel members use their veto powers to undermine the science. In one case, they cut references to the need for gas and coal plants to be shut down within a decade. Leaked documents provided to the<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58982445"> BBC</a> hint at who was behind these changes, including “one senior Australian government official rejecting the conclusion that closing coal-fired power plants is necessary”. Other leaks expose the countries behind the removal of references to emissions from the aviation, car and meat industries, as well as the additional emphasis on the potential for carbon capture and storage technologies to clean up fossil fuel emissions. 
Despite this, the IPCC is widely respected, and not without reason: thousands of scientists volunteer their time to prepare reports that they hope will be as scientifically rigorous as possible in order to give an honest and accurate picture of the crisis facing our planet. This reflects that the world’s governments are at one level interested in gaining a realistic assessment of the threat posed by climate change, even if they are not willing to act on it. 
Climate scientists themselves hope that the truth, meddled with though it might sometimes be, will act as an urgent impetus for action. The 2018 Global Warming of 1.5°C report, for example, is known for its call to halve global emissions by 2030 through “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. This call helped spark the global school climate strike movement. 
But climate scientists are increasingly disillusioned with the very governments that run the IPCC. A 2021<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01461-y"> survey</a> of IPCC authors in the science journal Nature found that a quarter have taken part in protests, and 60 percent have little faith in government action. Climate scientist Joelle Gergis, in her recent book Humanity’s Moment, shares her experience as one of the dozen Australian lead authors of the latest IPCC report. She describes the harrowing findings, the deep grief shared by colleagues and the frustrations: “Very often the IPCC’s most important messages are lost in translation”. 
Frequently, the science simply does not translate into the necessary government policy. In 2015, 195 governments in the Paris Climate Accord committed to limit global warming to 1.5 to 2°C. In response, the IPCC was tasked with achieving the impossible: to determine policy options to limit warming to under 2°C while justifying the continuation of the fossil-fuelled economy. To do this, the IPCC uses computer models called integrated assessment models (IAMs) that couple earth system models with economic models. 
IAMs are recognised as the defining measure of government policy’s impact on the climate. But the modellings goal is not to generate policy that minimises capitalism’s impact on the planet. Instead, the IPCC’s fifth assessment report states that the aim is to produce policy options that “minimiz[e] aggregate economic costs”, while assuming “functioning markets and competitive market behavior”. In other words, while the models are constrained by climate ambitions, they prioritise the protection of fossil fuel assets over everything else. 
As a result, “The way IAMs are set up, mitigating climate change is always more expensive than inaction”, explain the authors of a 2018 Climate Analytics <a href="https://climateanalytics.org/media/climate_analytics_iams_briefing_oct2018.pdf">report.</a> IAMs justify the economic viability of inaction with far-fetched hypothetical scenarios that discount many of the negative impacts of climate change, such as its toll on people, the economy and the biosphere. And they weigh near-term economic costs more heavily than future costs, assuming that technological progress will compensate. 
By ignoring climate change’s impact on the economy, for example, IAMs don’t factor in a global economy struggling to adapt infrastructure to withstand an increasingly hostile climate. 
By ignoring climate change’s impact on human wellbeing, IAMs don’t factor in the tremendous suffering associated with inaction. The IPCC <a href="https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2022/3/3/ipcc-africa">estimates</a> that by 2030, at 1.5°C, up to 700 million Africans alone could be displaced due to water stress. The international economy will struggle to respond to the escalating humanitarian crises caused by a 1.5°C rise. 
By ignoring climate change’s impact on energy demand, IAMs don’t factor in the rising demand for electricity (still partially fuelled by hydrocarbons) as the need for air conditioning skyrockets. In 2018, the International Energy Agency <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-cooling">estimated </a>that with 2°C of warming, additional energy demand could be equivalent to the current electricity consumption of the US, Europe and Japan combined.
Because IAMs are structured to favour inaction and the protection of existing industries, governments require a degree of creative accounting to make it seem like their policies could achieve meaningful climate targets. One important example is the concept of carbon offsets. Carbon offsets involve governments factoring into their policy modelling hypothetical technology that may one day remove carbon from the atmosphere, even if such technology doesn’t yet exist. An example of this carbon offsetting technology is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). 
