Interconnectedness of climate, genocide, and ecocide

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The Sustainable Hour no. 516 | Transcript | Podcast notes

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Our guests in The Sustainable Hour no. 516 are Amin Abbas, a diaspora Palestinian and a digital consultant, and Elyse Cunningham from Friends of the Earth Melbourne.

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Mik Aidt is currently in Denmark, and he opens the Hour with a short description of the difference in climate action between Denmark and Australia, with Denmark taking climate change seriously and implementing strategies to achieve net-zero emissions.

Colin Mockett OAM delivers his Global Outlook with news from around the world, which you can read below in the transcript.

The 516th episode of The Sustainable Hour delves into the complicity of Australia in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the environmental impact of the conflict.

Amin Abbas talks about the role of extractivism and land grabs in fueling genocides and the importance of justice for indigenous peoples in achieving climate justice.

Elyse Cunningham from Friends of the Earth Melbourne works on connecting climate activist groups with the Free Palestine movement.

Our two guests discuss the intersectionality of the climate crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the control of power supply and the destruction of the environment in Gaza, and highlighting the interconnectedness of climate, sustainability, genocide, and ecocide.

Amin describes the trauma and pain experienced by Palestinian refugees and the health crises they face due to limited access to healthcare.

The Boycott Divest Sanctions movement is discussed as a nonviolent means to boycott and divest from institutions supporting apartheid and genocide in Palestine. The conversation concludes with a call for honesty, self-reflection, and collective action to address the climate crisis and dismantle oppressive systems.

“We’re disrespecting land, we’re disrespecting waterways, because we’re completely out of touch with how to actually care for the planet. And everything that we do seems to rely on some sort of greed and extractivism. And yeah, this is what we’re currently seeing all over the world. Colonisation is an ongoing process, and genocide is an ongoing process that hasn’t stopped here in so-called Australia. It’s going on in Palestine, in Sudan, the Congo, West Papua, New Caledonia. And the motive is always profit, but in all of these places as well, there is staunch resistance.”
~ Amin Abbas and Elyse Cunningham in The Sustainable Hour no. 516

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Amin Abass is a diaspora Palestinian, and the son and grandson of refugees from Jenin and Tiberius. An innovation and digital consultant during the day, Amin dedicates his free time to advocating and organising for Palestinian liberation, as he dreams of returning to his beloved homeland Palestine as a liberated and free man.

→ You can follow Amin and his work on his Instagram page

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Elyse Cunningham is a white settler, currently living and working on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin nations. She is a climate justice organiser who works for Friends of the Earth’s Sustainable Cities collective – who campaign towards a more equitable transport system for Victoria – and she is involved with an autonomous collective of climate activists who have been working in solidarity with the movement for a liberated Palestine. She is also working on a project for Friends of the Earth’s ‘Defence of Earth’ project, alongside the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), on the intersection of militarism and climate change. 

→ Learn hear more about Elyse Cunningham’s work here: Defence of Earth and Sustainable Cities

→ If you’d like to get in touch with Elyse Cunningham, her email is : elyse.cunningham@foe.org.au 

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That’s all we could fit in today. Brought to you all from rooms in Denmark, Geelong, Footscray and Melbourne. Today, through Elyse and Amin we hope that we have extended your understanding of the true intersectionality of the climate crisis we face. It is happening now, not in the future as we have been led to believe.

The atrocities that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza right now is having an immediate impact on the Gazans, but it is also turbocharging the crisis by contributing extra carbon into the already carbon-supersaturated atmosphere that we all share. 

In fact, every thing we value is going to be under threat as the extreme weather events continue to roll out all around our world. As more and more people come to realise the true intersectionality of the climate crisis, we’ll see more causes coming together to protect the atmosphere we all share. This strips away divisions that have separated us in the past as we combine in a common humanity to protect that atmosphere.  

“I feel like what’s going on in Palestine and what Israel’s doing there is shine such a light on global US and UK imperialism and colonialism. I think there’s been a real mass awakening over these past 10 months and a mass education and that, ‘you’re not alone’. I mean, feel like I’ve also just learned so much during these months, and nothing will ever be the same.

Other than ‘Be Palestinian’, I think another one that’s applicable to settler colonisers is: ‘Be honest’, like: be honest with yourself, be honest with who you are and where you come from and about the ways in which you are complicit in what’s going on yourself and be honest about what you’re doing to dismantle these systems that oppress the people who are protecting most of the planet’s biodiversity. Be honest with yourself first and foremost, and then you can be honest with the world.”
~ Elyse Cunningham in The Sustainable Hour no. 516

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Is Israel committing genocide?

The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is highly controversial and politically charged. Whether or not this statement is justified depends on legal definitions, interpretations, and perspectives. Here’s a breakdown of the key aspects:

1. Legal definition of genocide

Under international law, particularly the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (often referred to as the Genocide Convention), genocide is defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. The acts include:

• Killing members of the group
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

2. Application to the Israel-Gaza conflict

To determine whether the actions of Israel in Gaza constitute genocide, one would need to assess whether Israel’s actions meet the criteria above, particularly the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people as a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

• Intent: Proving intent is the most challenging aspect of genocide accusations. It requires evidence that Israeli actions are not merely military operations or self-defense but are aimed specifically at eradicating the Palestinian population.
• Actions: Critics of Israel argue that the high number of civilian casualties, the destruction of infrastructure, and the blockade of Gaza could be seen as acts contributing to genocide. However, Israel and its supporters argue that these actions are part of a military conflict aimed at neutralizing threats from Hamas, rather than an attempt to eradicate the Palestinian people.

