•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 1 11/12/20 1:36 pm Praise for Griffith Review

‘A literary degustation... The richness of these stories is amplified by the resonance between them. It’s hard to think of so much fascinating story being contained within 270-odd pages.’ Ed Wright, The Saturday Australian ‘…informative, thought-provoking and well-crafted.’ The Saturday Paper ‘[An] outstanding collection of essays, reportage, memoir, poetry and fiction.’ Mark McKenna, Honest History ‘The Review doesn’t shirk from the nuanced and doesn’t seek refuge in simplistic notions or slogans. It remains Australia’s primary literary review.’ Professor Ken Smith, Dean and CEO ANZSOG ‘Griffith Review continues to provide a timely focus on contemporary topics through its high-calibre collection of literary works.’ Graham Quirk, former Lord Mayor, Brisbane ‘…an eclectic, thought-provoking and uniformly well-written collection.’ Justin Burke, The Australian ‘This is commentary of a high order. The prose is unfailingly polished; the knowledge and expertise of the writers impressive.’ Roy Williams, Sydney Morning Herald ‘For intelligent, well-written quarterly commentary…Griffith Review remains the gold standard.’ Honest History ‘Griffith Review is Australia’s most prestigious literary journal.’ stuff.co.nz ‘Griffith Review is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in current affairs, politics, literature and journalism. The timely, engaging writing lavishly justifies the Brisbane-based publication’s reputation as Australia’s best example of its genre.’ The West Australian ‘Griffith Review enjoys a much-deserved reputation as one of the best literary journals in Australia. Its contribution to conversations and informed debate on a wide range of topical issues has been outstanding.’ Hon. Ian Walker MP ‘This quarterly magazine is a reminder of the breadth and talent of Australian writers. Verdict: literary treat.’ Herald Sun

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 1 11/12/20 1:36 pm SIR SAMUEL GRIFFITH was one of Australia’s notable early achievers. He occupied positions of authority during some of the most momentous events in the history of the Queensland colony, the frontier wars, the ‘blackbirding’ trade of people from the Pacific, the shearers’ strike and Federation. At times he challenged power, at others he was willing to compromise. He was a man of colonial times, not all his decisions have stood the test of time. Twice the premier of Queensland, that state’s chief justice and the author of its criminal code, he was best known for his pivotal role in drafting the Constitution that led to Federation, and as the new nation’s first chief justice. He was also a reformer and legislator, a complex yet pragmatic man of words.

Griffith died in 1920 and is now most likely to be remembered by his namesakes: an electorate, a society, a suburb and a university. Ninety-six years after he first proposed establishing a university in Brisbane, Griffith University, the city’s second, was created in 1971. His commitment to public debate and ideas, his delight in words and art, and his attachment to active citizenship are recognised by this publication that bears his name.

Like Sir Samuel Griffith, Griffith Review is iconoclastic and non-partisan, with a sceptical eye, a pragmatically reforming heart, always ready to debate ideas. Personal, political and unpredictable, it informs and provokes Australia’s best conversations.

During Griffith’s lifetime, and while he was in positions of power, the First Nations of Queensland resisted and suffered British invasion and dispossession. Sir Samuel made it possible for some Aboriginal people to testify in court when charges were brought against settlers. The first Australians survived, but at a terrible cost. In the twenty-first century, the need for a thorough and lasting settlement is urgent, one that respects and honours the rights, history and culture of the descendants of those who were dispossessed.

Griffith Review staff acknowledge and pay particular respect to the traditional custodians of the lands on which their office is located, the Jagera and Turrbal people in South-East Queensland, and to elders throughout Australia.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 2 11/12/20 1:36 pm GriffithReview71 Remaking the Balance Edited by Ashley Hay

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 3 11/12/20 1:36 pm GriffithReview71

INTRODUCTION 7 Create, destroy, reset ASHLEY HAY: Forging worlds with finite resources

ESSAY 11 Breaking new ground GABRIELLE CHAN: Innovative approaches to farming 25 Masters of the future or heirs of the past? CLARE WRIGHT: Mining, history and the right to know 79 Generation Covid KATIE HOLMES: Crafting history and collective memory 104 It’s more than just the fruit ROBIN E ROBERTS: Consequences of climate change on Australian agriculture 115 Food insecurity in uncertain times BRONWYN FREDERICKS and ABRAHAM BRADFIELD: Ways forward post-­pandemic 124 Sitting with difficult things SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM: Meaningful action in contested times 140 Accords and antagonisms TONY WOOD: Making progress in the combat for climate policy 148 A long half-­life IAN LOWE: Nuclear energy in Australia 195 Trash fish, sand, sea snails ELSPETH PROBYN: Why little things matter 241 State actions and libertarian lawsuits ANNE ORFORD: Lessons from Covid for the climate emergency 251 Touching the future GENEVIEVE BELL: Stories of systems, serendipity and grace 264 Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman LESLEY HUGHES: Our troubled relationship with the Blue Marble 275 Gifts across space and time NARDI SIMPSON: Journeying together in speak/listen trade

MEMOIR 39 Returning value to profit ALAN SCHWARTZ: On my late onset political awakening 89 Verdigris LESLEY-­ANNE HOUGHTON: The elements of corrosion 227 The professor and the word JULIAN MEYRICK: On value in culture and economics

REPORTAGE 51 Tales from the frontline JO CHANDLER: The emotional impact of climate change

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 4 11/12/20 1:36 pm 95 Eating for the climate MATTHEW EVANS: Reframing the debate about ethical diets 173 Hail hydrogen NICOLE HASHAM: Powering the debate on future fuel

INTERVIEW 72 ‘A poem is a unicycle’ BARBARA KINGSOLVER and ASHLEY HAY: A conversation on poetry, politics and post-truth

IN CONVERSATION 205 Animal perspective ERIN HORTLE, LAURA JEAN McKAY and CHRIS FLYNN: Breaking the language barrier

FICTION 135 Provenance JANE DOWNING 186 Blue crane INGA SIMPSON

POETRY 76 How to have a child 77 How to shear a sheep 78 How to do absolutely nothing BARBARA KINGSOLVER 114 urgent biophilia CHLOË CALLISTEMON 134 The Biyula novels DECLAN FRY 215 Qualifying ode to experience JOHN KINSELLA

PICTURE GALLERY 161 The crimson line TRENT PARKE

Marian Drew, Melon, Coral, Clouds [detail] 2014 Inkjet print, 60 x 90 cm Image courtesy of the artist

Griffith Review gratefully acknowledges the support and generosity of our founding patron, the late Margaret Mittelheuser AM and the ongoing support of Dr Cathryn Mittelheuser AM.

Contents.indd 5 16/12/20 3:56 pm GriffithReview71 2021 Griffith Review is­published four times a year by Griffith University.

Publisher Julianne Schultz AM FAHA Editor Ashley Hay Associate Publisher Jane O’Hara Managing Editor John Tague Senior Editor Carody Culver Marketing & Events Co-ordinator Emma Reason Business Co-ordinator Esha Buch Proofreader Sonia Ulliana Chair, Advisory Board Scott Harrison Publicity Brendan Fredericks Typesetting Midland Typesetters Printing Ligare Book Printers Distribution NewSouth Books/ADS

ISBNs Book: 978-1-922212-56-6 PDF: 978-1-922212-57-3 Epub/Kindle: 978-1-922212-58-0

ISSN 1448-2924

Contributions by academics can, on request, be refereed by our Editorial Board. Details: griffithreview.com GRIFFITH REVIEW South Bank Campus, Griffith University PO Box 3370, South Brisbane QLD 4101 Australia Ph +617 3735 3071 Fax +617 3735 3272 [email protected] griffithreview.com SUBSCRIPTIONS: See griffithreview.com/product-category/subscriptions Institutional and bulk rates available on application COPYRIGHT The copyright in material published in Griffith Review and on its website remains the property of the author, artist or photographer, and is subject to copyright laws. No part of this publication should be reproduced without first contacting Griffith Review. Opinions published in Griffith Review are not necessarily those of the publisher, editor, Griffith University or NewSouth Books. FEEDBACK AND COMMENT [email protected]

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 6 11/12/20 1:36 pm INTRODUCTION Create, destroy, reset Forging worlds with finite resources Ashley Hay

WE’RE TERRAFORMING, MY son and me. We’ve done this in the real world before, tree by tree – but this time, it’s virtual, pixelated. Digging down and piling up, creating landscapes and buildings and ponds. I place green blocks of grassy stuff slowly, one by one. My son deals his out like a top-table croupier. ‘So how much of this stuff do I have?’ I ask. Another block. Another cube. ‘As much as you want, Mum.’ ‘There’s no limit to the resources I can use?’ ‘Nothing runs out.’ Grass. Wood. Stone. Fish. Food. Water. Glass. Gems. Tools. Another crop. Another building. Another panda. Another cow. Nothing is earned or purchased: it’s all just there to use. And there’s a curious satisfaction in laying down piece after piece of green, brown, blue without having to think about shortage – or consequence. This seductive bounteousness: as much as you want. Minecraft, for those who don’t live with a twelve-year-old, can be played in two modes: creative and survival. There are internal games, variations and opportunities, but it’s fundamentally a world-building app, like Lego on-screen, allowing the construction, block by block, of everything from basic to elaborate topographies, residences, lands. I painstakingly complete my row of grass. My son spawns llamas, chickens and pandas, and plants more corn – this profligate abundance. He dumps bucket after bucket of never- ending water into a new pool for more dolphins, turtles, sharks and more of Minecraft’s 3,584 different kinds of available tropical fish. The problem is, of course, this is not how most real-world resources work.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 7 11/12/20 1:36 pm 8 GriffithReview71