Almost all modelled policy options rest on large-scale employment of BECCS that, based on current technology, would be impossible to implement. The end result is to grossly underestimate the warming that should be expected. For example, in a 2°C pathway outlined in the Global Warming of 1.5°C report, to compensate for no rapid transition, the model requires a carbon drawdown of 12 gigatonnes of CO2 per year by 2100, which is equivalent to about a third of 2021 global emissions. 
But a 2018 Nature <a href="https://idp.nature.com/authorize?response_type=cookie&amp;client_id=grover&amp;redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41558-017-0064-y">paper</a> found that if BECCS was to be constrained by the nine <a href="https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html">planetary boundaries</a> that ensure Earth’s habitability, it could sequester only a mere 0.5 percent of global emissions, nowhere near enough to keep warming to 2°C. Such untenable “solutions” exist in IAM modelling only to keep policymakers and fossil fuel corporations happy: it enables them to make relatively ambitious commitments while maintaining business as usual, along with all the continued climate destruction that involves. 
The IPCC’s creative carbon accounting fits so neatly with fossil fuel company interests that Shell’s “vision” of keeping warming below 2°C features as a credible pathway in the Global Warming of 1.5°C report. The large-scale use of fictitious carbon capture and storage technologies in the company's model ensures its fossil fuel reserves are safe future assets. 
Overall, the net result of IAMs greenwashing has been to provide scientific backing for government proclamations that an energy transition can occur through gradual change, free-market profiteering and carbon offsetting. 
Another way the IPCC’s findings are distorted involves the presentation to the public of the risks of climate change. A range of possible warming outcomes are predicted in the IPCC’s climate modelling, with different levels of probability. The one presented to the public is usually only the most likely, which obscures the various “tail-end” scenarios, which are less likely but pose much more risk.
The IPCC has modelled the probability of levels of warming once the world has adjusted to an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 700ppm, double pre-industrial levels. While the most likely outcome is 3°C, warming of 4.5°C has an 18 percent likelihood. In Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet, two economists have used the IPCC’s numbers to further show that there is a 10 percent probability of warming of at least 6°C. 
There is a significant difference between 3 and 6°C of warming. Our Final Warning, a book by Mark Lynas, describes the different impacts of the various possible degrees of warming. At 3°C, he says billions of people in poor nations will reside in climates akin to the hottest parts of the Sahara, including nuclear-armed nations India and Pakistan. At 5°C, for most of the year, regions currently inhabited by a majority of humans will experience wet-bulb temperatures, defined as the threshold in which humans are unable to survive outside. Lynas suggests that a 6°C temperature rise, which has a 10 percent chance of happening, “imperils even the survival of humans as a species”. These tail-end risks demand scrutiny—especially given that current global policies are predicted to reach almost 3°C by 2100, which, once the tail-end risks are taken into account, poses an existential threat to humanity.
Existential tail-end risks are largely excluded from public discourse, and are not factored into IAM modelling and international climate policy. The governments running the IPCC obscure these risks in their blind determination to put fossil fuel profiteering above the habitability of our planet. As scientists’ understanding of tail-end risks has improved over the last two decades, their assessment of the probability of them occurring has tended to increase. 
The uncertainty of tail-end risks stems from a lack of scientific clarity about the pace and magnitude of warming generated by a range of earth system processes commonly referred to as “feedbacks” and “tipping points”. Some of these processes are not understood well enough to be included in climate modelling, such as “Arctic permafrost thawing that releases methane and CO2, carbon loss due to intense droughts and fires in the Amazon, and the apparent slowing of dampening feedbacks such as natural carbon sink capacity”, say twelve respected earth system scientists in a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119">paper</a> published this year titled Climate Endgame. This warming, when accounted for in climate models, may further increase the probability of tail-end risks. The earth system scientists argue that these “dangerous surprises” should be researched further and be the subject of the next IPCC report. While governments in charge of the IPCC want to bury these risks for their own political ends, there is an urgent need to learn more about them so they can be better managed.
 The environmental movement and climate scientists have a responsibility to expose government distortions of science and to expose the vested interests that underpin such distortions. The misrepresentation of science is adding to a sense of complacency, or misplaced hope, that capitalism can meet the challenge of climate change. This will only bring us closer to an uninhabitable earth. History is full of mass movements leading revolutionary change on a scale that people previously thought impossible. In the coming years and decades, once again, we must make history. We have everything to lose and a planet to win.