3. International court rulings

No international court has formally declared Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Various legal bodies and human rights organizations have investigated and condemned specific actions by both Israel and Palestinian groups, but the charge of genocide has not been legally upheld.

• International Criminal Court (ICC): The ICC has been asked to investigate alleged war crimes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but as of now, it has not charged Israel with genocide.
• United Nations: Various UN bodies, including the Human Rights Council, have issued reports and statements condemning human rights violations, but they stop short of labeling the situation as genocide.

4. Arguments for and against the term “genocide”

• For: Some activists and scholars argue that the systematic destruction of Palestinian society, the blockade of Gaza, and the disproportionate use of force can be seen as genocidal acts. They argue that the cumulative effect of Israel’s actions amounts to an attempt to destroy Palestinian identity and existence.
• Against: Others argue that the term “genocide” is not appropriate because the Israeli government’s stated and observed intent is not the eradication of the Palestinian people but rather self-defense against threats from militant groups like Hamas. They also point to the fact that genocide is a specific legal term with stringent criteria that may not be met in this context.

Conclusion

While the use of the term “genocide” in the context of the Israel-Gaza conflict is deeply contested, it has not been legally validated by international courts. The debate around its use often revolves around interpretations of intent and the specific actions taken by Israel in the conflict. In defense of using the term, one might argue that the scale and nature of the actions taken, coupled with their impact on the Palestinian population, align with the broader understanding of genocide, even if they do not strictly meet the legal definition.

The use of such a charged term is often more about drawing attention to the severity of the situation and pushing for international intervention, rather than making a precise legal argument.

Source: ChatGPT

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Link between fossil fuels, deaths in Gaza, and planetary extinction

In this article journalist Chris Hedges writes about the the connection between what is happening in Gaza and global mass death due to climate breakdown. Expanding Israeli oil and gas production requires occupying Gaza’s coastline and the removal of the Palestinians, he writes.

“The trajectory is clear. Burn the planet. Lock up dissidents. Censorship. Crush those who resist, especially those in the Global South, with industrial weapons and indiscriminate violence. And, if you are part of the privileged class, retreat into gated compounds that provide food, water, medical care, electricity and security that will be denied to the rest of us.”

→ Consortium News – 10 October 2024:
Chris Hedges: Burn the Planet & Lock Up the Dissidents
“The imprisoned Roger Hallam believes that resistance is not, ultimately, about what we can or cannot achieve. It is about a “re-enchantment of the world,” he says. “It is about our spirit taking center stage”.”

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A post shared by Vic Central (@centralvicclimateaction)

“Military activity consumes vast quantities of fossil fuels. Up to 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from military activities. The projected emissions from the first 120 days of the Israel-Gaza conflict were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries and territories.”
~ Central Vic Climate Action

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 516

Antonio Guterres:
The climate time bomb is ticking.

Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong. The Sustainable Hour.

Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to the elders past, present and those that earned that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded. Always was and always will be First Nations land. We can’t hope to have any form of climate justice without justice for First Nations Australians. And in their ancient wisdom that they honed from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen, lies so many of the answers that we’re going to need to survive the climate crisis.

Mik Aidt:
“We cannot continue to destroy our own home. Greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of natural resources and destruction of natural habitats have reached a point where the damage cannot be prevented or rolled back. If we don’t change behavior or technology, the changes will be devastating for generations to come. Even though in a city like Aarhus, we have only 350,000 of the almost 8 billion inhabitants on the planet. It matters how we act. We are part of the solution.”

What I just read to you here is something you can find on the home page of the city called Aarhus in Denmark. Aarhus is the city where I was born some six decades ago. A city of 350,000 people. Where the council has just announced last week, it’s crunch time here, folks. They’re saying to the residents of Aarhus that yes, we agreed actually 16 years ago that we would become a net zero town by 2030. And now it’s almost just five years to go. The shortcuts and the low hanging fruits are all taken. Now we need to do the hard work of doing the last bit of getting to this net zero. So they have some strategies for that and I’ll be telling you about that later because I am actually in Denmark today, and it’s almost like traveling in a time machine to come to a country where the climate is taken seriously in mainstream media, where you open up your public broadcaster… There’s two of them here in Denmark, similar to in Australia. There’s DR and there’s TV2. And on TV2, they have regular climate news. Can you believe it? In the news, they have a section for climate, just like they talk about finance and the weather and so on. Yes, they talk about climate. And they have scientists in the studio who are explaining this and explaining that.

At the same time, the climate reality is just outside our windows, just 20 kilometres away from from where I’m sitting now in a rural area of Denmark, there was flash flooding the other day and cars getting caught in the water. All the usual pictures that we see on the news all the time. It’s happening here in Denmark just as well. But the big difference is that I think people in Denmark in general have come to that point where they understand that this is serious. As you could hear the way they talk about it when a municipality talks to its residents, they’re saying changes will be devastating for generations to come unless we act and become part of the solution now. And even though that might be inconvenient, because it’s also about things such as that everyone needs to change their behavior, the cars are being told to get out of the cities and many other things. People are feeling in one way that they’re being harassed by authorities, but on the other way, people are saying, ‘Yeah, well, it’s not comfortable, but I guess we have to do it.’