THE INELASTIC LIMITS of the planet and just about everything it holds are well documented. There’s even an Earth Overshoot Day, when the world’s population exhausts the resources the planet makes available for each calendar year. As Lesley Hughes writes in this edition, that day has crept forward year on year – from late December in the early 1970s to, in 2019, its earliest ever: 29 July. (Measured as a single country, Australia used up its load months earlier, in March.) Overshoot Day had its own moment of Covid-pause, delayed until 22 August in 2020, as global consumption eased. Welcome respite, the Global Footprint Network noted, but one that would ideally have been achieved by ‘design, not disaster’. Those regained three and a half weeks spoke to many questions sparked by the pandemic. Would resources – and humanity’s relationship to them – be impacted by the virus, by its potential rupture? Would the value or impor- tance of intangible resources become as important, more important, than more tangible ones? Would expectations of quantity, agency, access and control be changed by the unexpected lives many people lived last year? Would responses to Covid inform responses to other immense planetary threats – loss of biodiversity, the arrival of the Anthropocene, the escalating impacts of climate change?

ASSEMBLING AN EDITION of Griffith Review is a bit like world-build- ing in Minecraft, placing one block next to another and seeing greater shapes and possibilities emerge in their combination. In this edition’s explorations of resource and new balance, the climate crisis looms large: Jo Chandler and Sophie Cunningham both write in this context of exercising courage and hope as if they were muscles, which feels like a critical prescription. Ideas of supply, demand and value play out across landscapes, from Gabrielle Chan’s wide fields of agricultural policy to Matthew Evans’ microcosms of soil. They resonate through Elspeth Probyn’s celebration of small things – fish and snails – and Robin Roberts’ celebration of the quintessential summer fruit, the mango. They intersect in Alan Schwartz’s late-onset political awakening as an active capitalist, and Julian Meyrick’s epiphany about ‘value’ beyond the ideas of economic analysis. Bronwyn Fredericks and Abraham Bradfield lay notions of inner-city bounty – even in the wake of supermarket limits exposed by last year’s toilet-paper rushes – alongside the enforced and expensive precarity of basic provisions for many Indigenous Australians. Ian Lowe, Nicole Hasham and Clare Wright explore potential energies from the future and the past.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 8 11/12/20 1:36 pm Ashley Hay: Create, destroy, reset 9

And Barbara Kingsolver’s poetry provides ‘how-to’ guides to lay beside Katie Holmes’ projections of collective memory, and of narrative itself as a resource. The capacity to tell stories – whether they reframe the past or forecast the future – is a signal resource allocated to humans. On this continent, along- side storytelling, there exists a particular tradition of trade, a literal gift in the landscape. In this collection, it manifests as an extraordinary invitation extended by Yuwaalaraay writer, musician, composer and educator Nardi Simpson to enter a more generous and rewarding process of exchange, lifting the idea of resource, of asset, of object, out of time and materiality, beyond narrow expec- tations of numbers or returns. This powerful and lyrical journey is the first work developed under the auspices of ‘Unsettling the status quo’, a commissioning- editor mentorship undertaken with Griffith Review by Grace Lucas-Pennington from black&write!, thanks to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. And even Minecraft has its limits. One enthusiastic player – who has delineated the boundaries of the game’s world at 921 quadrillion blocks – estimates that if 7.5 billion people played in a single Minecraft world at once, it would take four years and five months to deplete its first resource: gold ore. To get 7.5 billion people to play Minecraft together at the same time would take an unprecedented act of global collaboration – which might be more usefully directed elsewhere. Then again, perhaps it’s as good a start as any. Choosing between creative and survival has a different resonance these days. Another resource available to those 7.5 billion players is imagination. Even if overthinking mothers of a certain age find the value of games like Minecraft suspect, those billions of players would be in there, thinking, making, creating, for all that time. The Global Footprint Network is currently calculating Overshoot Days for 2021, country by country. At the time of writing, its ‘now-cast’ system predicts that Qatar will exhaust its years’-worth first on 9 February, followed six days later by Luxembourg. Indonesia will last until 18 December, while the two-island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe will live most within its means, only exceeding its annual resource quota on 27 December. That’s still four days short of any semblance of balance. Our relationships with resources are defined by what we do with all that’s animal, vegetable and mineral in the world – as well as with so many less tangible commodities. The challenge now is how to reach for new sustain- abilities; how to change what we do with what we have, be that snails or sunshine, soil or stories. 30 November 2020

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 9 11/12/20 1:36 pm THE NATURE CONSERVANCY’S Photo © Ben Goode.

SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!

Submissions are now open for essays of between 3,000 and 5,000 words set within an Australian landscape and in the genre of ‘Writing of Place’. The winning essayist will receive $7,500 and be published online in Griffith Review. Judges for the 2021 Prize are Tara June Winch and Geordie Williamson. One Highly Commended writer will receive The Rosina Joy Buckman Award, a 2-week residency at Life at Springfield. Enter via natureaustralia.org.au/nwp Closing date: Friday 19 February 2021, 5pm

The Nature Writing Prize is made possible thanks to a generous donation from the McLean Foundation, which promotes and celebrates the art of nature writing in Australia. The Rosina Joy Buckman Award has been generously donated by Life at Springfield. For full prize inclusions and T&C’s please visit natureaustralia.org.au/nwp

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 10 11/12/20 1:36 pm

TNC4736 NWP_GRAd_BW_v2.indd 1 20/11/20 2:44 pm ESSAY Breaking new ground Innovative approaches to farming Gabrielle Chan

IT WAS NEVER part of my plan to move to a farm. The landscape is Wiradjuri country, bought from previous farmers in the 1920s by my husband’s family. In the past quarter-­century since I moved from the city, I have become more familiar with this place in a multidimensional way. Life in a more natural landscape replaced life in a built environment in the frenetic media industry. There, I considered nature as an add-­on. Here, the farm underlines to me every day that we belong to nature. Like a quilt, the farm’s various ecologies are stitched together in ways that are both affected by human management and beyond it. Its soil, plants and animals work as a system for the benefit of all the inhabitants, including us and the introduced livestock. It is a dance, informed by observation and ecology. Droughts have arrived with regularity. I have learnt that nature bends and looks like it may break. Then it self-­organises, not always in good ways for humans or the natural world. Pulling the thread on a farm takes you to fundamental questions of human existence. For us, the short-­term goal is feeding ourselves, our families and our communities. The long-­term goal is to leave the land in a better state than we found it. Almost every farmer I speak to would share that ambition. The way we choose to manage that task has to work at the natural level and the human level because humans are part of the environment too. At the natural level, organising food production requires consideration of the building blocks of our physical world: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 11 11/12/20 1:36 pm 12 GriffithReview71

phosphorous, rhizobium bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi, and many more we don’t even know about yet. The whole is greater than the sum of its known parts. The whole includes the river systems, the native vegetation and all the little critters in the soil food web. These ecosystems have to function to produce healthy food – and their limits can be reached due to any number of factors: the human culture managing the system; the amount of rainfall and its timing; the landscape’s health or disease; the global forces of climate change. At the human level, land management can take you to the big economic and political questions. The limiting factors for the food grower include the most basic constraints on the farm. The costs of growing the food compared with the price the farmer receives. The rules of engagement outside the farmer’s control are often pulling in opposite directions. Farmers are caught between market demand and the natural world. The rules are sometimes set by governments, the most obvious around native vegetation and water take. The rules are increasingly set by large corpora- tions, which specify the produce they buy, such as the shape of a carrot or the fat content of a lamb chop. The global forces of competition and international trade rules affect the equation. The infrastructure by which farmers get their product to market, particularly in a country the size of Australia, also plays a role. In the current farming system, the simple truth is that the natural constraints are at odds with the human constraints. For at least three decades, farmers have been told to act as the farming version of homo economicus. ‘Using rational assessments, homo economicus attempts to maximise utility as a consumer and economic profit as a producer,’ says the OED. Farmer economicus has been held as the ideal since the 1980s. Farmers have been repeatedly told by economists, governments and agricultural educators that the only way to get a pay rise is to increase production. Apple may set the price of an iPhone, but the average farmer cannot set the price for a tonne of wheat. Farmers are told that producing more with less is the only way to improve the bottom line. Since Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution, farmers have been primed to feed the world and its growing population. The Green Revolution’s leap in production technology delivered an agribusiness system that left growers dependent on a high-­input farming model, requiring fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and other additives. This has allowed farmers to deal with the human constraints of falling food prices and greater specifications

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 12 11/12/20 1:36 pm Gabrielle Chan: Breaking new ground 13

from supermarkets and food processors as well as the need to compete with other trading nations. Global farmers have become so successful that the world can apparently now afford to live with a distribution system that wastes 40 per cent of what farmers produce. That’s another story. Enter climate change. Add it to flatlining economic growth and wages. Some economists now question the wisdom of our current path. Economic growth as it is currently framed is the never-­ending story: in theory, we just keep growing ad infinitum. It is the aeroplane that takes off but never lands, says Oxford economist Kate Raworth. I see parallels between the never-­ ending economic growth story and the never-­ending productivity story in agriculture. Except in Australia, agricultural productivity has flatlined too. And, arguably, we are using balance sheets that only show part of the picture. One large part of the asset has always been left off the accounts of the food producer. That is the natural assets. The natural capital. We are spending up big and we are not accounting for our spending in the natural world.