The politics behind climate models

Labor’s hot air on climate

Quentin Beresford’s book <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/wounded-country-118493/">Wounded Country: The Murray-Darling Basin—a contested history</a>, published in September 2021, is a warning. State officials, politicians and agribusinesses risk turning Australia’s premier food bowl—the Murray-Darling Basin, which covers 14 percent of the Australian mainland—into desert.
The book is an environmental history of the once thriving basin, which evolved over millions of years to accommodate and retain water during the cycle of floods and droughts. It’s the story of how this immense river system and the ecosystems that depend on it are being slowly killed for profit.
Beresford details how, following the invasion and colonisation of this continent by the British, anything that got in the way of profit-driven agricultural expansion—from Indigenous people to native ecosystems to wildlife—faced campaigns of “annihilation”. The Australian state has been the key cultural and economic driver of this (ongoing) destruction, and its goal from the start has been to foster an agriculture sector that can compete in the global capitalist market.
Within decades of the British invasion, tens of millions of sheep roamed the landscape, devouring the native grasses. These grasses have deep roots adapted to soak up occasional heavy rainfall into the spongy soil. In their place, squatters planted shallow-rooted grass, which was more subject to damage by summer heat and storms. Furthermore, the spongy soil was pounded down by the heavy-hoofed sheep and cattle, leading to soil erosion and reduced soil fertility.
Cleared land has always been seen as more profitable in the short term. Fewer trees mean more crops and cattle. This logic was promoted by state and federal governments. Until the 1980s, Beresford explains, farmers could obtain a tax deduction for spending on the destruction and removal of timber, scrub or undergrowth. The result was wholesale annihilation of forests along the basin’s network of rivers. By 1995, the CSIRO estimated, between 12 and 15 billion trees had been removed in the region, and the logging has continued to this day.
Vast areas of irrigated crops along the Murray River were once shady oases of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-river-red-gum-is-an-icon-of-the-driest-continent-118839">river red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis)</a>. The trees, Beresford writes, were “found for hundreds of kilometres along the Murray, stretching from 5-13 kilometres back from the river”. They are “perfectly attuned to the periodic flood conditions”, and played a role in managing water flow and retention along the river. Today their numbers are much reduced.
Land clearing, combined with declines in water flow, has also contributed to a salinity crisis along the Murray—harming native ecosystems and agriculture alike, as well as impacting Adelaide’s drinking water. The river red gums and other trees act as pumps, keeping ancient salts dissolved in groundwater. As “farmers—backed by government schemes—removed the trees”, writes Beresford, it resulted “in a rising water table bringing salt deposits to the surface, which killed plant life”. By the 1970s, a tonne of salt was carried annually down the Murray River from the irrigation drainage system.
Beresford also writes about the state-funded war targeting many native animal species—seen as 
“pests” that get in the way of productive harvests. The basin was once teeming with dingoes, wallabies, kangaroos, wombats, platypuses, koalas and emus. Each species was slaughtered in the millions. Some—like the kangaroo and wallabies—were able to adapt and survive. Most, however, have disappeared from agricultural land and continue to have their last remaining habitats threatened.
The campaign of destruction began in earnest in the late 1880s, by which time all state governments covering the basin had adopted some form of “pest” control act. “The acts”, Beresford explains, “gave the government the power to enter and inspect any property and, if vermin were found, order the owners to destroy the pests under threat of a fine. Inspectors could order the laying of poisons and the erection of new fences”. The drive to annihilate native species went beyond those deemed agricultural “pests”. Species like the platypus and koala were also slaughtered to supply the global fur and feather trade.
Beresford recounts two largely forgotten droughts as a warning of what may lie ahead without radical change. Both the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/federation-drought">Federation Drought of 1895-1903</a> and the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1875963716300167#:~:text=Between%201935%20and%201945%2C%20Sydney,and%20sheep%20flocks%20were%20destroyed.">Australian “dust bowl” of the 1930s and 40s</a> turned much of the rural landscape of the eastern states—centred in the Murray-Darling Basin—to dust.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallee_(Victoria)">The Mallee region</a>, an agricultural area surrounding the north-western Victorian town of Mildura, was particularly badly impacted. During the Federation Drought, Beresford writes, “drifts of sand in this and other areas filled houses knee-deep, blocked front doors, clogged water tanks and engulfed fences and vegetation”. Many settlers left the region, and those who remained were “on the verge of starvation”. This story was repeated across the Murray-Darling Basin from Victoria, through NSW, to southern Queensland.
The drought, Beresford recounts, had a death toll in the thousands “from the effects of heat, bushfires, disease and malnutrition”. And its impacts weren’t limited to rural areas. “The dairying, meat export and wheat industries were paralysed”, creating food shortages in the major cities.