And that’s the big difference, I feel, from the Australian mentality and to what I’m seeing here is that I haven’t noticed anywhere where there’s that sort of voice that we hear, for instance, from Sky News, where they all the time talking about the ‘greenies’ and ‘all of these people want to kill off the carbon’ and using all these expressions that they have. That’s not existing here.

Anyway, enough about Denmark and me, over to Colin Mockett who’s got the global outlook. Colin, what do you have for us today? I’m really curious to hear what’s been happening around the world while I’ve been out in the countryside.

Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook:
Well, yes, I was taking notes while you were speaking there, Mik. Aarhus has a 350,000 population that’s almost the same, almost exactly the same as Geelong and the Surf Coast, which has 320,000. If you sort of whip in the local bit of surf coast as well, we’re in 350,000 as well. And the difference, as you say, is very much that in Denmark, you’ve got scientists on the news talking about the effects of climate change. Here, we have a double whammy. We have sports people on the news talking about AFL.

And we also have, we give precedence to the opposition leader and his wacky views on the nuclear power stations, which he sees as being far better than sustainable energy generation. But that’s by the by. My World Roundup today begins in your neck of the woods, Mik, as you would know.

It’s in Norway where 91.9 per cent of vehicles that were sold in July of this year were battery electric. 91.9 per cent of the 8.1 per cent that’s left. So you’ve got 91.9 per cent all electric. Of that 8.1 per cent that isn’t electric, 2.4 per cent of them were plug-in hybrids. 2.5 per cent were hybrids and only 3.2 per cent were either diesel or petrol. That’s an astonishing thing when you think that Norway itself is not a tiny island. It’s got a large road system. Plus Norway’s electricity is generated 98.4 per cent by renewable wind, water and solar. 98.4per cent.

Only 0.6 per cent percent is burning fossil fuels. The nation, Norway, is living our future. We’re not even a fraction of that way. And as you said, you look around and you can see people who are concerned about the future in Scandinavia. We aren’t. We’re living in cloud cuckoo land, which is controlled by fossil fuel interests.

So look, I haven’t got such good news about Antarctica either because a new report last week recorded temperatures that soared more than 28 degrees above normal in the second major heat wave to affect the region in the past two years. That’s 28 degrees Celsius, by the way, not Fahrenheit. This historic warm spell is an ominous example of the major temperature spikes, the polar climate could experience much more frequently in our warming world. The heat wave is a record for the region of East Antarctica, which makes up most of the continent, said Edward Blanchard, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington. The heat wave’s large footprint is also remarkable because this heat wave has come in the middle of the Antarctic winter.

So temperatures are still hovering around minus 20 degrees Celsius. Still, the Antarctic temperature anomaly is the largest on the globe, according to weather models that he presented. Temperatures are expected to remain up to 20 to 30 degrees above average in parts of East Antarctica for at least the next 10 days. They were substantially above average for most of July, but not as high as they are now. Last week they climbed to 12 degrees Celsius above average. And that data is reflected in another new report that was published last week in Nature magazine, also about here in the Southern Hemisphere. This found that sea surface temperatures in waters surrounding the Great Barrier Reef have reached their warmest levels in more than four centuries.

To find this data, published in Nature magazine, researchers drilled into the cores of coral connellies and looked at the structure of corals themselves to ascertain sea surface temperatures on data that dates back to the year 1618. The findings reveal that the four warmest summers in the Coral Sea over those 400 years all occurred in the past decade, with 2024 by far the hottest at 1.73 degrees above the pre-1900 average. One of the lead researchers in this study, University of Melbourne lecturer Benjamin Henley, said the staggering 2024 result was so far beyond the others that he didn’t believe it and had to rerun the analysis to confirm it. He said the findings were not only significant but of great sadness as the world is about to lose one of its most spectacular natural wonders.

“I find it an absolute tragedy. It’s hard to understand that this has occurred on our watch and in our lifetime,” he said. Another new report last week by the Climate Council warned that Australia is one of the biggest producers of methane, which it called a climate change supercharger. The report found that Australia produces nearly 4 million tonnes of methane a year, is turbocharging climate change. Their word, not mine. Australia’s outsized methane production produces four to five times more methane per person than the global average. The true emissions may be even higher, with experts warning that Australia could be under-reporting methane emissions from coal and gas by as much as 60 percent.

Professor Leslie Hughes, a founding councillor with the Climate Council, called methane which is largely produced by cattle and fossil fuels. She called it the evil bridesmaid of greenhouse gases. It traps 85 percent more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, she said. This turbo charges the global warming that is driving extreme events like heat waves, bushfires and floods,” she added.

And finally, a new book that was released last week written by Royce Kamalov’s titled ‘Slick – Australia’s Toxic Relationship with Big Oil’, details exactly how the fossil fuel industry controls both of Australia’s major political parties. One passage that resonated with me described how oil company executives have access to politicians around the world, but most especially in the United States and Australia. But it’s said that of the two, Australia is far worse. In the US, they sit in the gallery. In Australia, they sit in the room, one interviewee said of the lobbyist access to policymakers. And that rather chilling comment ends my Roundup for the week.

Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.

