Catholic Mission and its supporters attended National Climate Emergency Rallies held across the country last Saturday demanding that Australia take immediate action to reduce its carbon emmissions, support “green” jobs and reject nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels.
The protests were an initiative of the Australia’s Climate Action Summit, a left-aligned network of groups and individuals arising out of the Climate Action Summit held in Canberra on 31 January – 3 February earlier this year.
The Perth protest took place in Forrest Place on Saturday June 13 and attracted nearly 500 people according to organisers.
The local rally featured speakers from the Wilderness Society, the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of WA and speeches from two WA Green MPs.
WA Green Senator, Rachel Siewert, was reported in the West Australian as calling for immediate action.
“The science is absolutely clear – if we are to have any hope of preventing runaway climate change and the chaos that will bring, we need to bring global emissions down rapidly and begin removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
That means that rich countries like Australia need to move towards zero emissions as fast as possible, and the minimum target by 2020 has to be 40 per cent.”
Catholic Mission did not participate in the Perth rally due to staffing issues but it is understood that the organisation did participate in most capital city centres.
“At Catholic Mission we realise the importance of understanding and addressing climate change,” said Jenny Collins-White, Catholic Missions Education Officer in their national office.
“We support, the Catholic Bishops and their call to change our ways of seeing, thinking and behaving as we accept our responsibility to protect the earth,” she said, describing Saturday’s rallies as “important for us to get behind as an organisation and as individuals.”
Francis Leong, Perth Director of Catholic Mission, says that the organisation received a directive from Australian Regligious that Catholic Mission use their media resources to highlight climate change and bring it to the attention of catholic and secular media.
Catholic Mission’s Village Space program – an interactive performance educating school students on social justice issues – is this year focussed on climate change and its effect on people in the majority or developing world.
The initiative will give examples of the effects of climate change from Mexico, Kiribati, the Arctic Circle, Bangladesh and Australia to more than 15,000 across Australia, with about 10 minutes of its one hour and ten minute performance time dedicated to opposing views.
Mr Leong says that the organisation’s efforts have show the Australian community that the Catholic Church “is not behind the times” and are a reflection of Catholic Mission’s grassroots proximity to the world’s poor in its more than 160 development projects.
“We are often the first to know that it is the poor that are the first victims of climate change. They’re the ones who drown whereas the rich can choose,” Mr Leong says. “What are we if not a church for the poor?”
While the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has thrown its weight behind the idea that human-driven climate change is a real phenomena it has stopped short of demanding immediate and unilateral cuts to emmissions.
Organisations with a broadly Catholic membership are by no means uniform in their view and approach to climate change.
John Morrissey from the Australian Family Association (AFA) says that his organisation is “diametrcially opposed” to the dominant understanding of climate change as a result of human-driven carbon emissions and the proposal that Australia unilatterally reduce emissions.
“People who regard it as a moral crusade are dressing up pseudo science,” Mr Morrissey says, adding that there were other more pressing ‘crusades’ such as the 19,000 lives lost to abortion in Australia each year.
“The story about consensus is an absolute nonsense. The science isn’t definitive and is mainly based on computer modelling.
What’s more, it is absolutely ridiculous to expect Australia to do anything before the greatest carbon producers. Our less than two per cent of emmissions would be a token sacrifice but would do so much damage the Australian economy. From a family point of view, with a significant loss of jobs, so many would suffer needlessly with so little environmental benefit.”
In contrast, Perth Mission Director, Francis Leong, says the economic argument is a phurphy and a smoke screen for the issues, he says, Christians should be concerned about.
“The economic argument is always the one that is presented as the reason why we shouldn’t do anything. It’s the most unchristian of arguments. Jobs may in fact be gained.
The stance of the Church is about our solidarity with the poor and they’re the ones who are not only going to lose jobs but also their lives and what little subsistence agriculture they do have.”
He says the key proponents of economic arguments against reducing Australia’s emissions usually come from big business and that Christians should instead choose to “live simply so that others may simply live.”
Catholic Mission’s national education officer Jenny Collins-White concurs.
“I feel for people who’s jobs are threatened but we have to be sustainable, moving away from industries taking us to a future we cannot afford.”
The AFA’s John Morrissey says that he doesn’t doubt the sincerity of emission reduction proponents but says that their analysis of the problem and their proposed solutions have, he says, obvious problems.
“Most people [pushing for reductions] are doing it with the best will in the world. They are willing converts to climate change possibly because of their quite-reasonable concern about pollution – a huge problem – but people can easily mix their issues.
Cleaning up pollution is laudable but the single issue focus on climate change is an article of faith rather than an article of science.”
There is however, some agreement that renewable energy sources and technologies must be developed and continually improved.
“Given that resources are going to be depleted, if we can improve solar and wave power – windpower being too inefficient – we will achieve a far less polluted environment,” Mr Morrissey says.
Disagreement remains when it comes to a proposed solution that the recent climate change rallies explicitly rejected, if Mr Morrisey’s comments are any indication.
“The elephant in the room is the absolute superiority of nuclear power over fossl fuel power. Particularly given that the only two countries who met their emission reductions under the Kyoto Treaty were Sweden and France, both of which use nuclear power extensively.”