The “dust bowl” of the 1930s and ’40s caused similar levels of hardship. “In terms of the area affected by erosion and the length of time over which dust storms erupted”, Beresford argues, “Australia’s dust bowl was greater than America’s”. Agricultural industries were crippled once again, topsoil from vast areas of farmland was blown out to sea, and permanent gangs of workers were required to keep railways free of sand drifts.
The Murray-Darling Basin was in a state of collapse during these two prolonged periods of drought. This collapse was just as much a product of human activities as it was of the natural variability of weather patterns and rainfall. According to research on the Federation Drought published by the CSIRO in 2019, the cause was <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a008-el-nino-and-australia.shtml">an El Niño event</a> exacerbated by “land clearing, degradation of native grasses, overstocking and overcropping, and the introduction of feral species”.
These conclusions were little different from those drawn by scientists at the time. As early as 1885, the NSW Royal Commission on the Conservation of Water concluded that the wholesale clearing of forests had reduced rainfall “by up to 50 per cent in some districts”. But despite the impact of the droughts and the warnings of scientists over many decades of the need for change, the kind of environmental vandalism that contributed to the devastation has never ceased.
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<img alt="Illustration by Sofia Sabbagh (Instagram: @sofia.sabbagh)" src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/Murray-Darling.jpg" /></div>
<div class="article_inline_caption">Illustration by Sofia Sabbagh (Instagram: @sofia.sabbagh)</div>
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Given what we know about the likely impacts of climate change on Australia, it’s certain that we’ll face more, and more severe, droughts in the years ahead. Scientists predict that the kind of extreme El Niño events that triggered previous severe droughts will increase in frequency in a warmer world. And already, a long-term decline in water flows into the basin is evident. A 2018 CSIRO study found that “the average inflow to the Murray River during the past 20 years was almost half the 20th century average”.
Governments have heralded irrigation as the solution to drought. But it’s a “solution” only for those big irrigators farming cattle or growing water-intensive crops like cotton, who can invest in the machinery and water storage infrastructure required to hoard all the water they need. For local ecosystems and communities in the basin, it’s making things worse.
The ABC’s Four Corners episodes <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/pumped/8727826">“Pumped” (2017)</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/cash-splash/11289412">“Cash Splash” (2019)</a> exposed the large-scale, unregulated over-irrigation occurring across the Basin, covertly backed by our corrupt political establishment and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. The consequences of this ecological vandalism have been devastating. The basin ecosystem is dependent on periodic floods, which fill a network of wetlands and lakes that keep the river system and surrounding landscape hydrated during periods of drought. Today, however, due to the vast amounts of water being pumped out by big irrigators, even the wettest seasons aren’t enough to replenish fully the Basin’s natural reserves.
In early 2021, residents of the western NSW town of Menindee <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/14/toxic-blooms-and-local-fury-whats-going-on-at-menindee-lakes">were in uproar</a>. Their water supply turned green and stank. Beresford records, “The <a>townspeople claim that water from the drought-breaking rains</a> of early 2020 wasn’t flowing to them”. This created the conditions for an algal bloom. The last time the Darling River was in the same poor shape was in 2018, when another algal bloom <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-08/second-fish-kill-in-darling-river-at-menindee/10696632">killed an estimated one million fish</a>. Widespread heavy rain across NSW and Queensland in the second half of 2021 has improved the situation, but without fundamental change, the shortage of natural flows through the system will become the “new normal”.
Beresford’s book captures one relatively local aspect of a global crisis. His message is clear: if we fail to change course, Australia’s food bowl will again turn to dust. And this time, due to the combined pressure of climate change and continuing ecological destruction, the damage may be fatal. And when we expand our view from the Murray-Darling Basin to encompass the entire Earth, we get a terrifyingly clear picture of the suicidal trajectory that capitalism’s drive to short-term profit has put us on.
We need not, however, resign ourselves to a future battle for survival against ever-encroaching desert sands. Scientific knowledge gives society the capacity to be stewards of a sustainable food system across the Basin and our entire planet. We have the capacity to transform agriculture into a system that is capable of feeding Earth’s current population and more: one that is a carbon sink rather than a major emitter; one that safeguards key ecological functions such as water flow and soil health; and one that integrates corridors for wildlife, wetlands and native forest systems for moisture feedback, nutrient sinks and biodiversity.
The profit-driven system of capitalism has failed. To save the Murray-Darling Basin and our habitable planet at large, we need nothing short of far-reaching system change.