Tony Gleeson:
Now, over the last few months, I’ve had a number of conversations with people and we ended up talking about the atrocities that are being committed in Gaza at the moment. And they saying, well, it’s really got nothing to do with the environment or with sustainability. We’ve got a couple of guests on today that would like to put that myth to rest. So we’ve got Elyse, who works for… Elyse Cunningham, who works for Friends of the Earth and one of her many roles is joining the, well, she’ll tell us, Lise will tell us all about what her role is in a minute.

And our other guest is Amin Abbas who actually has first-hand knowledge of what’s happening in that, the genocide that’s actually occurring over there right now. So both of you, thanks for coming on. Maybe we’ll start with you, Elyse, and tell us what’s your connection to what’s happening over there.

Elyse Cunningham:
Yeah, sure thing. Thank you for the intro and for having me on the show. I’m really excited to be here and stoked to be here alongside Amin, who’s doing some incredible work on the ground. I’ve seen you popping up everywhere. So yeah, it’s really awesome to be joined with you in this episode.

So my role, like you said, I’ve got a couple of roles at FOS. So my sort of main role is community organiser for the Sustainable Cities Collective, which is currently working on a campaign to transform the bus network in Melbourne’s Western suburbs. So it was interesting, the chat that was coming up just then about the switch to EVs that’s happening in Norway and, you know, the like electric vehicles, I guess, is like a solution to transport emissions, whereas the perspective we’re coming from is like, EVs are great, but we need to get people onto public transport as well. But we should, we can park that for another episode, maybe I could talk to you about that all day. But the other role, which is a bit more recent is I’m doing, writing up a research report on the intersection between climate and militarism. So that was commissioned by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War.

And the aim of the project is basically to get climate orgs and environmental orgs to start talking more about militarisation and the military industrial complex and the impact that that has on the environment. Things like the lack of accountability and emissions reporting. No one really knows how many military emissions come from the ADF as well as, yeah, what’s been termed ecocide that is currently being committed on the people of Gaza and the occupied territories of Palestine by so-called Israel and its allies. various other things, but basically to get the climate movement to step up and look at militarism a bit more and hopefully get people to step up their action when it comes to the movement for a liberated Palestine as well.

Tony:
I’d say many of our listeners would have no idea how complicit Australia is in what’s going on over there at the moment. Can you take us through that?

Elyse:
Yeah, well, maybe I’ll throw this one to, I mean, would you feel comfortable answering that one? I don’t know if you’d be able to speak to it a bit better and then I can add on to your answer.

Amin:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely can do. So look, Australia is, if we just want to, if I want to just take a step back, not just Australia, but let’s look at all colonisers in the world. They all have that same mindset and view is that they are coloniser countries who are trying to benefit from colonisation, genocide committed around the world. Australia is one of those countries that is a colonising country that will benefit from genocide committed around the world.

Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories is, and the apartheid against Palestinians is one of those. Australia has, was one of the first countries to recognise Israel back in 1947, 1948, recognised as a legitimate state, even though it’s a state that was founded based upon the oppression, occupation, and mass dispossession of my people, my grandfather being one of them who had to flee to Lebanon in 1948.

And since then Australia has continued to maintain diplomatic efforts with Israel. It has continued to support Israel on the global stage. And if we talk about the events of the past 10 months, we have seen Australia continue to produce military parts and weaponry for Israel. Some of those parts are sent to the US where they are actually put together to create whether it be the complete military parts.

And we’ve also seen Australia just completely complicit in the political stage where it refuses to condemn Israel, it refuses to impose sanctions, it continues to trade with Israel and continues to maintain an allyship and an alliance with Israel, despite very clearly on the international and on many international bodies and international scene that Israel is being seen as committing a plausible genocide, and this was back in February, where now in August, is deemed that the settlements in occupied past interterritories are truly illegal and constitutes as an apartheid system. Israel has had a number of countries cut off diplomatic ties with it. Israel has really shown itself to be a rogue state in every sense of the word.

And yet Australia has been very complicit and continues to trade, not impose sanctions. It does not even recognise Palestinian suffering nowhere near as much as it would have recognised some of the events that happened on October 7th to Israelis. Quite frankly, our lives do not matter as much as the lives of an Israeli life. Australia is very complicit in this and has not done nowhere near enough as much as it should.

Colin:
I have several questions that I’d like to ask both of you, starting with the Melbourne bus system, but on Amin’s subject, I’m a historian and I can bring a little bit more light onto that that might surprise one or two people. And that was the reason that the state of Israel was created by the British and Americans after the second world war was a place to put the displaced Jews from after their persecution by the Nazi regime. There were millions of Jewish refugees and they needed to find somewhere for them. One of the suggestions that was put forward at the time and was seriously researched was to open up a Jewish settlement in the north of Australia, in the Kimberley region of Australia. And the Jews really did get in there and they came up with systems of irrigating the desert and they were going to build several cities there and farms until the Jewish religious leaders got on board and said, no, we need to go to Palestine. That’s where our roots are.

It could have all been sorted out by Australia in the mid-1940s if we’d have taken a different political course. Since then, of course, we’ve taken our response to Israel and Palestine purely by playing lapdog to American and British politics.

Mik:
So, Amin and Elyse, explain to me why are we discussing this in a program called The Sustainable Hour – in terms of what is the link between what you’re talking about here, which is definitely something to be discussed. But is it to be discussed in a program that is about sustainability and climate? What’s the link?

Elyse:
I would say there’s several links. First of all, I guess what I wanted to just quickly draw back to as well, just touching on what you brought up, Colin, about the establishment of so-called Israel.

