Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

from a community radio background,
also helped FoE’s efforts to build
strong relations with trade unions, other
indigenous communities and other social
movements that were resisting the nuclear
fuel cycle.
At a time where there was limited attention
on nuclear issues in Australia, FoE
activists kept pressure on the domestic
industry, focusing on existing mines in
SA and the NT and highlighting various
proposals to further expand the industry.
Ila Marks, Linda Marks, Jan Whyte, Eric
Miller and others from the Melbourne
anti-uranium collective made regular trips
to the region around Roxby Downs in SA,
working with local traditional owners to
catalogue the ecological costs of WMC’s
Olympic Dam mine, particularly the mine’s
voracious demand for ground water. They
reported on the impacts on the Mound
Springs, ‘already degraded by pastoralists
and poor management and maintenance
in the past’.
In 1987, the ALP was re-elected to power,
signalling an even harder and more limited
path for achieving an end to Australia’s
involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle. FoE
was excluded from negotiations between
the party and environmental ‘heavies’
before the election and, given the political
climate of the day, these meetings failed
to secure any great advantage for the
environment. According to many party
officials, Bob Hawke was interested in the
centre of the electorate, and felt he could
take the support of the left for granted.
Federal Cabinet seemed immune to any
argument on the environment. In the days
before the creation of a national Greens
party, this again raised the possibility of
a red/green electoral alliance that could
potentially force the main parties towards
an anti-nuclear and pro environment
position.
1988 was the Bicentenary of European
settlement of Australia and was marked
by a year of major protests by Indigenous
people and their supporters. FoE activist
and poet John Renshaw labelled the
Bicentenary ‘the year of shame’ and was
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one of around 45,000 people who joined
the survival day march in Sydney on the
day of the re-enactment of the first landing
of Governor Phillip at Botany Bay.
Around this time, three noticeable trends
intersected to form a new and unexpected
phase in the development of modern
concepts of environmentalism. In a limited
period, there was suddenly far greater
media attention given to the environment,
and this intersected with growing public
awareness and concern for environmental
issues, as well as with a growing number
of famous people becoming vocal
advocates for the environment.
These three interconnected phenomena
created the brief wave of ‘green
consumerism’ that marked the early 1990s.
This ‘third wave’ of environmentalism
was intensely non-political and primarily
focussed attention, and hence ‘blame’, for
environmental deterioration on individual
consumption patterns. In this analysis,
changing the purchasing choices of
individual consumers was seen as the
solution to environmental destruction.
While acknowledging the role of individual
consumers as elements of both the
problem and the solution to environmental
deterioration, FoE cautioned against
seeing this as being the core of the matter,
as it potentially let big business and
politicians ‘off the hook’. FoE continues to
argue that consumers’ choices will always
be largely dictated by the realities and
options presented by the community and
economy they live in. After a relatively
short time, green consumerism subsided
as a dominant force in environmental
thinking. An unexpected benefit of this
wave of concern was an unprecedented
surge in membership of all green groups,
including FoE.
FoE 30 Years 43