Glimmers in the gloom: 10 signs of climate progress

It is easy (and pretty apt) to get depressed about the climate situation. As records keep tumbling and feedbacks kick in and polluters continue to throw their political weight around, the momentum on our trajectory into ever greater disaster can feel overwhelming. Yet it is also apt at times to remember some glimmers of good news amidst the gloom. Here are the ten signs that most encourage me about places where progress that has been made since this image was taken a handful of years ago.

•  In five years, the value of the four largest US coal companies has plummeted from $45b to $200m, a drop of more than 99.5%. A string of major financial institutions have declared the coal industry to be in structural decline.

• For the last two years, China has reduced its coal consumption without being in recession. This included shutting down hundreds of smaller, dirtier coal mines.

• For the last few years, new renewable electricity generation capacity has exceeded new fossil fuel + nuclear capacity. Both wind and (especially) solar have seen their costs drop dramatically in the last 5-7 years.

• ExxonMobil faces the possibility of real legal consequences for their decades of lies and misinformation. And by extension, other fossil companies too.

• Fossil fuel divestment continues to expand rapidly, with now trillions in funds under management having divested in part or whole, or having committed to doing so.

• Mass civil disobedience against the causes of climate disruption is increasingly becoming a reality. Australian efforts such as the #LeardBlockade and #PilligaPush and #BentleyBlockade and #LockTheGate have seen the largest campaigns of civil disobedience since the Franklin River in the early 80s.

• Leaders with large followings in the UK and US are speaking openly and repeatedly about corruption, plutocracy, inequality and corporate hegemony - and drawing the links to climate change.

• Public opinion in the English-speaking world on the need for taking climate action is at its highest for almost a decade. While fickle and related most closely to recent weather as much as anything else, this nonetheless presents new opportunities.

• The compromised and weak Paris Agreement nonetheless represents the most ambitious step forward in international negotiations thus far, with every nation signing on to the need to participate in emissions cuts to keep warming to less insane levels.

• The US Republicans - the only major party in the developed world to embrace an official policy of climate denial - look increasingly likely to nominate an unelectable and divisive figure who could demolish their gerrymandered Congressional stranglehold on his way down.

• The most recent papal encyclical, Laudato Si', was a stirring call with implications that were nothing short of revolutionary, whose effects continue to reverberate throughout the global Catholic (and catholic) church.

And the final encouraging sign is that I sat down to try to write a list of ten and came up with eleven.

An Australian Hero: coal vs public health

Near the end of last year, a famous Australian put his religious and scientific convictions into action and was arrrested at the #LeardBlockade while non-violently protesting the construction of the Maules Creek open cut coal mine. This mine is being built in the middle of a critically endangered woodland ecosystem and is reducing the water supply to some of Australia's best farmland. The coal extracted over the planned lifetime of this mine will result in as much carbon pollution as would be emitted by hundreds of millions of people living with sustainable carbon footprints for a year. Air pollution from extracting, transporting and especially burning this coal will very likely result in thousands of early deaths and hundreds of thousands of people finding it more difficult to breathe.

So, who was this Australian icon putting his body on the line to protect our farmers, our koalas and bats, our neighbours, our habitable planet? I'm not referring to David Pocock​, though the rugby star and committed Christian was also arrested days later doing much the same thing, and undoubtedly received more coverage than of the other 350-odd arrests at Maules Creeks over the last year or so. I'm talking about the man who (in my book) is the most credible and authoritative of all those who have joined the #LeardBlockade: Professor Colin Butler​, an international expert on climate and public health, an IPCC author, and sole editor of the most up to date and weighty volume in that field, Climate Change and Global Health, a collaboration of 56 authors from 18 countries that came out weeks before his arrest. Prof Butler is also co-founder of the Buddhist NGO BODHI (Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health and Insight).

Prof Butler was arrested back in November and faced court yesterday, where the original charges against him were dropped and he was found guilty of a lesser charge. No conviction was recorded under Section 10, and Prof Butler was given a two year good behaviour bond (which is still heavier than many people who have been arrested under similar circumstances, including David Pocock).

Almost every time people read about people being arrested for peacefully protesting, there will be comments from confused people who have perhaps conflated "peaceful/non-violent" with "lawful", and who think it is outrageous that someone could be arrested for a peaceful protest. It was indeed a peaceful protest, but once which broke the law of NSW.

So what did Prof Butler do wrong?

Essentially, a parking violation. Prof Butler parked his backside in the middle of the road for a few hours (and presumably refused to move when directed to do so by a police officer), a road which just happened to one that mining equipment required for the construction of the mega-mine in question.

It is good to have laws against parking/traffic violations. In general, people ought not to be allowed to block public roads. But sometimes, there are bigger fish to fry: people really, really ought not be to be allowed to dig up sequestered hydrocarbons on a massive scale without regard for the damage caused by the extraction, and ought not be allowed to burn those hydrocarbons while dumping their waste into the global commons of the atmosphere and oceans in such a way as to endanger the habitability of the entire planet. In that context, one crime is far, far, far more serious than the other.

And so thank you Professor Butler. Thank you for your vital research, public voice and actions in seeking to protect the habitability of our home. There is no planet B.
First image (Leard State Forest being cleared for the mine) from Greenpeace Australia Pacific. Second image (Prof Butler's arrest) from Front Line Action on Coal.

The Story of Change: put down the credit card

Another brief, simple (simplistic? Perhaps, but you've got to start somewhere) animation from the people who brought you The Story of Stuff. This six minute video tackles the question of how social change is effected by groups of committed citizens taking action around an idea.

I entirely agree with the cynicism towards ethical consumerism as a change-making force. Sustainable consumerism is an oxymoron. Yes, buy stuff responsibly, and yes for some people it is a door into thinking more seriously about the world, but don't expect that ethical consumerism (a.k.a. light green thinking) will change the world. I have an upcoming post outlining five problems with ethical consumerism. More on that later.

This is what hope looks like

Read this moving final statement from environmental activist Tim DeChristopher to the court before he was sentenced to two years in prison for a creative protest he made in 2008 against the illegal sale of federal US land to fossil fuel interests. Rousing stuff. If you read to the end, you'll find why I thought of Archbishop Tutu.

If you're not familiar with DeChristopher's story, then you can get a summary here or much more detail here.