And I guess it’s interesting like whether it was in, you know, whether people had been like Jewish people had been sent to Australia or Palestine, which is where they were sent. Neither of these were lands that were not previously occupied by the indigenous peoples of those places. In Palestine it was Palestinians and in the Kimberley it would have been the First Nations peoples of that area.

And I think it just speaks to, yeah, like Amin was talking about, I guess, the colonial mindset of the British imperialists and US imperialists who think that they have a right to just give land away that isn’t theirs and not recognise the sovereignty of First Nations peoples in the places where genocides and ecocides are committed. But back to, yeah, just the…

I guess, connection between sustainability and Palestine. think there’s several different threads. mean, so the reason that we’re both here today is that Amin and I are both working on a campaign that’s involving several groups based throughout the country, I think. Right. It’s now it’s become a bit of a national campaign that was led by BDS Australia, the boycott, divest and sanctions movement to boycott Caltex, the petrol company that is owned by Chevron, which is a massive US oil giant who currently extracts, think it’s about 70 per cent of Israel’s fossil gas. they basically extract gas off of Palestinian natural gas fields off their shores and supply that to Israel who use that energy to commit genocide against Palestinian people. And Chevron is a typical evil giant oil company that is committing climate atrocities all across the world. yeah, that’s, guess, specifically why we’re here. But there’s a lot of other ways, I guess, in which the genocide in Palestine is also an eco side.

And I want to just draw people’s attention to a report that was released by Friends of the Earth International in conjunction with Friends of the Earth Palestine or PENGON, called the Environmental Nakba Report. And it’s all about how Israel’s apartheid state, or I guess the tactics that Israel employs to commit genocide in an ongoing way against Palestinian people, whether that be cutting off access to water or destruction of agricultural lands, olive trees, which are a source of sustenance and livelihood for, and have been for a very long time for Palestinian peoples. And yeah, several other things. think if people who are listening today want to go in, I think it’ll be in the show notes. But even like, yeah.

One of the other things is illegal dumping of hazardous waste, then including nuclear waste, which pollutes waterways and limits access for Palestinian people to water. yeah, there’s several other ways, I guess, that what Israel is doing is a climate atrocity as much as a genocide of people.

Colin:
Elyse, in your studies, are you aware of anybody who’s done any research on just how bad for the climate, why is it in war? Because blowing things up and setting them on the fire certainly isn’t very good for the climate, is it?

Elyse:
No, it’s pretty bad for the climate. Even just like, you know, the activities of militaries and the emissions that they emit, obviously are a massive contributor to global warming or to climate change, but one of the big issues that is definitely prevalent in Australia is the lack of accountability around military emissions. Like the ADF is not actually required by any means in any of the agreements in the Kyoto Protocol or any of the subsequent agreements. There’s no actual requirement to report military emissions.

Colin:
How is the electrical power generated in Palestine or the Gaza Strip or the region that is currently under bombardment by the IDF?

Elyse:
Yeah, so the power in Palestine really comes from Israel and what Israel supplies to Palestinians. the fact that Israel has control over, well, let’s just put into context, Israel has put a besiege over Gaza. That means that it controls land, air, sea, electromagnetic waves, whatever it is, anything that goes in and out of Gaza. Israel has complete control and shuts it down. And it has military control over the occupied Palestinian territories, which is the West Bank. And so part of that is that it controls also the supply of power to the occupied Palestinian territories, are generated from, believe natural gas is one of those sources. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bit of petrol as well being used, but I do know natural gas and that’s where Chevron is involved, is that it extracts natural gas from sovereign Palestinian land and generating millions of dollars for the genocidal apartheid state that is Israel.

Amin:
And it is using that energy to supply Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, which are deemed illegal and by international law. It is supplying power to them consistently 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the West Bank are limited to electricity only a few hours during the day. And that is quite simply is apartheid. It is that there is a treatment of one group of people which is preferable and they are getting better, they’re better resource, they’re getting better treatment over another group of people who are not only occupied, but also have a substandard living situation. And they are the indigenous people of that land being Palestinians. I do wanna expand on something that Elyse also mentioned. There’s a question about the link between sustainability and what’s happening in Gaza. I see sustainability, as it’s multifaceted in how I see it. Firstly, Palestinians have, we say that the land owns us. We do not own the land. There is a love for the land and we must respect the land and give it the treatment that it deserves, which is that we are farmers. We take care of the land, we make it thrive. And that’s why we plant olive trees, all kinds of vegetables, fruits.

I have been to Jenin in the West Bank, which is the hometown of my father, and there is such a love for the land and such care is given to the farmland. It is actually known for Palestinians that when they diaspora Palestinians, and so in essence, Palestinians living outside of Palestine, they visit Palestine, they take some Palestinian soil with them as they leave Palestine. And that is a sense of that they are connected to their homeland. There is a love for that land.

