The Fight For The Environment Is Getting Much Tougher
Be positive about the future, but be realistic about the challenges we're facing.
I was chatting with a person the other day, out of the blue. They were asking about the state of affairs for positive change with regards to the environment.
There is a delicate balance, that I definitely do not always get right, between making people feel positive about the future, and the possibility of positive change - while clearly and carefully making it very clear, that there are massive systemic challenges that we need to tackle, if we really do want to create positive change.
Because there is a reluctance to do difficult things (understandably) and an even greater cultural reluctance to long-term commitment to anything, we are used to seeing a bait-and-switch tactic employed as a means of getting people to do something easy, while banking on being able to switch them to the something necessary once they get started.
From gyms we see it in this familiar format - Do this 30 day fitness challenge, and you’ll be lean and fit. Of course, that is never true, but the gym is banking on holding onto you once you come in, in search of quick wins. Long-term, consistent training and diet management is the real way to achieve your health and fitness goals, but that’s not a sexy sales pitch.
Bait and switch is not a good retention strategy, as you are only attracting people who are looking for quick wins, and there are plenty of other places promising them those wins, so they will likely leave for an alternative challenge, or fad, or quicker, easier path to fitness.
Unfortunately, this practice, in all areas of life, means we are bombarded with messages grossly overstating the impact of tiny actions.
The environment is one such area that suffers from the over-reliance on small, individual, short-term efforts, in the face of mounting systemic challenges.
Yes - it is great that kids in school do workshops on sustainability sometimes.
No - that doesn’t even come close to moving the needle in the ways that really matter.
Yes - we should remain positive about our capacity to affect change in this area.
No - a positive mindset, while ignoring the structural attacks on the environment, is not enough.
What structural challenges?
If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to be caught in a rip, you’ll know that trying to swim against it is exhausting, and if the tide is strong enough, futile.
No amount of encouragement is adequate in the face of the awesome power of the ocean. You are caught up in it, and must swim across it to get out of the rip.
If we are honest about surf beaches, we recognise the power of the tides, and the location of rips, and we work with that understanding to avoid getting into trouble. Experienced surfers can actually use the rip to their advantage, using it to take them out behind the breaking waves.
The tides of change are sweeping through environmental stewardship and the future of our planet right now, pulling unsuspecting and ill-prepared environmentalists along in the wrong direction.
I have selected some examples, so that we may clearly see these structural challenges.
Declining equity funding for climate technology
I’m not the first person to implore you to ‘follow the money’. Without adequate investment, particularly while facing the immense, virtually limitless resources of the incumbent fossil fuel industry, enviro-tech will struggle to find the solutions and reach the scale required to solve our sustainability challenges.
According to the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, investment in climate technology has been steadily declining since 2021.
2021: Approximately $160-170bn USD
2022: Approximately $125bn USD
2023: Approximately $80bn USD
2024: Approximately $45bn USD
Companies that once had climate outcomes at the core of their mission statements and value propositions are changing their tune to reflect a commitment to national security, AI and other non-environmental focused outcomes.
As put by Ed Ballard, the author of the WSJ article - Some rhetorical shifts are jarring. Air Company’s website used to say it “exists to solve one problem: climate change.” That mission no longer gets a mention. The company, working to commercialize a synthetic jet-fuel alternative, now says it is focused on “global energy independence and security.”
The move of money and mission away from climate technology should be a massive warning bell for everyone with an interest in the future of our planet. One should also take a moment to consider how many recycled cans can make up for the $125B of investment missing in 2024 as compared to 2021.
Greenpeace gets whacked with a $660M verdict
In another warning to all environmental activists and organisations, in North Dakota only last week Greenpeace was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay Energy Transfer, a Texas-based oil pipeline company worth ~$64bn USD.
By admission of the Energy Transfer CEO, this ‘primary objective’ of the suit, was to ‘send a message’. The same CEO claimed that activists should be ‘removed from the gene pool’.
This law suit began in Federal court in the US, before moving to North Dakota, a state that does not have protections against “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” (SLAPP). SLAPP lawsuits are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
A common feature of SLAPPs is forum shopping, wherein plaintiffs find courts that are more favourable towards the claims to be brought than the court in which the defendant (or sometimes plaintiffs) live.
Greenpeace plan to appeal the decision, but also acknowledge that a ruling of this size would bankrupt the organisation and prevent it from doing further work in the future.