KEN HENRY’S FATHER was a timber cutter, making railway sleepers from felling trees. The Henrys sprang from a long line of ‘cedar getters’, working long days, from dawn until dusk. One afternoon when Ken was about thirteen, John Henry drove his three sons to the sawmill. On the ground was the biggest log he had ever seen. It lay there ‘like the vanquished party in Jack and the Beanstalk’, two metres in diameter and twelve metres in length, which was about all a truck could carry. His father was proud to show his boys, proud of his work, given he had to climb so far up to get to a point where felling such a tree was possible. The monster log was just a portion of a much larger tree. Henry and his brothers were proud of their dad and, like kids every- where, they were ready with questions. Dad, how old do you reckon the tree must have been? ‘Oh, very old. At least a hundred years. Anywhere up to five hundred.’ Wow! How many houses do you reckon you could build out of that log? ‘Oh, it would make the framing for at least three houses.’ Wow! So how much would that log be worth? ‘I’m not sure, but certainly thousands of dollars.’ So how much do you get? Ken Henry, Secretary of Treasury from 2001 to 2011, credits that moment with sparking his career in economics. His father said that he would only get a couple of hours’ wages. The sawmill would

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 13 11/12/20 1:36 pm 14 GriffithReview71

get the majority, and the state government would get some royalties, ‘a few dollars I guess, perhaps not that much’. The whole scene troubled him. And he sensed his father and brothers were troubled too. ‘Our sense of unease only grew as our father told us that he had cut down hundreds of trees just like the one from which this log had come but had had to leave them lying in the bush.’ Old hardwoods typically have hollow cores and a sawmill didn’t consider it economic to pay the transport costs for a log with fewer than one foot of solid timber around the hollow core. ‘The problem was that you couldn’t tell how hollow a tree was until you brought it down. That didn’t trouble the sawmill, because it paid royalties only on what it took out of the forest. The Forestry Department didn’t get a cent for what was left behind on the forest floor. Hundreds of trees, hundreds of years old, torn down – their carcasses left to rot where they fell.’ Cultures, laws and economic signals change. Behaviour can be altered by leadership or markets or regulation or law, but those measures rarely account for the intangible costs. In conversations long after the felling of that tree, John Henry told his son of his remorse over the way he earned a living and the effect of logging on the soil and the ecosystems – even though he was simply providing a living for his family.

TALL TREES THROW a long shadow. The shadow of John Henry’s tree followed his son into university. He learnt lots of things along the way. That property rights were important. That free markets might fail. That people in commerce could benefit from exchanges that might impose costs on others, including future generations. That prices guide resource allocation. He also learnt that governments might manage the common wealth in the common interest. ‘I came to the view that peoples’ behaviours had a lot to do with their pursuit of self-­interest, and that a lot of what I might have found objection- able about the things humans did could have had something to do with the opportunities and incentives established by governments.’ Henry’s 2010 analysis of Australia’s tax system came up with 138 policy recommendations to streamline the nation’s overly complex system. The Rudd government implemented just one: the Resource Super Profits Tax, known as the mining tax – a complete change in the way Australia would account for natural resources to future generations, but isolated from the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 14 11/12/20 1:36 pm Gabrielle Chan: Breaking new ground 15

context of Henry’s planned overhaul. It was swiftly killed by the incoming Abbott government after the mining industry bankrolled a political campaign that would hone its skills to defend the coal industry for another decade. After Henry retired from Treasury, he was still working for that tree. Despite a lifetime of reporting using orthodox economic criteria in his work, he has a problem with one of the biggest staples of government budgeting and economic performance: the gross domestic product, used to measure the health of the economy.

TO BECOME INTIMATE with one piece of land is to watch the world shrink. It reinforces that the system is limited. Only so much grass. Only so many trees. Only so much soil carbon. Only so much water. It becomes obvious, particularly in a drought, how quickly things can turn. For the longest time, parts of farming culture reinforced a more circular economy, and in some places it still does. This is obvious on this farm. Baby-­formula tins hold nuts. Jam jars hold bolts. Pallets have been made into storage cupboards. Timber boxes have been fashioned into bedside tables. Strict accounts are kept to measure the flows of products. When wool, wheat and lambs are shipped to market, they have to be accounted for. So many sheep, so this much wool. So many acres of crop means this much wheat. All accounted for. But the way countries account for resources is different in the GDP. If you look at it plainly, it sounds like a conjuring trick. It is better than the rabbit pulled out of the hat. It is as if the resources come from nowhere. Many people look at the national economic accounts and are seduced by the notion that GDP provides a pretty good measure of material living standards as well as a basis for considering how living standards change over time. It also forms a basis for international comparisons. Henry argues that the people who came up with GDP and the system of national accounts developed it as a way to keep track of the peaks and troughs in aggregate demand within Keynesian macro-­economic policy. It was never intended to be used as an indicator of the standard of living. ‘The most spectacular problem with national accounts being used in that way is that it makes no allowance at all for the loss of natural value,’ he says. ‘It makes no allowance even for the loss of raw materials, using stuff in production processes. If somebody digs a tonne of iron ore out of the ground, the national accounts regards that tonne of iron ore as having been created

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 15 11/12/20 1:36 pm 16 GriffithReview71

the moment it was extracted from the ground. It didn’t previously exist. If it’s exported, then that full tonne of iron ore makes a contribution in full to Australia’s gross domestic product in the quarter in which it is extracted and exported. There is just no allowance and no recognition at all of the fact that because a tonne of iron ore is extracted, it is no longer available for future generations, or even the present generation. It just no longer exists. If it was a tonne of iron ore sitting in your backyard, you would certainly want some recognition for that. You would regard it not as income in the quarter in which you sold it; you would regard it as a sale of an asset. But that’s not how the national accounts treats it.’ When economists realised they had a problem on their hands, they asked the wrong question. They looked to modify the existing system. Is there some way of adjusting the national accounts to address these problems so we are left with a more accurate metric of what is happening to the standard of living? Henry thought for a long time that would be possible – but realised he had to take a step back. The bottom line, he says, is that the human brain is simply not that good at placing a dollar value on the condition of an environmental asset. Numerous and classic studies prove this. One involved asking three classes of students to value seabirds trapped in an oil slick. How much would students personally be prepared to pay to save those 2,000 or 20,000 or 200,000 birds? The numbers came in at between $80 and $88 irrespective of the quantity. In other words, the students took no account of scale or scope. ‘When you ask a human to process that sort of question, the brain uses a mental heuristic, a shortcut,’ Henry says. Incapable of imagining 2,000 seabirds, let alone 200,000, it is more likely to produce ‘an image of one bird trapped in an oil slick. No matter how many birds you’re asked to evaluate, you’re going to get a mental image of one and so your answer is going to be the same.’ In the same way, he says, ‘you can’t really ask people questions like what value do you put on the Tarkine forests. Or any bit of wilderness. Because the human brain is at best going to imagine one tree.’ Ken decided the best way was to start with the scientists who already have measures of condition, species, water and air quality and so don’t fall into the shortcut trap. Now, a not-­for-­profit called Accounting for Nature (ACN) – on whose board Ken Henry sits – has come up with a system of assessing the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 16 11/12/20 1:36 pm Gabrielle Chan: Breaking new ground 17

environment relative to, in his words, ‘a pristine benchmark’. An accredited ‘Econd’ unit, developed by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, can describe the current biophysical condition of an environmental asset as a number between zero and one hundred, where one hundred is a measure of the asset in its undegraded state. Once you start measuring, you are left with tables of figures that show whether the environmental asset is going up or down, whether it is trees or a fish stock or a riparian habitat or the number of macroinvertebrates. They are categorised in a balance sheet of sorts so you can see, year on year, whether the stock is improving or declining, just as a farmer might do with sheep numbers or tonnes of grain, or cherries or cauliflowers. That environmental account becomes a barometer for the land and water assets. The big and very contentious question is whether we should place a dollar figure on the environment in the national accounts. Environmental activists such as George Monbiot are against such accounting: ‘Everything will be fungible, nothing will be valued for its own sake, place and past and love and enchantment will have no meaning. The natural world will be reduced to a column of figures.’ And some scientists – including Peter Cosier, Henry’s fellow ACN board member and a member of the Wentworth Group – want neither a dollar-value placed on the environment nor buy-in to the idea you can monetise everything. Cosier just wants things measured so we know if we are doing well or badly. When the United Nations’ working group settled the rule book for a standardised system of national environmental accounts ten years ago, Henry had a little mental celebration. But the Australian government decided not to fund this approach. So the impetus for ACN was ‘to start from the ground up. Literally to build it up, paddock by paddock by paddock.’ One day, he says, a future Australian government will find the approach interesting. They’ll send in the Australian Bureau of Statistics to take responsibility for the measure- ment of environmental condition. Think how much the debate over our natural world changes if we have a simple standardised measure of our environmental condition. It’s the ultimate feedback loop. The Australian public can then decide what to do when the dashboard is showing that petrol in the tank is low. We can decide how we want to use those resources and perhaps be more realistic about our limits.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 17 11/12/20 1:36 pm 18 GriffithReview71

We can determine how much we are willing to blow and how much we are willing to save. Hopefully we think about our grandchildren when we are doing it.