Now let’s bring that back to sustainability. There’s the environmental sustainability aspect, which is right now, it is actually deteriorating in Gaza. It is absolute nightmare. You’re having these mass weapons and bombs being dropped on the Palestinian people. The emissions coming out of these bombs is atrocious. The fact that it’s being dropped on residential and commercial buildings, which are made of concrete, and we know concrete is one of the one of the highest carbon producing elements within the world. And if you’re actually dropping bombs on top of it, just imagine the carbon emissions coming out of that. You can also imagine the destruction to the water, the noise, the noise pollution, the air pollution, the pollution to the ocean as a result of it. have bodies, excuse me, excuse me for being very, I guess, trying to be very graphic here, but there’s bodies that are still stuck underneath the rubble that are literally decomposing. Can you imagine just how destructive that is for human bodies’ health and to the health of the environment and to the air that they breathe? That brings me on to the next point, which is we talked about how sustainability is multifaceted. There’s environmental, then there’s the social sustainability. How do you sustain a people socially when they are going through such a nightmare and such a genocide. You have an ecocide, then you have this genocide. How are these people supposed to deal with all this trauma, with all of this pain, right? The refugees that are arriving now from Gaza in Australia, a lot of them are just not able to work because they are so overwhelmed by the trauma and the pain that they have gone through. They require so much therapy and psychology work just for them to be able to function normally. The link between sustainability and the genocide and ecocide of Gaza and occupied Palestinian territories are very much interlinked. And we cannot separate both issues away from each other. The destruction of, it’s not just an eradication of people, it’s a destruction of environments. Yeah, thank you. I mean, you put that like… so perfectly. And there’s a few things that you mentioned that I wanted to touch on as well. I think first of all, like you said, it’s about sustainability of the planet and also human lives. And I just wanted to point to, I guess, the health crisis, crises that are currently beginning in Gaza. think a polio epidemic was declared just last week or maybe two weeks ago. And that’s the same with hepatitis. This is all being caused because Palestinian peoples are being deprived of access to adequate healthcare and are being forced to flee their homes to one small place because they’re told that, you know, that’s a safe place to go. But then of course Israel is coming in and bombing refugee encampments and bombing places where they’ve just told people to flee. So it’s just really, yeah, disgusting and atrocious.

I think as well, just expanding, guess, on what you said about extractivism, because I think, you know, at the end of the day, what Israel is doing in Palestine and the reason that, you know, Australia and the US and the UK and people just remain standing as allies with Israel is because of extractivism and because there is a massive natural gas field off the coast of Gaza that they want access to colonisers will benefit and profit from the gas fields that are off the coast of Gaza that Chevron and BP and these big companies are going to go in and do that dirty work and they’re going to profit themselves.

Extractivism and land grabs or water grabs or resource grabs are always the reason behind a genocide, really. Around 36 per cent, it’s indigenous peoples who actually protect 80 per cent of the earth’s biodiversity and around 36 per cent of earth’s remaining intact forests exist on the lands of indigenous peoples. I think, you know, throwing back to what you said, Tony, in your acknowledgement of country, there is no climate justice without justice for First Nations peoples and there is no climate justice without justice for Palestinian people and people who do live connected to country, connected to land and not in the way that settler colonisers do where we’re constantly disrespecting country.

We’re disrespecting land, we’re disrespecting waterways because we’re completely out of touch with how to actually care for the planet. And everything that we do seems to rely on some sort of greed and extractivism.

Elyse:
And yeah, this is what we’re currently seeing all over the world. We’re seeing it, you know, like… Colonisation is an ongoing process and genocide is an ongoing process that hasn’t stopped here in so-called Australia. It’s going on in Palestine, in Sudan, the Congo, West Papua, New Caledonia. And the motive is always profit, but in all of these places as well, there is staunch resistance.

And there’s people like Amin and there’s all of the incredible activists that are in the community now running campaigns and fighting constantly to try to change this and try to do something about this. But I think the reason I’m so fired up right now, working in the climate activist space or climate justice space, there’s been so much silence from climate and environmental organisations who claim to care about the planet aren’t speaking up for Palestine, even though as I’m in has just laid out really well, this is a climate justice issue.

Yeah, people who call themselves climate activists really need to be doing more and getting involved in this movement.

SONG (36:55)
Anousha Victoire: ‘Phoenix Rising’

We’re counting down
People are white
You’re cutting
See you tonight again
Hold up
The children
You minimise
You made a change
The ashes of your distractions
As your days run dry There’s too much at stake
This time she won’t let it fly
Can’t you hear the roar?
Don’t misjudge the girl
Yeah
She will rise again, rise again, again, rise again
Is you really
We will be watching you

Mik:
There is another perspective on all of this speaking of climate, which is that we know that there are parts of the world, parts of the planet that are becoming uninhabitable, which means, for instance, are islands that will be totally flooded with water. Certainly there will be no drinking water or agriculture possible on these islands. And there are areas, and that’s also close to Palestine slash Israel, where humidity and heat is going to make it impossible to live according to the scientists in just, we’re talking decades from now. And if we look at what happened here with placing a people who became refugees after the Second World War in an area where they sort of were just told, well, you can live here. How do we think it’s going to look in the future when suddenly there are nations where people will need to move because it’s become uninhabitable? What’s your perspective on that?

Well, I think that’s a very classic coloniser perspective is to profit off fossils and carbons and say, hey, we’re going to generate millions of dollars for our governments and for institutions. And as islands and as other lands start to flood and people flee, and then they throw around, you know, this is the extreme people on the right will start to say, we do not welcome refugees. We do not want them here. It’s the very classic, know, we go, we completely ruin your society and your environment and your homeland. And when you come to seek refuge, you’re not welcome here. Go back to where you are. Quite frankly, you know, if there is a respect and a love for a land, leave the indigenous people alone and let them love and respect the land. Palestinians love and respect the land. Whereas a so-called Israelis would come in and plant, put in plants that are not native to the land, drop bombs on the land. If you’re going to tell me that’s what indigenous person does to their own homeland, then I think we need to rethink the meaning of indigeneity. It’s absolutely deplorable action.

