Mōrena, and happy Tuesday! We’re one week away from COP27 (here’s a good explainer on what that is), and you might have noticed some interesting civil disobedience protest in the climate space. From spray painting luxury car stores, to throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting, to Restore Passenger Rail’s blocking of Transmission Gully and Mt Victoria tunnel, you might be asking - how does this help the climate movement?
Civil disobedience has long been an integral part of social movements. It demands attention, dampens unfavourable operations (e.g. the fossil fuel industry), and complements pacifist actions.
Multiple people told us, “take your protest to Parliament.” We have. We’ve tried everything. This is the last resort. - Phoebe Wright, Wellington school teacher & Restore Passenger Rail protester
Radical action becomes necessary when the peaceful actions are not having the impact the movement deserves. Civil disobedience is a fascinating topic, so we’ve written a deeper dive to explore it further.
What can you do today?
The most-clicked link from last week’s issue was Forest & Bird's quick submit for a more healthy and resilient Gulf.
🐝 If you have 5 minutes: Penny for your thoughts
Protests like the ones above support the work of activists who live in areas where the right to protest is not protected. This year’s COP27 is held in Egypt, where it is not safe to protest or to critique the authoritarian government, and tens of thousands of environmental and human rights activists are held in political prisons. Greta Thunberg has made it clear in her tweet that the public must be free to participate during COP27.
Action: Sign the petition for open civic spaces and public discussion in Egypt for COP27The Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a petition for academic publishing giant Elsevier to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.
Action: Add your name to the letterThere is momentum gathering in the shareholders of Australian coal mining company Whitehaven, 20% of whom wish to see them wind down coal production towards net zero by 2050.
Action: Use this form by Australian climate action group Market Forces to ask banks to stop financing Whitehaven coal
🐇 If you have 15 minutes: Bank to the future
350 Aotearoa have updated their Fossil Free Banks for 2022! Now’s a great time to check how your bank is going, and consider amplifying your impact with some of the suggested quick actions further down the page.
Action: Check if your bank is still the best choice, and amplify your impact with email templates
💃🏽 If you have 30 minutes or more: HWEN do we want bold climate action? Now!
New Zealand has the opportunity to take the lead in agricultural emissions - half our total emissions - with a consultation on a final set of options for pricing agricultural emissions. It’s still nowhere near strong enough, with only a small chance of us actually hitting our bare minimum commitments. What’s more, there are well-funded lobby groups campaigning to weaken these policies even further during this round of submissions. Even though it’s highly technical, here’s the first of hopefully many submission guides to come before the deadline on November 18th!
Action: Use this Greens submission guide to write your own submission before 18 November
If you’re a climate organisation working on a submission guide, please do get in touch - we’d love to share it!
Save the date
Pōneke: Next Wednesday, November 9th - Parliament will be considering a law that would protect conservation land from new mines.
Action: Join the No New Mines protest to urge the Prime Minister to keep her promise and support the new law.Ōtautahi: Next Tuesday 8 November 6-7:30pm @ Tūranga - Cities are big enough to make a difference but small enough for concerned citizens to have real influence. Where and how should we focus our effort?
Action: Hear from local experts on how we grow a climate-action city for everyone
Missed the last one? Here’s the recording on what hampers effective climate action (and how we can move past the barriers).
Wins!
Last Thursday, our government announced a moratorium on deep sea mining in international waters! Thanks to all those who acted on this all the way back from Issue 8!
Shout out to Kirikiroa Hamilton, city of the future! Hamilton City Council have received $1.9 million of funding for their cycling and micromobility projects.
In the last 24 hours, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (a.k.a. Lula) has won the Brazilian election against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. “The stunning political comeback [was] welcomed by environmental, indigenous and progressive activists. Bolsonaro’s presidency saw deforestation in the Amazon increase to a 15-year high.” (Source: The Guardian)
That’s all for today, folks 👋🏽 Thanks for taking action. Enjoy this infographic on the Four Roles of Activism which highlights the crucial strengths as well as the common pitfalls to avoid in different forms of activism. Where do you see yourself?
See you next week,
Dhanya, Emily, and Jenny from the Climate Club
Issue #44: A necessity, not a nuisance
Thank you for the discussion about how we might think of very disruptive and potentially damaging protest actions. It’s very much at the front of conversations here in Australia. I particularly appreciated the Instagram post about Bill Moyers research – a friend pointed it out to me a few months ago when this topic came up and there was some heated debate within the environmental circles about whether really disruptive actions were “helpful to the cause”. My friend Isaac quoted Bill, and also suggested that people in the environmental movement who complain about other people in the environmental movement and their tactics, is a bit like a football goalkeeper saying that the team would be likely to win more games if everyone was a goalkeeper. If you get my drift. Isaac’s point being that bringing about social change is a team activity, and we need diversity in every team. Thanks for the thoughtful extra work you put into outlining the history and role of disruption.