PRIVATE MARKETS ARE heading in the direction of valuing natural capital whether or not governments have a consistent measure of environ- mental value – a bit like the decline of coal or the rise of carbon prices. As the former chairman of NAB, Henry is confident that banks and their products – including the average farm loan – will soon start measuring environmental condition. This will have implications for land managers across the country and the globe. Not only are eaters demanding more environmentally sustain- able ways of farming; banks will use assessments of land condition to calculate interest rates. In the same way that banks look at assets and investments when lending money, they will look at paddocks and, potentially, other big measures – vegetation, ground cover, soil and water – to determine what farmers pay from month to month. Any farmer with a loan will have had the annual visit where the banker comes for a cup of coffee and a chat to get an idea of how things are going. The bank already knows the physical assets on the place and how much money is coming in and going out. Sometimes the banker might have a poke around in the cropping program or ask about the livestock program for the year ahead. But there is a conundrum. Two examples: one farmer is pushing harder to get maximum productivity in the short-­term. Growing more. Making more money. The other farmer is operating more lightly, perhaps ensuring maximum ground cover, balancing inputs more carefully, planting trees and understocking in case the season turns. Possibly making less money. Who is the bank going to favour? I would have thought the first farmer, because ultimately, the bank wants to see the money paid back. Henry disagrees. The bank will have a less risky loan book by favouring the second. ‘Putting my former bankers’ hat on,’ he says, ‘the worst thing that can happen for the bank is that the farm is completely degraded by the time it’s forced to take possession of it… That is what the whole field of regenerative agriculture is literally about. It is regenerating.’ There remain many arguments about the definition of regenerative agriculture. Henry’s definition is simple. ‘It is something that improves the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 18 11/12/20 1:36 pm Gabrielle Chan: Breaking new ground 19

condition of the environment and increases the returns for farmers. It doesn’t matter where the revenue comes from.’ I have met enough farmers to know that the idea of farm loans deter- mined by environmental condition would send up at least two red flags. First, it would require more work to provide the information, and involve opening up the landscape and farm books to greater scrutiny. Second, what would that information be used for? Open the gate; the measurement is taken; new rules are imposed: that’s how it goes in the farmer’s imagination. Often the farmer’s instinct is correct. But the flipside of measuring is gathering evidence that shows how improvements in land condition – regeneration, if you like – might boost your bottom line.

I STARTED RESEARCHING natural capital after I met Steve Lacey. He was working for the Queensland agricultural advocacy group AgForce at the time. A farmer, former soldier and native of the UK, he grew up on the edge of the New Forest, William the Conqueror’s hunting ground in the eleventh century. For hundreds of years, the commoner rights of the New Forest allowed pigs and ponies to graze freely on Crown lands. The animals were used as tools to manage the asset: the pigs ate the acorns, and the cattle and the ponies chewed down the gorse and the heathland. This has woven Lacey’s view of the natural world into the human community, and vice versa. When Steve and his family came to Australia, he discovered many farming policies were based on activity rather than the impact of the work on that farm. Influenced by Dieter Helm, a professor of economics at Oxford, he became convinced that accounting for the natural capital in any farming system – the water, the air, the vegetation, the soil that nature provides for free – would be a way of setting policies for the next generation. ‘When you have a massive asset, you tend not to measure it until it’s too late,’ Lacey says. ‘Some policies were about agricultural growth and productivity as opposed to profitability. By bringing the extra layer of natural capital into the accounts line, you could actually show you were working within a safe limit of your asset base and determine whether it was renewable or non-­renewable.’ Steve likens a farm to his own body. As a young man ‘I flogged my body’, he says, ‘but when it went wrong, it’s never been the same machine since. I have seen that in the grazing industry. The time it takes to rest country

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 19 11/12/20 1:36 pm 20 GriffithReview71

once it’s gone past a certain point – that’s the bit that’s so hard on a grazier who has to produce income. That can push people to work the country harder than they need to because they need turnover. We often hear farmers are the true environmentalists. Well, some are and some aren’t fantastic at it. State and federal policy tended to support landholders to stay on the land rather than allow them to exit and get someone else to manage it.’ He worries that government and industry too often focus on exports and dollars to the exclusion of other things, which renders food production unsustainable. If we thought about what is best for the landscape, land manag- ers, banks, governments and whole economies, Lacey argues, we would be in a far better position. In other words, farmers have to take account of the system they are working in: good farmers already know that. Governments also need to pull the right policy levers to ensure that farmers don’t erode their natural capital. For the past thirty years, the government policy signal has been to push harder, grow faster and remove the costs of labour because the price of the food has dropped and the costs of inputs have increased. The only way to get a pay rise if you are under pressure is by pushing your country as hard as you can. Yet now, in countries around the world, light bulbs are turning on. People are questioning that very neoliberal approach – not just in agricultural policy but in finance, in industry and in communities. The time has come for a more balanced approach. The simple productivity solution that has reigned from the 1970s onwards is so last century. Farming is entering the next phase and it will require a thinking shift to integrate the natural world more fully for both farming systems and anyone who eats our produce.

IT WAS ONLY in coming to grips with the business of farming that I began to think hard about how we should regard the natural world in terms of what we need to eat and produce. The farming mindset is often about control of nature, yet it regularly yields to forces beyond its control. Seasons start with promise and then die. Crops flourish and wither. Prices rise and then fall. Prize rams find a new way to die. A cold snap and torrential rain arrives in the lambing season, as it did in 2020. Water pipes burst, trade wars flare, rain doesn’t fall.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 20 11/12/20 1:36 pm Gabrielle Chan: Breaking new ground 21

There is a balance required in farming between when to control and when to yield. The idea that farmers can control nature is prevalent because we need to make an income. It is reflected in agricultural products marketed as weapons of war against nature. At the same time, yielding to nature is a fundamental farming instinct. You can shake your fist at clear skies, but it won’t bring rain. Farming requires careful attention to nature. The farmer notices well before me that there are no bees in the Paterson’s curse. Or that the ironbarks are flowering at the wrong time. Or that shingleback lizards are having a good season. Funny, he says, I haven’t heard the sound of frogs in the back ramp for a few years. These personal experiences ground the farmer in the landscape. The detail of nature becomes imprinted on many of them. Those experiences have emotional roots, which form a connection to the natural world, even for those who might be regarded as bad land managers. This is not to excuse bad farming, but rather an observation about why you might raise a farmer’s hackles by saying they fail to understand or are destroying nature. When the political debate strays towards climate – or water or biodiversity or native vegetation – they feel unheard and under-­appreciated, even if their actions are at odds with the wider goal of preservation. Land managers balance two imperatives: looking after the landscape and making a living. Landcare membership, planting trees, setting aside habitat or fencing off a creek appeals to the landscape imperative. Finding a way to grow a decent crop with all the conventional inputs appeals to the impera- tive to make a living. If eaters are unhappy with some practices and want farmers to change, they have to understand that a farmer cannot be all for landscape regeneration without making a living – unless someone is paying for that regeneration.

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES ARE about paying for farmers to address subjects such as soil health, species habitat and vegetation. If you start measur- ing natural capital and the environment is diminishing, how do you turn it around? The answers are either regulation or incentives to manage land in a different way, such as payments to improve natural capital. You will hear a lot more of this term in the coming decade as governments around the world scramble to mitigate carbon emissions and put back some of the natural capital

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 21 11/12/20 1:36 pm 22 GriffithReview71

both farmer and consumer have collectively blown. That conversation is most advanced in the UK. As well as his professorship at Oxford University, Dieter Helm is Chair of the UK’s Natural Capital Committee, which provides independent advice to the government on how to manage its natural capital. The future of British agriculture is one of the key political and social choices facing the UK as a result of its withdrawal from the European Union. Farming districts largely supported Brexit, a phenomenon The Economist dubbed ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. The result is that UK farmers will move away from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) system that paid farmers based on the amount of land they managed. According to its critics, it is a system that pumps up land prices, keeps farmers on marginal areas, locks young farmers out of the land ownership system and gives no incentive for good practice. Instead, future payments will be for provision of ‘public goods’ in the form of environmental land management. The pot of public money remains on par with the EU’s CAP contribution, in the vicinity of three billion pounds a year. The idea of public money for public goods is quite a philosophical leap in the UK. While Britain’s decision to leave the EU was driven by a conserva- tive impulse, reorienting farm production subsidies to environmental-­service payments is potentially a huge cultural change. Helm describes it as a big moment in UK history and the public understanding. Right now, Helm believes the UK leads the world by taking a natural-­ capital approach to agriculture, but he suspects it will not be long before Europe catches up. At the same time, navigating the path between environ- mental activists and farming-­industry advocates can be difficult – although Helm has identified what he calls a ‘pretty damn large’ overlap between the two groups: soil. ‘In a country like Britain, the soil is just declining so fast. It is beginning to be quite a serious question as to whether the kind of chemical-­based farming we’ve developed actually will be, in the strict sense of the word, sustainable.’ While Helm has said of farming that ‘no other economic activity combines such a perverse set of incentives, or produces so little value for its true costs’, he does not buy the argument that getting rid of farming is the best answer to landscape management – even if we could find another way to produce food. He argues that the bulk of land requires ‘a way of combining farming with a less environmentally destructive approach’.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 22 11/12/20 1:36 pm Gabrielle Chan: Breaking new ground 23