‘Look up’, Australia: How capitalism and climate change are turning our food bowl to dust

Earth is overpopulated, but in only one sense: there are too many rich people. The rich are the main drivers of the climate crisis, not the masses of workers and the poor whose existence is commonly blamed for climate change and other environmental problems. 
To solve the climate crisis, the rich must be abolished, for two main reasons. First, the lavish lifestyles of the rich and powerful are highly energy- and resource-intensive—think of all those mansions, petrol-guzzling cars and super-yachts, and regular long-distance flights, often in their own private jets.
According to a September 2020 report by Oxfam, Confronting Carbon Inequality, between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10 percent of the world’s population produced 52 percent of all consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions. The richest 1 percent were responsible for 15 percent of the total, more than double the 7 percent of emissions produced by the poorest half of the world’s population.
Eliminating the energy- and resource-intensive lifestyles of the wealthiest segment of the population would be by far the most effective way to reduce emissions rapidly. British climate scientist Kevin Anderson provided this useful explainer in a 2018 interview with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!: “If that 10 percent of high emitters reduce their carbon footprint ... to the level of the average European citizen, that would be equivalent of a one-third cut in global emissions, even if the other 90 percent did nothing”.
The immediate and significant reduction in consumption that would flow from this would also help offset all the energy and resources required to build a livable and sustainable future for everyone else. The poorest half of the world’s population currently have a very small environmental footprint. The “sustainable” lifestyles of the poor, however, stem from their lack of access to many of the basic amenities that people in developed countries take for granted.
Any genuine, just solution to the climate crisis must involve lifting masses of people out of poverty. To do otherwise is to leave billions exposed to the life-threatening impacts of climate change that are already being felt—such as rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts, cyclones, floods and fires. The transition to a more equitable and sustainable society will involve a massive investment not only in renewable energy, but also housing, public transport, health care, and so on.
Over time, we can expect that the greening of our basic infrastructure (for example, housing that is better designed and insulated against temperature extremes) will lead to a decline in energy and resource consumption at the same time as the living standards of the majority of people increase. In the transition period, however, demand for energy and resources will spike as we address the most urgent challenges of both poverty and sustainability.
The need for increased access to air conditioning is one example. A 2018 report by the International Energy Agency, The Future of Cooling, estimated that in a world 2 degrees warmer than the 20th century average, an additional electricity supply “equivalent to the combined electricity capacity of the United States, the EU, and Japan today” will be required to meet higher demand for cooling. For the world’s poorest people, the majority of whom live in the hottest areas of the planet, air conditioning isn’t some luxury they can do without. In a warming world it can be a matter of life or death.
Another challenge will be managing the transition to renewable energy in a context of the scarcity of the rare earth metals required for the production of solar panels and wind turbines, and the lithium needed for batteries. A 2018 paper by environmental consultancy Copper8, Metal Demands of the Dutch Energy Transition, found that “global production of six rare metals used in solar panels and wind turbines” is grossly insufficient to meet global energy demands. In the short term then, we will continue to rely to some degree on fossil fuels, highlighting the need to actually reduce demand for energy to enable us to make the transition without causing further significant damage to the climate.
Sacrifices will need to be made in some areas. And the simplest, fairest and most effective thing would be simply to abolish the completely superfluous luxury in which the richest few currently live.
The second reason we must abolish the rich is that it’s they who are invested (either directly or indirectly) in the industries most responsible for continuing high emissions. Due to their sheer financial clout and their connections and influence over the political elite, the global capitalist class are free to steer the economy in whichever way best suits them. And for now, a rapid decarbonisation of industry doesn’t appeal.
The reason for this is simple: it’s much more profitable for them to preserve the status quo. To the rich, the threats posed by climate change must seem very distant indeed. They aren’t the ones who are currently feeling the early, destructive effects of a warming world—their immense wealth offers a high degree of protection from this. In contrast, the piles of cash they are amassing from the “business as usual” of capitalism are very real and tangible.
It’s not only the fossil-fuel barons we have to worry about. Whether or not a particular member of the capitalist class is directly involved in the fossil fuel industry, their wealth and power are almost certainly tied to emissions-intensive activities of some kind. 
In Australia, only 33 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity generation. The rest arise from things like transport, manufacturing (e.g. of cement, steel, aluminium, plastic, paper etc.), and agriculture (e.g. methane emissions from livestock and the production of nitrogen fertiliser). And the short-term profits flowing from these industries don’t matter only to those directly running businesses in these areas. They also matter, for example, to the big banks and investors who have loaned out their money, in the expectation that they will get a return. 
It’s the economy as a whole, not just the “fossil-fuel economy”, that needs to undergo a major, rapid change. Much of the basic infrastructure of the capitalist economy in countries like Australia today has to be retired, rebuilt or retooled if we’re to reduce emissions at anywhere near the rate required. The rich—the people who own, run and profit from the destructive status quo—are the biggest barrier to this.
The greed of the rich is driving us to catastrophe. They must be abolished so we can get on with the job of building a more just, equitable and sustainable economy and society.

