Opinion
Change of climate: Will today’s activist villains be tomorrow’s heroes?
Mark Naglazas
Journalist and sub editorIt is one of the most iconic images of the 20th century – two African-American athletes standing on the winner’s podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics thrusting black leather glove-clad fists into the air as their country’s national anthem played.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s gesture of solidarity with the Black Power movement and the respect shown them by Australian sprinter Peter Norman is now revered. But at the time their breathtaking act of defiance was roundly condemned.
Matilda Lane-Rose, 19, centre, is one of the activists arrested and charged over a protest at Woodside boss Meg O’Neill’s home on Tuesday.
They were booed by the crowd in the stadium in Mexico City; IOC president Avery Brundage eviscerated Smith and Carlos for making a political statement during an apolitical event and booted them out of the Olympic Village; Time magazine labelled their action (in a play on the Olympic motto) as “angrier, nastier, uglier” and on returning home they received death threats.
The same reversal of fortunes occurred with Western Australia’s own Nicky Winmar, whose gesture of lifting his jumper and pointing to his skin was savaged in 1995 but then celebrated in 2019 with a statue outside Optus Stadium.
It is doubtful the climate change activists who targeted the City Beach home of Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill on Tuesday night will be memorialised by an iconic photograph or a statue.
WA Police prosecutor Kim Briggs said the impact on O’Neill and her family “cannot be over-estimated”, Premier Roger Cook labelled the Disrupt Burrup Hub group “extremists” and talkback radio was flooded with angry callers slamming the activists for going too far. Even Teal independent Kate Chaney shunned their actions.
However, there may be a time in the future, when the temperature edges up another degree, in which the people now ridiculed and reviled for their allegedly unlawful actions will be recognised as part of the noble few who acted on their beliefs.
A Disrupt the Burrup Hub protest at WA Parliament.Credit: Hamish Hastie
According to a 2021 United Nations and Oxford University survey, most of us share the convictions of the activists charged this week. We are in the midst of a climate emergency. So why aren’t we more sympathetic to their protests against a company whose product is a major contributor to the warming of the atmosphere?
Just this week, UN boss Antonio Guterres declared the “the era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived”. Surely a group that has shown no taste for violence staging a stunt outside the home of the boss of a major fossil fuel company is small potatoes?
The thwarted action outside the Woodside boss’ home pales alongside the violent protests that have taken place around the world in recent times.
The US went up in flames after the murder of George Floyd; Paris burns so routinely you’d think it would be part of the tourist itinerary (“Day one: Go up the Eiffel Tower, walk around Montmartre, take photos of the Yellow Vest protesters setting fire to the Champs Elysee”); and Hong Kong not that long ago challenged the French capital as the ground zero of no-holds-barred political action.
The Yellow Vest protestors in Paris: Breaking the law is their raison d’etre.Credit: AP
We don’t condemn these overseas protesters because we largely support their causes. Yet when it comes to our own climate change protesters, whose concerns about a fast-warming planet we mostly share, West Australians come down like a tonne of bricks.
Bringing the battle to the front door of a private citizen and not a politician, someone who works for a company that employs thousands of other West Australians, is regarded – with justification – as a bridge too far.
The enemy are the shareholders, the board and the management of Woodside, not the family of one of its employees.
The Disrupt Burrup Hub group certainly got the attention of the media but the backlash has been so intense they more than likely have damaged their own cause.
The home is a person’s sanctuary. So threatening the Woodside boss’ home was probably a dumb idea.
But how else do they get attention in a city and state in which hundreds of thousands of people derive their livelihoods from the resources industry?
According to one report, the Disrupt Burrup Hub group are planning to shut down the freeway. Imagine the blowback when people are delayed getting home after work.
Equally frustrated by a perceived lack of action for her cause is animal rights activist Tash Peterson, who latched onto anti-vegan comments made by Perth chef John Mountain and used them as a reason to repeatedly invade his restaurant.
While most agree that Peterson’s assault on Mountain’s eatery was too extreme, her Roadrunner versus Wile E. Coyote-style clash with the Gordon Ramsey-ish owner was great theatre.
Most crucially, Peterson kept the attacks for his place of work, which is a good lesson for the climate change group.
Interestingly, another activist who appears to have had enough of low-key, non-confrontational protests is the most infamous and beloved agitator of all, Greta Thunberg, who last month was arrested for blocking oil tankers heading to the harbour in the Swedish city of Malmo.
“We know that we cannot save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to be changed,” Thunberg told the media who gathered outside the court.
“We are in an emergency. Due to that, my action was legitimate.”
She refuses to play by the rules: Greta Thunberg speaks to the media after appearing in court.Credit: Ole Jensen/Getty Images
Why do I get the feeling that if Greta was living in Perth she would be paying a Meg a visit?
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