Australia has the highest arrest rate of climate and environmental protesters
The University of Bristol recently published the Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests paper, which found that more than 20% of all Australian climate and environmental protests involve arrests, which is 3 times the global average of 6.3%
Michael Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders released a report in 2024, reflecting on environmental activists exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, guaranteed under international human rights law.
The Environmental Defenders Organisation report - The Global Warning Report: The Threat to Climate Defenders in Australia documents the importance of climate activism in Australia, maps the systemic repression faced by climate activists across the country, and examines the unregulated political influence of the fossil fuel industry driving that repression.
The suppression of methods of public protest, through law enforcement and punitive measures are ways of making genuine progress and challenging the powerful vested interests more and more difficult. The stakes for the environment are incredibly high, and the impact on future generations will be undeniable. Nonetheless, arresting and imprisoning climate activists is a significant deterrent, and an infringement on a community’s inherent right to protest.
Making true progress when free speech, assembly and protest are impaired in this way, is incredibly difficult.
Trump Uses Executive Power to Halt Offshore Wind Energy Production.
In the relentless march of announcements, executive orders and Tesla ads coming from the Whitehouse and the US more generally, one can be forgiven for missing this amongst the noise.
On the 20th January this year, newly elected President Trump signed the executive order “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects”
This order prevents the leasing of government land to offshore wind production and seeks to review/revoke any existing agreements to that effect. “This withdrawal does not apply to leasing related to any other purposes such as, but not limited to, oil, gas, minerals, and environmental conservation.”
What difference does that make to us, you might ask? Well, with the size of the American market for energy consumption and production, removing certainties about the implementation of Offshore Wind Turbines is likely to have a global effect on the cost of such technology. In Tasmania, for instance, sustainable energy production forms the backbone of large social and economic planning for the future of the state - including offshore wind. Increasing costs will be passed onto Tasmanians and Australians more generally, and increasing uncertainty will make training and employability plans more sketchy, higher risk, and of course - more expensive.
It may take a year or two to get here, but these developments will make life for sustainable production more expensive for Australians. Which is of course, by design, with these laws and orders expressly working against the environment, in favour of fossil fuel incumbents.
The Big Banks Leave Climate Targets Behind
In a show of gutless, valueless, integrity-void behaviour that should surprise no one familiar with the banking industry, America’s six largest banks left the Net Zero Banking Alliance in the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration. These banks included Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, while monster investment firm BlackRock (which manages $11.5 Trillion in assets) left the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative at the same time.
While it’s clear that the ‘commitment’ of these massive institutions only goes as far as the limits of their self interest, the implication of the move away from environmental targets and values, as well as DEI and other social impact activities, is that we are entering another moment in time of pure commerce, profiteering, extraction and exploitation. Firms and individuals are lining up to take advantage of the moral hazard implicit in a global economy that enables giant firms to profit without concern for any social or environmental ‘externalities'.
Trillions of dollars of managed funds, and some of the most powerful people on the planet, racing away from commitment to mutual care, to pure profit without even a veneer of care for communities affected by their decision making. The power and economic imbalance is staggering, and when combined with the full punitive force of the state, provides an enormous obstacle to overcome.
This has all occurred in the context of executive orders in the US removing protections regarding air and water quality, emissions limits and dozens of other climate policies. Setting the stage for environmental abuse on an industrial scale that we may have been forgiven for thinking we’d left in the past.
So what now then?
This small snapshot of powerful entities working against the best interests of the environment and the future of the planet should not leave you feeling hopeless or forlorn.
It should help crystalise the importance of tackling the small, every day challenges and opportunities around you;
Recycling, reusing, repairing, planting, protecting etc.
While remaining vigilant about who represents you, who you vote for - and what they vote for, where you spend your money, who you work for, how you talk about the future to your friends and family and what you pay attention to.
The State should be used to protect and secure the future for everyone, not simply protect the vested interests of the wealthy and large corporations. We must find motivation in the small wins, but use those small wins to work towards the big, systemic wins that we need.
We need to be aware of that delicate balance - between making people feel positive about the future, and the possibility of positive change - while clearly and carefully making it very clear, that there are massive systemic challenges that we need to tackle, if we really do want to create positive change.
Get involved. Pay attention. Don’t let apathy get in the way, and at the very least, try to support those who are doing the important work of tackling these large challenges. Vote and work for people who value the planet and the people on it, not simply the interests of a small number of already-wealthy and powerful individuals seeking to secure more for themselves at the expense of everyone, and everything else.