Solve the climate crisis: abolish the rich

Many have celebrated Joe Biden’s win in the US presidential election as a major turning point in the battle to save the world from climate catastrophe. The liberal media have been Biden’s main advocates. For example, a 12 November editorial in the Guardian argued: “Joe Biden’s win will make a big difference to international efforts to deal with the climate emergency”. Others have pointed to impressive-sounding campaign promises, such as a commitment to spend US$2 trillion over four years to build “sustainable infrastructure and an equitable clean energy future”. 
For the climate movement to fall for this would be a disaster. When you look beneath the surface at the detail of Biden’s promises, the difference between him and Trump appears more a matter of presentation than of policy content. Biden may not be an outright climate change denier like Trump, but this, in fact, is what makes him uniquely dangerous. By creating the impression of progress, a Biden administration could much more effectively “greenwash” the destructive status quo, taking the momentum away from the climate movement at a crucial moment in the fight for a sustainable future.
The world needs much bigger changes, and much more quickly, than anything Biden is proposing. The infrastructure investment is spread across a long list of projects that have little do to with his pledge to transition US electricity to zero net carbon emissions. Projects include rebuilding roads, rail, aviation, ports, bridges, water systems and universal broadband. 
The investment plan commits to projects necessary for an energy transition. But the funding will be spread thin, even if the proposals get through the Congress. Can it meet his pledge to de-carbonise the power sector by 2035? It will not come close. Recent analysis by the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates that $4.5 trillion would be needed to transition US electricity to renewables. But Biden has not committed to any emission cuts in his first term. None. Zilch. That is, unless you count committing to “a milestone target no later than the end of his first term”, as his policy website says.
In recent weeks, Biden has ruled out banning fracking, which accounts for almost all new US natural gas production. Yet an energy transition is impossible without transitioning away from natural gas. A 2019 paper published in the journal Nature, titled “Committed emissions from existing energy infrastructure jeopardize 1.5 degree climate target”, found that the total committed carbon emissions from existing and planned fossil infrastructure is more than double the maximum amount required to stay within the Paris Agreement carbon budget (the total amount of carbon that can be released to hold global warming below 2°C). And this is a conservative figure, as it does not include emissions from agriculture, logging and land use. No matter how many trillions are invested in natural gas and crude oil reserves, large portions of it will need to be abandoned—a fact Biden clearly refuses to accept by encouraging even more investment. 
Biden’s motivation to continue natural gas production has little to do with carbon emissions. It has a lot to do with his commitment to a profitable fossil fuel sector. His true intentions are visible to those who are looking.
Young climate activists in the Sunrise Movement reached 3.5 million young votes in swing states during the presidential election campaign. In response, Biden has appointed Cedric Richmond as White House public engagement officer, where he is expected to serve as a liaison “with the businesses community and climate change activists”. Richmond, a congressional representative, received $341,000 from donors in the oil and gas industry, the fifth highest donation total among House Democrats. This fossil fuel industry ally has a record of voting with Republicans against restrictions on fracking. Biden’s appointment of Richmond hints that behind a green PR campaign, dirty deals are already being made. 
But assume for a moment that Biden follows through on his carbon reduction pledges. His commitment to de-carbonising US electricity production by 2035 will not come close to honouring the US Paris Agreement pledge, which is a 26-28 percent emissions cut by 2025. Even if, miraculously, Biden and his successor(s) were to de-carbonise US electricity production by 2035—a 27 percent cut in national emissions—it would be ten years behind schedule. 
Now assume that Biden improves his emission reduction pledges and commits the US to the 2015 Paris Agreement. This would still not avoid a climate disaster. <a>Climate Action Tracker</a>, a scientific analysis that follows government climate action, estimates that if all global governments committed to the US Paris pledge, global warming would still reach four degrees by 2100. As detailed in Mark Lynas’ new book Our Final Warming, the Paris Agreement may deliver a three-degree warmer world as soon as 2050. 
What would this climate disaster look like? A 2020 scientific paper titled Future of the Human Climate Niche found that, with three degrees of warming, 3.5 billion people would be living in regions with a mean annual temperature akin to the Sahara desert today. This scenario would cause global mass wildlife extinctions and ruin billions of human lives. 
Biden’s climate policy is not a major turning point. It is a continuation of a violent assault on Earth’s biodiversity, on billions of young people alive today and on the sustainability of our planet. Biden hopes to do what Trump was no good at: demobilising the climate movement by convincing activists that he is on our side. The environmental movement must not get swept up in distant Paris Agreement pledges and net-zero 2050 national targets.
The 2019 IPCC report, titled Global Warming of 1.5 degrees, insists that we need to keep the globe from warming by 1.5 degrees. This can be done only through global emissions cuts of 7.6 percent annually, starting now. Another recent IPCC report, 1.5 degrees, says that this energy transition demands “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. 
Resting our hopes in Biden is a recipe for disaster. The global climate movement must fight to change the system itself.