Amin:
We should really understand and appreciate that indigenous people truly understand their lands, truly love their lands. And you can tell because it’s the way they treat the land. And if you want to really combat the system that Elyse outlined where the gas reserves off of Palestinian land is likely to be harvested by American multinational companies. Really, when you look at the big picture, the best thing that anybody can do anywhere in the world is decarbonise their lives so they’re not using gas, they’re not using oil or fossil fuels. And the chevrons and the mobiles and BP’s and shelves of the world, the multinationals, will find themselves with a declining market and not want to go and dig more wells and not have as much money also to buy politicians. Correct. And so this is why, and this segues quite nicely onto BDS as a movement, Boycott, Divest, Sanctions. BDS is exactly how apartheid South Africa got dismantled. apartheid South Africa didn’t get dismantled because of human behavior change and people started becoming sympathetic and empathetic towards indigenous people of South Africa. It dismantled because it got too expensive to maintain apartheid system there. And we’re trying to follow a similar model here with so-called Israel.

BDS is a nonviolent movement that is all about, we are going to be boycotting or removing funds and removing support away from institutions and governments which are maintaining or imposing an apartheid system on an indigenous people. And in this case, it’s about boycotting and removing investments from institutions that support or enable apartheid and genocide against Palestinians and also sanctioning the apartheid state of Israel. And this is why this Caltechs movement and this Caltechs campaign, which is, mean, firstly, I just want to commend Elyse for actually joining the campaign. And she’s done tremendous work in building that solidarity between pro-Palestinian movements and the climate activist movement. And what we’re seeing is that it’s a great example of organising and bringing different activists from different groups together for against a one target that is not only had that doesn’t only have a devastating impact on the climate, but is also generating money for for a state and a government that is occupying and oppressing and continuously dispossessing of people and exploiting them.

And so, Caltechs, which is a subsidiary of Chevron, was actually upgraded from a divestment company to actually a boycott company because it was imposing so much damage on Palestinians. And so now that’s why we are trying to really come together, organise, and we’re targeting Caltechs to tell people don’t buy from Caltechs, because Caltechs fuels genocide and it’s also fueling an ecocide. And it’s a great example of the intersectionality and bringing two different causes together to have one target.

Tony:
How are the Palestinians in Gaza… How the hell are they sustaining themselves with all…? Like, this has been going on for 10 months. They must be incredible people to be able to withstand that.

Amin:
I mean, I ask myself the same question every day, honestly. It’s the sustaining yourself, not only just physically of how do you keep going and find, you how do you… find out where you get your next meal or where you can find the next tank of water that you can get your water supply from, which you have to travel sometimes kilometers for, fill up some sort of container that you’ll have, and that container is your water supply for drinking, showering, cleaning, dishwashing.

How are they sustaining themselves when they don’t have electricity a lot of the time some of them use solar panels to charge their phones And to charge whatever electronics that they have whatever lights they may need Sometimes I ask myself how do they sustain themselves mentally when they’re hearing all of these bombings and the aircrafts that continuously fly in the air that causes such an annoying noise and such a Traumatising noise that you can’t really even sleep at night – it’s, be honest, you have no choice but to survive, but to sustain yourself because that’s indigeneity is that you’re willing to die for that land no matter what, even if it means it costs us mass lives, if that’s what it takes for us to maintain our indigeneity and our love for the land. And that’s as our land, do you find any way possible to sustain yourself? And I think it’s also like, Palestine, like most sort of First Nations peoples, are a lot more communitarian in their approach to life.

So people are much more likely to cooperate and work together and feed each other and help one another. Whereas those of us in the Western world who have our Western colonial mindset, it’s a lot more about just individuality and taking care of yourself before, you know, before your neighbour, before your family, before your friends.

Colin:
Among the very first colonisers on the planet were the Vikings who colonised places like Ireland. They established the township of Dublin and they are now the current leaders, as we pointed out, of looking after the sustainable planet. So we are capable of changing.

Mik:
Thank you for that positive note, Colin. And that’s maybe one way we can round this off – because we need to end it right here. Yes, you’re right, Colin, but I must remind you it took around a thousand years to evolve from where the Vikings were and where the Danes and the Norwegians and the Swedes are today. So I don’t know if we have a thousand years to wait. We might have to speed up the process a bit.

Thank you very much, Elyse and Amin, to both of you for sharing your perspectives on this quite hot debate and giving us some insights into why you’re doing what you’re doing. And we’ll put links to the things you have mentioned during the hour in our show notes, which you can find on climatesafety.info at any time.

That’ll be all from The Sustainable Hour this week. We’ll be back again next Wednesday. So thank you and be the difference.

Amin:
Be Palestinian.

Elyse:
In our thousands and our millions, we are all Palestinian. Truly. Yeah. That’s what I’m I always tell people, if you want to change the world, change yourself and be the change that you want to see in the world.

Amin:
I’ve changed so much in the last 10 months. I never even came to think about the intersectionality of Palestine with climate change, with indigenous struggles everywhere. you just, the awareness that I’ve built and the knowledge that I’ve built and the love and the appreciation I’ve built for so many other struggles, it’s all happened in last 10 months. And I have to show appreciation for people like Elyse.

