Global Changemakers

It’s been a strange week in Australian politics.

The Labor government has released a raft of major policy platforms the week before Christmas, in part seeking to hide behind a smokescreen of festive spirit, and in part because they seem to have an awful lot to say.

Foremost amongst these was the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper – or in normal speak, what the government are going to do about climate change. In it, the government laid out how it is going to confront what our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, calls the “greatest moral challenge of our time.”

The government’s response – a 5% cut in emissions by 2020 (on 2000 levels).

Coming a week after international climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland, and the EU’s recommitment to 20% emissions reductions – the announcement was decried by the environment movement in Australia and around the world as condemning the planet to meltdown, and sacrificing great Australian icons like the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu National Park.

As I listened to the increasingly shrill calls of my friends in the environment movement, I was reminded of the great challenge that we face as activists – the difference between being ‘right’ and winning.

Being passionate about our causes, we spend much of our time evangelising to others, helping them see the importance of our issue, and getting to move closer to our position – which we invariably consider to be the correct one. We focus on the course of action that we feel should be taken, and hold dearly to our view of what is right.

All this attention on being right can take us away from the real purpose of activism – to effect change, which is about winning. We must win the hearts and minds of the community, key decision-makers, and stakeholders like the media.

It doesn’t matter how right we might be if no one is listening, or worse still, they’re listening, and they disregard our ideas as crazy or unrealistic. Yet this is the trap that many in the environment movement have fallen into in Australia. Calls for 40% cuts by 2020 – regardless of their merit – are far too scary for politicians, the media and the community in Australia to countenance. From a political point of view, it’s easy for the government to discount these views as extreme, carving out a greater political space for their inaction to be seen as moderate and responsible.

It’s a trend that I’ve seen all too often in my work – from the most local of issues like the freeway that is being widened at the end of my street, to global issues like climate change. And, it’s something that I’d encourage all of you heading to Guildford to consider – how can you pursue what you’re passionate about, leading change towards what you believe is right, while still giving yourself the chance to actually win?