THERE ARE PLENTY of critics of the natural-­capital approach. Kate Raworth is the most notable, and her book Doughnut Economics is a favourite among policy wonks and environmentalists. She dislikes the term ‘ecosys- tem services’ because it changes nature from being ‘man’s material means to being an asset on his balance sheet’. It appropriates nature for human usage, unlike the indigenous view of the world, which sees nature – earth, rivers and landscape – as a family rather than something to be used. George Monbiot also argues persuasively that by accepting natural capital as the only way to change the environment for the better, it buys into a system that considers nature as just another asset, something be traded. Better to improve things by mobilisation, he suggests, by people getting involved and fighting to protect nature. The problem is that mobilisation is not working. This is an ongoing policy debate. The National Farmers’ Federation has a goal that farmers should receive 5 per cent of their income from ecosystem service payments by 2030, whether the money comes from governments or private markets. Australia currently has a range of ecosystem or biodiversity programs, but they are neither uniform nor strategic. If such payments come from government, there may be trade implica- tions. Framing them as ‘payment for services’ rather than ‘subsidy’ allows Australia to continue to berate others in the world to lower trade barriers. Such payments could also come from the private market, from companies that want to invest in people ‘doing the right thing’ – whatever that is. Ken Henry says there will be billions amassing in private markets in the next few years. He thinks there will be a dollar value on the environment by default. Queensland’s $500 million Land Restoration Fund (LRF), for example, is a state-­government-­run program that funds farmers and land managers for biodiversity values and carbon. Programs like the LRF and other ecosystem service- ­payment programs will allow people to figure out a dollar value for environmental services. Though totally opposed to the concept, Monbiot’s warnings underline the need to get the design right. One of the biggest confidence tricks in environmental accounting has been the use of offset programs. Cut out an old- ­growth natural koala habitat here and plant new trees over there, in the hope that one day a dwindling koala population will find its way to trees that will take years to mature. A badly designed system that allows environment to be improved and lost through trading could be worse than no policy at all.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 23 11/12/20 1:36 pm 24 GriffithReview71

A badly designed system with no accountability would be even more diaboli- cal. It could become a rorted system that would make the pork barrelling ‘sports rorts’ saga pale by comparison. Ken Henry underlines that natural capital programs should only provide commercial incentives for enhanced environmental protection. That would stop developers destroying the natural world on the grounds that their project’s economic value exceeds the natural-­asset value. ‘Right now, the farmer loses no revenue based on environmental amenity but gains an income from cropping or grazing,’ Henry says. ‘And Australia’s history of land clearing and mining approvals provides pretty convincing evidence that policy-­makers carry in their heads a valuation of environmental amenity that is not much above zero. Generations of “mobilisation” might have made some people feel better, but it seems to have had little impact on that.’ Of course, nature is not here for human use alone. It has an intrin- sic value. But there is an urgency to this debate. In 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the world’s topsoil could be gone in sixty years. Sixty harvests. Around 2080 – when my grandchildren will be around my age. While that date has been contested, no one is suggesting the world’s soil is improving. It is degrading. Humans need to live and eat in a way that improves the planet and we are all going to have to accept change in order to achieve this.

For references, see griffithreview.com

Gabrielle Chan is a writer and journalist. Her book Rusted Off: Why country Australia is fed up (Vintage, 2018) was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the Walkley Book Award. Her work has appeared in Guardian Australia, The Australian, and the Daily Telegraph among many others.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 24 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and the right to know Clare Wright

IN MAY 2020, the international mining giant Rio Tinto made a calculated and informed decision to drill 382 blast holes in an area of its Brockman 4 mining lease that encompassed the ancient rock shelter formations at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. In a matter of minutes, eight million tonnes of ore were ripped from the earth, and with them, 46,000 years of cultural heritage destroyed. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama Pinikura people, who are the traditional owners of that land, lost their material connection to sacred sites of ceremo- nial, clan and family life, the basis for their political and social organisation. The Australian people lost a significant chunk of their national estate. As Marcia Langton lamented, not only had the PKKP people been robbed of their cultural inheritance, but the world lost out too, because the Juukan caves ‘held significant evidence for the further understanding of human history’. For this hefty price we all paid, Rio Tinto lawfully gained access to $134 million dollars of high-­grade iron ore. The Human Rights Law Centre said that the global Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, based in the Netherlands, should strip Rio Tinto of its status as a global human rights leader. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who three years earlier had lovingly cradled a lump of coal in his hands in parliament, said nothing. Conventional accounts of mining’s role in Australia’s history represent the exploration, extraction and exploitation of mineral resources as a story of

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 25 11/12/20 1:36 pm 26 GriffithReview71

unchecked progress and national wish fulfilment: the sometimes-­shimmering, ever- ­solid bedrock of a lucky country. It’s a convenient narrative for a settler society. Historian John Reynolds expressed this extractive ethos in his 1974 book Men and Mines: A History of Australian Mining, 1788–1971: ‘For almost 200 years mining activity in Australia has opened a path of progress and economic buoyancy for the country’s development.’ Reynolds took his lead from Geoffrey Blainey’s seminal 1963 text, The Rush That Never Ended, a book that has been republished five times, most recently in 2003, when its blurb read: ‘a saga of tough men, iron-n­ erved gamblers, violence, death and glittering riches set against the backdrop of some of the most awful country on earth.’ Romance! Adventure! A young country digging up old dirt to pave a future of its own making, a track through the wilderness that ends, conveniently, at a bottomless pot of gold. Might there be another way to tell the historical mining story, other than as a celebratory nationalist narrative that is so clearly at odds with present community standards of corporate accountability? There is no doubt that mining has and does, in some essential way, define the life of the Australian nation. Its GDP. Its public policy. Its philosophy. But in seeking to understand how people have interacted with the land, the state and each other around mining sites, can we begin to see that nation as a less clear-­cut and more contested entity, one where Australian’s values, aspirations, characteristics and notions of development clash as much as they cohere? Upend as well as underpin? Blast and bludgeon as well as bulge the coffers? Such critical recasting is important, for mining has unequivocally transformed both ecologies and economies in the settler world, as well as determining the power dynamics between and within communities. Blainey was right: the rush that started in Australia with gold prospecting in the 1850s – and found a new horizon for development in northern Australia a century later – has yet to end. So, in the devastating wake of Juukan, it is timely to ask: can the extractive frontier be just as important as the military frontline in defining the story of our nation? What happens when we look at the ‘broken’ in Broken Hill?

ONE DAY, ALL Australian primary school students might learn about the Juukan Gorge the way generations have studied the nineteenth-­century Victorian goldrush, with its own explosive crescendo, the Eureka Stockade.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 26 11/12/20 1:36 pm Clare Wright: Masters of the future or heirs of the past? 27

To recap: gold was ‘discovered’ in Ballarat in 1851, when the population of Victoria was about 25,000. By 1861, after a tidal wave of immigration from across the globe, that number had risen to over 600,000. Escaping old- ­world hierarchies, inequality and poverty, polyglot schemers and dreamers dug their way towards a new life of freedom and independence. When the British rights and liberties of these cosmopolitan miners were threatened by an authoritarian administration and unjust taxation, the disenfranchised diggers rebelled, leading to a short battle and a long legacy: Eureka became known as ‘the birthplace of Australian democracy’. Recent research, including my own, has demonstrated that women as well as men participated in this mining boom and its economic and political, if not mythological, inheritance. Similarly little recognised is the fact that the central Victorian goldrush occurred on the lands of the Wathawurrung people, who had made the fertile hunting grounds of the Ballarat basin their ancestral home for tens of thousands of years. Gold seekers inundated country that had first been invaded by squatters and sheep in the 1830s. It is estimated that prior to European contact there were up to 3,240 members of the twenty-­five Wathawurrung language groups. By 1861, 255 Aboriginals remained in the Ballarat region. Some European observers, like C Rudston Read, readily acknowledged that ‘the white man has stepped in and taken possession of his land, nolens volens’. One contemporary response was pity: Samuel Heape called the Wathawurrung ‘poor helpless things’. But other goldseekers were aware, as historian Fred Cahir has shown in his landmark book Black Gold, of the extensive quarrying, and subsequent commercial transactions, being carried out by Victoria’s Indigenous inhab- itants prior to and after British colonisation. Indeed, resource extraction was practised by Indigenous people throughout the continent. Batjala-­ Quandamooka-­Kalkadoon historian Kal Ellwood has traced the principal mining trade routes of pre-­colonial Australia, proving that Aboriginals used sophisticated underground and pit mining techniques, as well as post-­ extraction treatment processes, as part of complex commercial relationships. Indigenous Australia had its own stories to explain how minerals were created and where they were deposited. The bronzewing pigeon Marnbi, for example, seeded gold at Broken Hill, copper at Cloncurry, sandstone at Mt Isa and opals at Coober Pedy.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 27 11/12/20 1:36 pm 28 GriffithReview71