Elyse:
I’ve always opened my eyes to so much to just the atrocities that are being committed to the environment and to the climate as well as to my people. Yeah, that’s something I was thinking about as well. I feel like what’s going on in Palestine and what Israel’s doing there is shine such a light on global US and UK imperialism and colonialism, it just sort of like… I think there’s been a real mass awakening over these past 10 months and a mass education and that, you’re not alone. I mean, feel like I’ve also just learned so much during these months and nothing will ever be the same. And I think what I was going to say, ‘be Palestinian’, but also I think another one that’s applicable to settler colonisers is: ‘Be honest’. Like: be honest with yourself, be honest with who you are and where you come from and about the ways in which you are complicit in, what’s going on in yourself – and be honest about what you’re doing to dismantle these systems that oppress the people who are protecting most of the planet’s biodiversity. Be honest with yourself first and foremost, and then you can be honest with the world.

SONG
Formidable Vegetable: ‘Earth People Fair’

As a part of the hope, grow some food for my family
Know the boundaries but tear down all the walls
Won’t give up or give in to apathy
Gonna plant a tree then plant another three thousand now
So time to start feeding my soul, feeding the soil,
believing anything is possible

Some things become clearer
The end of my life is always getting nearer
Focusing on the things that bring meaning
Food, community, love and healing
I’m getting tired of all this moving around
Wanna bring it back home to a simple piece of ground
Been talking about it till my mouth is dumb
But all I wanna do is make a deeper connection with some Earth People Fair

Well I’ve been looking for the Earth People Fair
Well show me where to the Earth People Fair

Ancient land so much of the dream that
I still don’t understand
Been looking at you
But I’d rather see you and follow the path of that old ducky new
Someday my body’s gonna breathe its last year I’m aware that this too shall pass but till then I’ll keep singing to the open air
Hoping there’s time to advance Earth People Fair
Earth People Fair
I’ve been looking for the Earth People Fair
Show me where to find the Earth People Fair

Greenpeace video:
Yeah, I care about the climate crisis, but who’s going to pay for it? Well, finally, we have the answer, and it is… The oil companies. Or at least, they should be paying for it. The industry has known for decades that they were causing this crisis, and instead of addressing it, they covered it up while making $2.8 billion every single day for the last 50 years. You do the math. Okay, I’ll do it. That’s… $52 trillion in profits. To put that in context, the damage from extreme weather events reportedly cost $41 billion in the last six months alone. And these events are made only more frequent and severe by the burning of fossil fuels. So what did the fossil fuel companies pay for these damages? Zero plus zero, carrier zero. yeah, that’s right. They didn’t pay anything. Instead, they made record profits while everyone else struggled to pay their energy bills. The only reason they can make these profits is that their running costs do not take into account their products true cost to every living species. Of course, ordinary people do use fossil fuels, but we don’t really have choice when we turn on the light if it comes from affordable renewables or from an expensive fossil fuel power plant. And wanting to turn on a light isn’t a crime. I think. Whereas covering up the effect that your product has on the entire planet probably is.

The Juice Media: Honest Government Ad: ‘We’re Fine’
(LANGUAGE WARNING)
Hello, I’m from the government. With an important message as we enter the third decade of the 21st century. Things are going, overall, the Amazon is fine, half of Africa is fine, so is the Arctic, Indonesia, Spain, Greece, even Greenland’s on fucking fire, I mean fine.

Scientists have coined a new term for this stage of climate change we’re entering: We’re fucked. Unlike the previous state, which climate scientists called, ‘Listen to us or we might be fucked’, We’re fucked is happening and in your lifetime. This is thanks to us wasting decades piss fighting around at climate summits with non-binding emission targets, whilst handing out subsidies to climate criminals, obstructing renewables and generally not giving a shit that rising CO2 levels are about to trigger what scientists call

Feedback Loops. A feedback loop is the scientific term for when a species uses its own ignorance to screw itself and everything else around it so hard that its own planet tells it to get foe.

Some people are already experiencing where fucked, such as these Pacific nations facing rising sea levels, who recently begged Australia to please stop burning coal, to which Australia responded, get fucked. The combination of where fucked and get fucked will cause wars to break out over access to food and water, except in America, where the chosen one will just nuke hunger. Would you like to know more?

Please don’t panic. If the realisation that we’re fucked troubles you, why not ride a bike to work, have shorter showers, or send thoughts and prayers? Just don’t join the global climate strike this September, or Extinction Rebellion in October. Because a sustained collective movement would force us to take drastic action and turn this ship around, which might just be doable if enough of you demand it. Or you could go to Area 51 and demand to see the alien. In which case, we’re definitely fucked.

This has been a message from your local government franchise. Authorised by the Department for going gentle into that good night.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour

Events in Victoria

The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.

Petitions

→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name

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Live-streaming on Wednesdays

The Sustainable Hour is streamed live on the Internet and broadcasted on FM airwaves in the Geelong region every Wednesday from 11am to 12pm (Melbourne time).

→ To listen to the program on your computer or phone, click here – or go to www.947thepulse.com where you then click on ‘Listen Live’ on the right.

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Podcast archive

Over 500 hours of sustainable podcasts.

Listen to all of The Sustainable Hour radio shows as well as special Regenerative Hours and Climate Revolution episodes in full length.

→ Archive on climatesafety.info – with additional links
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