No, Joe Biden isn’t going to save us from climate catastrophe

Nearly 100 people turned out to a hastily called community meeting to defend a local health service in Melbourne’s inner north on 21 May. Elderly migrant residents of the nearby public housing estates made up most of the loud and angry meeting, held at the Cohealth medical centre in Collingwood.
“Tony Abbott needs to give us more money”, insisted Stan, originally from Yugoslavia, who spoke to Red Flag. “This chemist must stay here. We in the Cohealth centre will fight together so we will be more strong.”
Cohealth is not your average medical centre. It is a one-stop community health centre with the only fully funded not-for-profit community pharmacy in the country. Locals and Cohealth staff were taken by surprise when the pharmacy’s funding was axed in the federal budget.
Cohealth supports the marginalised: refugees, the elderly, people with a disability and others doing it tough. It sells medicines at around 30 percent less than the national average.
“People are poor”, says Stan. “They come to see the doctor, buy their prescriptions and get their tablets from the pharmacy. Elders and people in wheelchairs that need taxis, refugees that need translators – it will cost them double … people may not go and [will] get very sick.’’ “I want to fight! We want to fight! Because people here, we understand”, he says.
Cohealth chief executive Lyn Morgain and Greens MP Adam Bandt addressed the meeting. Both spoke of the need for a campaign. Five interpreters, each in a different language, relayed every point made by the speakers. The crowd responded with waves of cheers or sneers.
Lyn Morgain explained that the centre’s integrated GP-pharmacy model saved the government’s health budget $346,000 a year. “It is the only pharmacy that’s been saving the government money”, she said. This fact is not disputed by the government.
Instead, the budget papers justify the cut, according to Morgain, as “fixing up an anomaly” in the predominantly profit-driven pharmaceutical sector. One resident proudly argued that this “anomaly” actually “saves lives and should be spread across the country.”
Shafeeqa, an Afghan woman, spoke to Red Flag, with the aid of an interpreter. Like many who use the centre, she relies on the on-site interpreting services provided at Cohealth to communicate with health care workers.
“Big families with kids in the estate rely on this pharmacy. They see the doctors here and then get their prescription straight away. It is easy for them, also for older people, and the price is affordable”, she says.
“Our government does not care about us, does not care about refugees, does not care about any one.”