‘Aboriginal people,’ writes Cahir, ‘far from being repelled, were often attracted to the goldfields, motivated by factors such as new wealth, new sights, new sounds and new alliances.’ They co-h­ abited on the diggings with the newcomers, taking advantage of trading opportunities while maintaining traditional rituals and practices on the outskirts of Ballarat. As Ellwood argues about communities in other parts of Australia, Aboriginals ‘adapted readily to post- ­contact mining because of their long tradition of mining activities’. The Europeans were novel. The activity they undertook was not. Traditional knowledge was one thing. Land ownership was another. ‘Aboriginal people across Victorian goldfields,’ reveals Cahir, ‘continued to declare their title and insist upon formal acknowledgement of what was rightfully theirs.’ The Indigenous people of central Victoria might have been dispossessed, but they were not diffident. They installed toll booths on bridges, requested bounties on vessels crossing rivers, took food and goods from domiciles, and demanded financial restitution for revenue extracted from the land, all as a matter of cultural and legal entitlement stemming from prior ownership: ‘indefeasible title from time immemorial,’ as Wathawurrung elder ‘King Jerry’ put it to the Geelong Council. (Common law title, as we might call it post-­Mabo.) Such insistence, however, fell on deaf ears. In June 1860, by which time the tent city of Ballarat had been replaced by houses, churches and schools, the Victorian government established a system of six reserves to control and administer the affairs of Aboriginal people. Historian Richard Broome quotes Protector William Thomas protesting about the removal of the Kulin people from a site where they had successfully established a farming settlement: ‘This, the fate of Aboriginal industry, is enough to deter Aborigines from ever having confidence in promises held out to them.’ Ultimately, the full dispos- session of the Wathawurrung was not due to the unwillingness or inability of Indigenous people to engage in strategies for economic development, but to a failure of government policy to safeguard their connection with land. On the extractive frontier of the 1850s and ’60s, there was no consulta- tion with traditional owners about the occupation of their lands when mineral wealth was discovered buried beneath them. Whether the Wathawurrung and other local clans were pitied, patronised or simply plundered, the notion of co- ­operation and co-­existence was anathema to the settler project. Indigenous people were not a human resource; they were simply a commodity to be exploited, like the earth itself.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 28 11/12/20 1:36 pm Clare Wright: Masters of the future or heirs of the past? 29

FOR MOST AUSTRALIANS, the phrase ‘the Peninsula campaign’ conjures the distant shores of Gallipoli, where ANZACs fought against an alien enemy, apparently for our freedom. But another battle waged much closer to home – indeed at home – was also referred to as ‘the Peninsula campaign’. This contest for territorial control occurred on the Gove Peninsula, on the north-­east tip of Arnhem Land. The contest was over access to land that contained some of the richest bauxite reserves in the world. It played out over a decade from the late 1950s. The critical year of the campaign was 1963. The Minister for Territories in the Menzies government, Paul Hasluck, commanded the forces of expan- sion and development of the Top End; the Yolngu people of the Yirrkala region were the defenders of land that had been legally reserved for them in 1931, and to which they claimed ownership in perpetuity. The Yirrkala Bark Petitions (August 1963) and the subsequent Select Committee on Grievances of Yirrkala Aborigines (October 1963) were key battles in the offensive. Depending on your perspective, the creation of the mining town of Nhulunbuy, built in 1972, was either the spoils of victory or the price of defeat in the Peninsula campaign. The military metaphors are mine, not germane to the mining vernacu- lar. I’ve deliberately deployed them here to highlight how much of our national historical consciousness is built around war stories. We understand the language of conflict in binary, adversarial terms: enemy and ally; victor and vanquished. In reality, the story of how resource extraction led to a four-­cornered contest over the right to define and control the narrative of nation-­building in north-­east Arnhem Land is more complex – and compelling.

THE ARNHEM LAND Aboriginal Reserve, some 80,000 square miles of flat ironstone and low-­lying stringybark forest, was established in 1931 with the intention of ‘insulating’ the region’s Aboriginal population from the rest of the Northern Territory. Arnhem Land became ‘exclusively Aboriginal’; only missionaries, Northern Territory welfare officers and Yolngu were allowed in. Anyone else was trespassing. The reserve, conceived by the Commonwealth Government, the Northern Territory Administration and various Church missionary societies, was both a form of inverted incar- ceration (keeping Yolngu out of Darwin) and a protective exclusion zone

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 29 11/12/20 1:36 pm 30 GriffithReview71

to prevent ‘alien’ infiltration. Assuming the land itself to be remote and undesirable, the federal government saw the reserve system as the best way to protect its ‘wards’ and put a final stop to the area’s relatively recent history of cross-­cultural violence. The colonial frontier came late to the Top End, a century on from the massacres, dispersals and dispossession on the east coast of Australia. Incursions of pastoralists, looking to expand northern holdings in the late nineteenth century, were brief, if bloody. The ‘Black War’ in Arnhem Land was won by the blacks. Fierce and co-­ordinated Yolngu resistance, coinciding with drought, saw pastoral leases issued in the 1880s abandoned by the 1890s. A second pastoral push in the first decade of the twentieth century was similarly repelled. But the unsuccessful infiltration of the pastoralists was not the first time that strangers had come to Arnhem Land. The Yolngu people are consid- ered exceptional because they are the first Australian Aboriginals to have had contact with foreign visitors. For at least 500 years, Yolngu engaged in seasonal trading visits with the Macassans, Indonesian seafarers who came to exploit the trepang beds of the north-­east coast in exchange for tobacco, pottery, knives and cloth. Though Macassans could stay for months at a time, building wells and processing the trepang, there was never any prospect that they would settle permanently, nor take without giving – something to which the ‘white cow’ people seemed to feel entitled. By the time the European visitors arrived overland, Yolngu had experienced centuries of adaptation to new material culture and notions of labour and trade for goods and services. In other words, they understood and engaged in economic and political relationships, both inter-­tribally and internationally. The next strangers to arrive were the missionaries who established bases at Roper River in 1908, Goulburn Island in 1916 and Milingimbi Island in 1923. Following violent encounters with Japanese pearlers and Darwin-­ based police, a Methodist mission was established at Yirrkala in 1935 to provide sanctuary for the more than dozen clans of Yolngu people of this Miwatj region. Yirrkala, and surrounding Melville Bay, encompassed the traditional lands of the Gumatj and Rirritjingu clans. Yolngu, having long understood the positive use to which outsiders could be put, accepted the newcomers. Missionaries provided food, education and protection (from both aggressive intruders and feuding clans) in exchange for worship and work. The Methodists also accepted most cultural beliefs, permitted language

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 30 11/12/20 1:36 pm Clare Wright: Masters of the future or heirs of the past? 31

and rituals, employed a philosophy of bilateral learning and, in many cases, developed genuine friendships and important alliances. As historian Laura Rademaker has pointed out, missionaries’ proselytising intentions didn’t ‘neutralise’ Indigenous people’s ability to use missions for their own purposes, with Yolngu reaping both material and spiritual benefits from the encounter. Missions could be both sites of inequality and colonisation and places where Aboriginal people felt a sense of belonging and ownership. So, where does this frontier story, increasingly seen by non-­Indigenous historians as one of Yolngu agency and adaptation, intersect with the ortho- dox story of mining?

THE FIRST KNOWN geological reconnaissance at Gove occurred in 1952, fewer than two decades after the Yirrkala Mission was established, when Paul Hasluck announced a change of policy, opening the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal reserves to mineral prospecting. The time had come, he argued, to ‘extract the latent mineral wealth of the Territory’. Unlike the Northern Territory mission enterprise, which was conceived and portrayed as a vehicle for harm minimisation, the resources industry was always positioned – by the government – as an inescapable threat. And the threat was not an empty one. In 1958, the Commonwealth Aluminium Corporation (Comalco) was issued Special Mining Lease No. 1 to prospect twenty-­one square metres of land on Melville Bay, abutting the Yirrkala Mission. According to Hasluck, times had changed since the 1930s, when the system of Aboriginal land reserves had been established ‘liberally but rather carelessly’. Now, incen- tivised by the discovery that a blanket of bauxite lined the Gove Peninsula, Hasluck underscored ‘the necessity for developing our national resources’. Not natural, national. No less than the future of the nation was at stake. By the wet season of 1962, when the Reverend Edgar Wells took over as superintendent of the Yirrkala Mission, it had become commonplace to see prospectors ‘walk about the country, boring holes, marking off areas, and finally erecting buildings’ without, according to Wells, ‘any attempt at explanation’. The miners, observed Wells, roamed around ‘with a renewed assurance…in complete optimism…masters of the future’. On 18 February 1963, the federal government ratified an agreement with Nabalco, a joint Swiss–Australian venture, to mine for bauxite. This

