Introducing the extraction series: discussing the future of Australia’s energy sector
The latest report handed down by the IPCC does not tell us anything that climate experts have not been screaming for years: we are at a code red for humanity. And yet, the Australian energy sector proves an enduring bastion of fossil fuel dominance at home and through exports abroad. With the glaring disjunction between what is necessary and what appears feasible in the way of climate action, how to transform our societies away from reliance on extractive industry and towards genuine sustainability is a question only heightening in relevance.
As part of the Unsettling Resources research project Professors Susan Park (International Relations), Christopher Wright (Organisational Studies) and Tess Lea (Gender and Cultural Studies), along with SEI Deputy Director Michelle St Anne, have curated the Extraction Series, a selection of panels designed to probe the use, impact and future of gas, coal and lead extraction in Australia at a critical point in our changing climate.
Looking past admonitions and vague moralisms, across the month of October and in early November the Extraction Series will turn to concrete examinations of the possibilities and problems of a move away from extraction, and toward emissions reduction.
The first of these panels, ‘Protecting Country, or Extraction?’ brings together activists, artists, Traditional Owners and researchers to examine the fast and slow violence caused by the most toxic mine in Australia, Glencore’s McArthur River Mine. This panel will show how laws apparently intended to protect the environment, in fact facilitate its destruction, and the toxic legacy it leaves behind.
In the second panel, ‘From Denial to Delay: Moving Beyond Australia’s Fossil Fuel Addiction’ leading climate and energy experts will explain where global climate action is heading and why Australia is so out of step. The panel will explore how renewable energy could lead Australia towards a sustainable emissions pathway, breaking the fossil fuel hegemony that controls national climate policy.
The third panel, ‘The Toxic Greed of Australia’s Gas-Led Recovery’, will highlight the risks and burdens of a Gas-Led Recovery in regional NSW. Panellists will take a community-centred approach to the debate, examining the policy and social impacts of this decision and of the current Australian trajectory more broadly.
In the fourth and final event, ‘How Can Finance Address Climate Change?’, the panel will examine how the finance sector is shifting to incorporate climate modelling into its risk assessments for investments, how finance can create new ‘green’ markets and products, be used for investing in ‘green infrastructure’, and how climate finance is being used for addressing international climate injustice for those most affected by climate change such as the Pacific.
Header image: Christopher Wright.