Collingwood locals fight plan to axe pharmacy

The Victorian firefighters’ union has won a major legal battle against the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB). On 3 November, after months of deliberation, the Fair Work Commission rejected the MFB’s application to scrap the 2010 enterprise agreement it had negotiated with the union.
The MFB had been seeking to have firefighters’ conditions drop to the award, a major tactical advantage in current enterprise agreement negotiations. “Ultimately, we are looking to build an agile and flexible organisation”, MFB chief executive Jim Higgins told the Age after the decision.
Management also has revealed plans to reduce crew numbers by up to 9 percent, depending on weekly weather forecasts.
Speaking to Red Flag, union secretary Peter Marshall said the brigade’s case had political backing. “Under the endorsement and supervision of the Victorian premier Napthine and the federal emergency services minister Mr Mills, the MFB outrageously spent millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on highly expensive lawyers.”
Throughout the 15-day hearing in July, each MFB witness was escorted through the commission by bodyguards. This was an eyebrow-raising precaution given that firefighters were considered the most trusted Australian profession in 2013. The MFB were “attempting to portray firefighters as thugs”, says the union.
Firefighters, in turn, gave evidence against the MFB. The union had to spend $600,000 on the case. Up to 100 firefighters were present each day of the hearing to express their dismay with the MFB executive.
Asked about the lesson to take from this victory, Marshall said: “It’s only with the collective strength of the union that government attacks on employment can be defeated.”
A recent union staff poll showed that 95 percent of firefighters have no confidence in MFB chief officer Peter Rau and 92 percent have no confidence in MFB president Murray Neil Comrie.

Victorian firefighters win

The Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) has abruptly halted enterprise agreement negotiations with the firefighters’ union by mounting a legal attack on firefighters’ existing conditions. The MFB is trying to scrap the firefighters’ 2010 enterprise agreement and return important conditions and entitlements to award levels.
“There’s $66 million cut from the fire service budget, and at the same time we are seeing MFB senior management use the money the community has paid for fire protection against firefighters”, says the secretary of the United Firefighters Union (Victoria), Peter Marshall.
Speaking to Red Flag, Marshall described the application, lodged at the Fair Work Commission on 28 March, as “an attempt by the MFB to avoid the legitimate bargaining process”. The union says the application came without warning or discussion. “It’s an outrageous application”, he says. “The MFB willingly entered into an enterprise agreement [in 2010] and are now trying to undo it, and that is just simply wrong.”
The case is expected to be heard by the commission within weeks. The acting CEO of the MFB, Russell Eddington, has publicly spelled out the organisation’s rationale for the legal manoeuvre: “Terminating the agreements would allow the organisation [the MFB] to revert to the consultation requirements under the firefighters’ modern award rather than the arduous and impractical requirements currently in place.”
Marshall says that a win to the MFB would have significant ramifications for firefighters and the public. There would be “no minimum staffing – which means less protection for the community”.
“It would mean that many protections that firefighters enjoy in relation to equipment and uniform will be reduced to the very bare minimum, and many entitlements that enable firefighters to provide certainty to their families will be removed or reduced.”
Meanwhile, the union says that cuts to fire services funding are damaging the service. The state government has reneged on its promise to recruit an extra 342 Country Fire Authority (CFA) firefighters. “Recruiting in the CFA has frozen. There are areas of regional Victoria and Melbourne that are not covered as a result of those cuts”, says Marshall. “There is also ‛rationalisation’ of protective equipment.”
In some regional areas, stations are staffed for limited periods each day. Last month, three stations temporarily closed with no CFA firefighters to staff them. The UFU will be fighting the MFB’s application and is continuing its public campaign against the Napthine government’s cuts.
[Further information available at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ProtectTheProtectors">facebook.com/ProtectTheProtectors</a>.]

The Greens, the climate and the politics of compromise

Labor’s green power dwarfed by fossil fuel boom

The politics behind climate models

Labor’s hot air on climate

‘Look up’, Australia: How capitalism and climate change are turning our food bowl to dust

Solve the climate crisis: abolish the rich

No, Joe Biden isn’t going to save us from climate catastrophe

Collingwood locals fight plan to axe pharmacy

Victorian firefighters win

MFB attack on firefighters ‘outrageous’, says union

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