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 31 11/12/20 1:36 pm 32 GriffithReview71

meeting took place at the Methodist Overseas Mission’s (MOM) headquarters in Sydney, attended by mining representatives but no Yolngu. The first that the inhabitants of Yirrkala – Yolgnu or European – knew of the changes in policy was when white marker pegs suddenly appeared on the edge of the mission’s peanut paddock one Saturday afternoon in May. Ron Croxford, who was a lay missionary and principal of the Yirrkala Mission School in 1963, told me that he and his wife, Margaret, their small children and several Yolngu families were on their way back from a picnic at Melville Bay when, from the tray of the old green mission truck on which the merry band was huddled, Ron spotted the markers. They had not been there when the group headed out on their daytrip that morning. Ron informed Wells of these odd spikes. ‘Edgar had no knowledge of the reason for the white marker pegs being there,’ the now ninety-­two-­year-­old Ron tells me. ‘Edgar certainly was disturbed by my report but did not react. He told me to not mention what I had seen, to keep the information to myself.’ Wells didn’t want to alarm the 500 local residents of the mission. A week later, Ron recounts, his Yolngu teaching assistant, Daymbalipu, ‘approached me in a deeply disturbed state and wanted to share with me’. Daymbalipu had been to Rocky Bay, a beach in Yirrkala, ‘and had noted tide marker buoys pegged there’. Again, Ron ‘went to the Mission House and informed Edgar of the information that Daymbalipu had given me. I empha- sised the distress that Daymbalipu had shown.’ Wells soon discovered that, with the connivance of the MOM head office in Sydney, the government had excised 140 square miles from the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve, legally paving the way for mining operations. Aboriginal land had, with the sweep of a pen, become Crown land. As Hasluck told the House of Representatives later that year, ‘safeguard- ing’ the interests of the Territory’s Aboriginals was no longer a matter of protection from what lay outside the borders of the reserve, but of reaping the rewards of what lay beneath the earth. Mining would enable them ‘to take the fullest advantage of the opportunities opened to them by the development’. He promised that royalties would be payable to the Aboriginal Trust Fund, though at a discounted rate, and that this money would be used to ensure Aboriginal welfare in the Territory generally, and at Yirrkala specifically. The positive outlook squared with the new government policy of assimilation, the assumption of which was that, in Hasluck’s words, ‘in the course of time, it is

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 32 11/12/20 1:36 pm Clare Wright: Masters of the future or heirs of the past? 33

expected that all persons of aboriginal [sic] blood or mixed blood in Australia will live as do white Australians.’ Live as white Australians, but with a notable exception: Aboriginal Australians were still technically wards of the state, not citizens of the nation. In keeping with being treated as constitutional ingenues, the Yolngu of Yirrkala were neither asked about the mining on their land, nor informed of the decision to take the land from them. Edgar Wells later noted that the ‘safeguards’ clause of the mining agree- ment was included for the approval of the Australian public ‘down south’, not the people on the ground. The traditional owners were ‘not considered entitled’ to express an opinion ‘when alien operators were walking across and in the view of the Aborigines, trespassing on Aboriginal land’. Like children, Yolngu would be told what was in their best interests.

GALARRWUY YUNUPINGU WAS a fifteen-­year-­old student of Ron Croxford’s in Yirrkala in 1963. His father, Mungurrawuy, leader of the Gumatj clan, had once taken Ron to sit beneath the sacred banyan tree. Crouched low, running sand between his fingers, Mungurrawuy spoke only three words to Ron: ngarraku birrumbirr dhuwala. My spirit is here. The eyewitness accounts of Croxford and Wells attest to what later commentators would point out: Yolngu were ‘largely ignorant of events surrounding the resumption of reserve land’. But Galarrwuy, the current leader of the Gumatj clan, suggests that situational ignorance is not the same as politi- cal witlessness or historical amnesia. In his 2016 Monthly essay ‘Rom Watangu’, which translates as ‘the land is our backbone’, Galarrwuy writes of the frontier violence that unified his father and other senior men from all clans ‘against the cattle prospectors and land thieves, who hunted and killed Yolngu women and children’. ‘These events and what lies behind them are burned in our minds,’ Galarrwuy assures us. ‘They are never forgotten.’ Yolngu might not have been consulted about the changes that were about to sweep over their lives in 1963, but they saw the lines in the sand, and they knew what came next. Edgar Wells, who stepped up as an outspoken defender of the Yirrkala people against both the government and his Church elders, maintained that Yolngu might have considered a ‘transfer of leases’ if they were consulted as ‘equal partners in negotiations’. However, no attempts were ever made to ‘discover what the local Aboriginal reaction to the loss of totemic-­site-­ bearing land and adjacent hunting areas would actually be’. Wells believed

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 33 11/12/20 1:36 pm 34 GriffithReview71

that had discussions about mining rights started with Yolngu in 1957, when Nabalco prospectors first started sniffing around Yirrkala, by 1963 ‘quite amiable relationships of shared responsibility’ towards the land would have been achievable. Political diplomacy was just as much a traditional Yolngu skill as spear-­making. Indeed, in May 1963, Rirritjingu elder Mawalan Marika put aside tribal rivalries to join with Mungurrawuy and write to Hasluck. They requested forty houses ‘so we can exchange to make us level between you and we natives’. It was the lack of consultation that was the primary insult, not the idea that they might be asked to share their land. To the Yolngu mind, they were not only custodians of the land – caretakers – but also owners, with the capacity to cede territory. The work of Nancy Williams, an anthropologist with an expertise in Yolngu land tenure systems, demonstrates that for the people of Yirrkala, ‘rights of ownership include those of vesting subsidiary rights in others [but] the granting of subsidiary rights in land and natural resources almost always involves negotiation.’ Williams also shows that rights and obligations of ownership always have both a sacred and practical dimen- sion: ‘The Yolngu sanction those rights and duties in a religious idiom, while carefully calculating their short-­term and long-­term effects in economic terms.’ In other words, when Hasluck unilaterally excised reserved land, he effectively stole land from people who understood both the spiritual and commercial value of their assets. ‘We are hurt,’ wrote twenty-­seven-­year-­old Gumatj man Djalalingba Yunupingu in a letter to Labor MP Gordon Bryant, ‘that the Government told us nothing of this before it took place… We believe that our old age occupancy of this land gives us rights which should not be brushed aside.’ Notice of the excision of the Arnhem Land Reserve was published in the Government Gazette in May 1963. Over the next two months, there was a flurry of correspondence between Yirrkala, Darwin, Canberra and Sydney. Federal Labor MP Kim Beazley Sr, along with Gordon Bryant, made the long trek to Yirrkala in July to ascertain the level of distress. Standing in the newly opened Methodist Church, Beazley contemplated the extraordinary artworks that flanked the altar: large boards painted by Yolngu elders of each clan and moiety, including Mungurrawuy. Edgar Wells’ wife, Ann, who interviewed each of the artists as they painted, recognised that these panels were a ‘state- ment of land claims’, delineating language borders, natural features, sacred sites and ‘the disputes that inevitably arise over boundaries’.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 34 11/12/20 1:36 pm Clare Wright: Masters of the future or heirs of the past? 35

On viewing the panels, Beazley suggested that the Yolngu should present a petition to the parliament in their own vernacular. Before leaving Yirrkala, he furnished the wording of the preamble required of any petition to the House. Yolngu did the rest. On 14 August, Beazley presented the House of Representatives with what have become known as the Bark Petitions: two versions of the text, one in English and one in Yolngu Matha, pasted onto bark and framed with traditional paintings. There were eight points, but this is the crux: a protest against ‘decisions taken without them and against them’ that were ‘never explained to them beforehand, and were kept secret from them’, as well as a plea to ‘hear the views of the people of Yirrkala before permitting excision of this land’. The twelve signatories, including two women, representing six clans, ‘humbly prayed’ that ‘no arrangements be entered into with any company’ that had the capacity to ‘destroy the livelihood and independence of the Yirrkala people’. Nowhere do the petitions suggest that Yolngu are opposed to mining per se. What they requested was a voice. Yolngu anticipated that the miners, like the Macassans and missionaries before them, would be able to adopt a similarly accommodating stance to Yolngu prior occupation. They expected the government and Nabalco to ‘accept the value of the Yolngu evidence’, as anthropologist Howard Morphy puts it. For the Bark Petitions were not only a symbol of Yolngu culture; they were also a title deed, proof of prior ownership. By ‘Aboriginalising’ the European ceremonial act of petitioning, the Bark Petitions were a political means of ‘asserting Aboriginal identity and culture to outsiders as well as within the community’. The petitions demonstrated not only tribal traditions, but also colonial literacy. Procedurally, the Bark Petitions had an immediate effect. Though Hasluck rejected them on the grounds that they didn’t represent the true wishes of the community (only a small group of young rabble-­rousers), the Select Committee on Grievances of Yirrkala Aborigines was empow- ered – the first time in Australia’s history that a petition had directly led to a parliamentary enquiry. Just as significantly, the publicity garnered resulted in, as Wells put it, ‘a rising public awareness of the Aboriginal challenge to the status quo in Aboriginal affairs’. If Hasluck, MOM higher-­ups and the Nabalco execs had counted on ‘northern development’ proceeding without scrutiny due to the ‘awfulness’ of the land and passivity of the people, they

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 35 11/12/20 1:36 pm 36 GriffithReview71

had strategically misjudged the extent of both Yolngu resistance and the Methodist missionaries’ dedication to the wellbeing of their flock. The committee members took evidence in Yirrkala in October 1963. Yolngu men and women were called as witnesses, through Yolngu and white interpreters, as well as mission staff and representatives of the Gove Mining Corporation. Yinitjuwa, a twenty-­five-­year-­old woman of the Dhalwangu clan, put her case succinctly, in English:

I think we like this place so much indeed because all the children growing well… We want mining people to come here only for work. We want that. If they come here and they will work where the green lines are if they want to live at Melville Bay. They will stay just little way down only for work.

