Environment
Culture, Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021
Fire and fiction: Reading and learning empathy and connection through bushfire fiction
On both sides of the Pacific Ocean, 2020 will be remembered as the year that a new kind of wildfire burned across the pyrophytic landscapes of south-east Australia and the western United States. Twelve months down the line, the figures are still hard to comprehend; Australia’s Black Summer bushfire season killed or displaced more than 3 billion animals, and destroyed... Read More
Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021, Peace, Social Justice
A fiery trifecta
We are in the midst of a fiery trifecta of crises: climate, covid, nuclear. They’re all connected, and all capable of great damage, and of great transformation. The climate crisis just keeps getting worse, as governments refuse to take the bold and necessary actions to limit global warming to 1.5%. This challenge has been sneaking up on us for more... Read More
Culture, Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021
A thesis, fire, and the telling of stories
In the summer of 2019-20, my view of the world was skewed by fire. At the tail end of a Masters in Sustainable Development, I was working on a thesis. Exploring the issue of climate change reportage meant that a pine table in our home was cluttered with books and research papers tackling the subject. Volumes on climate change and... Read More
Economy, Environment, Featured, Social Justice
Blak Leadership, Green Politics: An Interview With Senator-elect Lidia Thorpe
Ahead of her swearing in as Greens Senator for Victoria, Senator-elect Lidia Thorpe spoke to Green Agenda editor, Felicity Gray, about the activist history that propels her, her plans for the Senate, and decolonising green politics. Felicity Gray: Congratulations on your recent pre-selection as a Greens Senator for Victoria. Very exciting. Lidia Thorpe: Thank you. Felicity Gray: It’s quite a... Read More
Environment, Featured, Social Justice
Why We Need a Decolonial Ecology
As Malcom Ferdinand explains, environmental destruction is inseparable from relationships of racial and colonial domination. It stems from the way we inhabit Earth, from our sense of entitlement in appropriating the planet. All of which means we must recast the past. His book, Une écologie décoloniale (A Decolonial Ecology), won the Foundation for Political Ecology literature prize in 2019. In this conversation,... Read More
Environment, Peace, Social Justice
Post-COVID: Will Our Better Angels Prevail?
I know I shouldn’t sit up late at night scrolling through the 24-hour coronavirus news coverage. I know reading countless horror stories about those impacted by the pandemic only makes me unnecessarily anxious, yet I do it anyway. While my biggest concern is for those losing their lives and loved ones to the virus, what also strikes me is that... Read More
Democracy, Environment
How The Greens Won Budapest
Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party seemed unbeatable until a progressive breakthrough at the Budapest mayoral elections. As he made me coffee in his kitchen on the train to Budapest, the chatty chef said something surprising: “there is a fashion now to hate the president”. Orbán would, he guessed, lose the next election. On my previous trip to Hungary, just 15 months... Read More
Environment
The Great Green Wall: Climate Change, Conflict and Community Resilience
The Great Green Wall is a documentary film that follows a journey along the Great Green Wall – an ambitious plan to grow a 8000km ‘wall’ of vegetation across the Sahel, from Senegal in West Africa, to Djibouti in the East. The film follows Malian musician and activist Inna Modja as she meets with communities across the region, grappling not... Read More
Culture, Democracy, Environment, Social Justice
Hope, Fear, Needing And Grieving: New Year’s Eve 2020 At Malua Bay
“Who will mend us? How will we mend?” In this piece, originally published on Valerie Braithwaite’s blog, Professor Valerie Braithwaite reflects on her experience of the 2020 bushfires on the south coast of NSW. [On Friday 3 January, 2020] I was one of the thousands who left the NSW south coast via Bega and Cooma, heading home to Canberra. Like... Read More
Democracy, Environment, Social Justice
Jobs, Justice And A Liveable World: Urban Planning In A Green New Deal
On August 29, 2019 the UQ Greens, alongside QLD Greens MP Michael Berkman hosted the forum ‘Jobs, Justice & a Liveable World: A Green New Deal for Australia’. Looking at the leadership being provided around the world on the issue, this panel asked the question what might a Green New Deal look like in Australia? With permission from the organisers Green... Read More