Nyabilinu, the twenty-­six-­year-­old daughter of Dhalwangu elder Nanyin, also expressed this willingness to accommodate to altered realities: ‘We want all our country, because this place here in Yirrkala will be God’s place – Christian place with name of the Lord.’ The Select Committee concluded that the Bark Petitions were ‘an appeal to the House of Representatives for protection’. It made eleven recommen- dations pertaining, in essence, to how best to integrate the Yolngu into the inevitable establishment of a large mining town on the Gove Peninsula, while preserving sacred sites. In 1963, the average Aboriginal life expectancy was forty-­two years. In 1968, the federal government signed an agreement with Nabalco for a forty- ­two-­year lease to mine and process bauxite in Gove, conditional upon the construction of an alumina refinery and a township able to accommodate 4,000 mining workers, administrators, service providers and their families. To Edgar Wells, the injustice of ‘giving away of ancestral territorial privilege of children’s children’ was simply ‘beyond comprehension’. Wells was sacked as superintendent on 11 November 1963. The mining lease for Juukan Gorge was granted in 1964.

IN FEBRUARY 2020, I sat with Galarrwuy Yunupingu at his kitchen table in Gunyangara – the Gumatj homeland on Melville Bay, fifteen kilometres from Nhulunbuy, now framed by the rusting carcass of the alumina refinery, mothballed by Rio Tinto in 2013 – and read him the list of recommendations

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 36 11/12/20 1:36 pm Clare Wright: Masters of the future or heirs of the past? 37

from the Select Committee. How many of these things happened, I asked him? He paused. For a long time. Then he answered: bangyu. None. ‘They tricked us. They never gave us anything they promised. I’m afraid I have to come to this conclusion. They asked us but they didn’t listen.’ Looking at the foundational moments of Ballarat and Nhulunbuy helps to elucidate patterns and themes that should be central to further exploration of how mining has defined the life of our nation. That is, the contest over who has the right to lay claim to the extractive frontier, but more, what that entitlement confers in relation to other aspects of political, economic and cultural sovereignty. As Galarrwuy has said elsewhere, land rights are one thing, but ownership means more than a moral prerogative. ‘We would like to turn the land into money,’ Galarrwuy told a somewhat perplexed progressive audience at the 2013 Garma Festival. ‘Aborigines have land rights but are still the poorest people on earth.’ ‘How to bring independence through land ownership,’ he asked. ‘That is the inside question.’ Ultimately, the Peninsula campaign was not only about the market value of the mineral resources themselves, but the moral, legal and civic status conferred on those who would call themselves miners. Those who would bring the future along with their bores and excavators. Those who could drive the nation and the economy forward. Why does being a ‘digger’ endow some citizens with mythical powers to evade ethical scrutiny? Can we ever afford First Nations peoples with the status of First Diggers? Can colonialism afford to share the spoils of resourcefulness? In her University of Melbourne Narrm Oration of 2015, ‘From Hunting to Contracting’, Marcia Langton outlined the history of Aboriginal Australians’ economic exclusion from colonial times to the twenty-­first century. Mining, she argued, offered First Nations peoples ‘a new paradigm devoted to development’. The Indigenous supply chain in iron ore in Western Australia had created $2 billion in five years, Langton averred, adding that Indigenous employees made up 12 per cent of Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals’ workforces and that Carey Mining became the first Aboriginal-­ owned resources company in 1995. To Langton, such examples of Indigenous wealth creation demonstrate that Indigenous engagement with the private sector economy is the ‘best way to close the gap’. (Indeed, the Gumatj Corporation launched its own 100 per cent Yolngu-­owned mining training facility and bauxite operations in 2017.)

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 37 11/12/20 1:36 pm 38 GriffithReview71

These insights might well be accurate, but where mining is concerned, it is also true to say that economic development is not a ‘new paradigm’ that Indigenous Australians have latterly come to accept as part of the logic of late capitalism or ‘postcolonialism’. Rather, an economic stake in the land is something that has been perennially contemplated and contested in terri- tories that, sooner or later, have come to hold commercial importance to white Australia. Participating in, and finding the economic benefits of, mining has been part of the strategy of responding to the realpolitik of the resources industry. It is not a new adaptation. What has changed, perhaps, is that mining companies have recognised the ‘social capital’ of collabora- tive working relationships with Aboriginal ‘stakeholders’. Whether this new alliance proves to be a reliable means of ‘livelihood and independence’ for Aboriginal communities remains to be seen. I suspect I know what the late Reverend Edgar Wells would say. Reflecting two decades later on the events of 1963, Wells concluded that ‘the history of mining in the colonial empire leads me to believe that under no circumstances can the mining industry be trusted to secure any but its own interests.’ Where mining is concerned, it just might be possible that looking at sites of conflict will help lead us to a more just, more reconciled Australia. That focusing on what we have long known is broken will help us mend a fractured polity and heal a ravaged earth. That human resources and mineral resources might work together to strengthen, rather than make a mockery of, our democratic values and institutions. Juukan Gorge represents the pinnacle of the colonial mining project. It fulfils the Four-­F rating that is at the heart of Australia’s relationship to land: Find it. Fuck it. Flog it. Forget it. Let’s hope that Juukan stands as the most broken, defective, shattered and superseded point of the hill. Galarrwuy Yunupingu has put this idea another way: ‘Too much of the past is for nothing.’

For references, see griffithreview.com

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Clare Wright is a professor of history at La Trobe University. The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Text, 2013) won the 2014 Stella Prize and Nib Literary Award. Her most recent book is You Daughters of Freedom (Text, 2018), and she is currently writing a book about the Bark Petitions.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 38 11/12/20 1:36 pm MEMOIR Returning value to profit On my late onset political awakening Alan Schwartz

AS THE CONSCIENTIOUS middle child of Holocaust survivors, my objectives as a young man were narrow and conventional: to become a better person, build a strong and loving family, achieve financial security and find happiness. I worked hard, was lucky in love and health, built several successful businesses and had everything other than happiness, which remains a work in progress. Twenty-­five years ago I was able to lift my eyes and expand my horizons. It was time to give back. I began to volunteer a large proportion of my time and financial resources to community and philanthropy. These beginnings are hardly the makings of an economic radical. But my story has an unexpected twist. Dipping in and out of business, community and philanthropy, combined with curiosity, a love of learning and a dutiful nature have, for me, been a potent and dangerous combination. I was increasingly confronted by two incompatible worldviews. On one hand I believed that our economic system, underpinned by capitalism, was a force for good, creating enormous wealth for society. I believed that those who create the goods and services that people need deserve the profit they earn – and the idea that profit should be aligned with social value is essentially the vision laid out by the father of economics, Adam Smith, more than 200 years ago. At the same time, I’ve come to under- stand over the past twenty-­five years, and the past three years in particular, that there is a vast gulf between this vision of the economy and the way it operates in practice.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 39 11/12/20 1:36 pm 40 GriffithReview71

From dozens of books, countless conversations with economists, business leaders, philanthropists, academics, friends and family, and from the many projects I’ve initiated, I have reluctantly come to understand that capitalism is broken, and that trying to fix it will provoke ferocious resistance from those whom it enriches. So here I am, approaching my seventh decade, a newly self-­styled politi- cal radical, and proud of it. How did I go from being a capitalist and philanthropist to becoming a political agitator?

BY 2017, MY views on capitalism were a mixture of pride, gratitude, doubt and anxiety. My lived experience as a businessman affirmed my belief in the power of markets to create prosperity: goods and services for society and wealth for capitalists. When capitalists produce goods and services for society, they deserve their profit. I felt wronged and misunderstood by those who disrespected business. At the same time, my lived experience as a commu- nity worker and philanthropist stirred a growing sense of unease about social issues, such as entrenched inequality and disadvantage, and environmental problems, such as species destruction and climate change. I became increas- ingly unsettled about the role of business. Was it contributing to these social and environmental problems? To buttress my defences, and my pride, I worked hard to conduct my businesses and investments ethically. To assuage my anxiety, I contributed to the not-­for-­profit sector. For years I had convinced myself that this was enough; the way of the world. I told myself that sweeping calls for radical change were unnecessary or unrealistic. But I was also experiencing a growing sense of foreboding, a sense that the system was creating problems it was unable to fix. When the Harvard Club invited me to speak at their not-­for-­profit award ceremony in July 2017, I decided to air my longstanding doubts and griev- ances, both as a capitalist and as a philanthropist. I titled the speech ‘What’s Wrong with Profit?’ I asked the assembled business and community leaders three questions: Why does our economic system allow businesses to profit at the expense of the environment or to contribute to obesity or social isolation? Why don’t we celebrate profitable businesses which avoid harming the environment and

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 40 11/12/20 1:36 pm Alan Schwartz: Returning value to profit 41

society? Why are not-­for-­profits that protect and enhance the environment and society undervalued and underfunded? My raw intuition was that these problems had a common underlying cause. They arise because, in our current formulation of capitalism, profit is not aligned with value. By ‘value’ I mean all the stuff that we, as individuals and as a society, care about: quality goods and services, power to keep the lights on, a roof over our heads, but also good health, a safe community, clean air, a stable climate and the prospect that our grandchildren might have the same opportunities we have. My conclusion was straightforward: we need to change the formula so profit is aligned with value; to align profit and value so that enterprises make more money when they generate real value, and less when they erode it. If we aligned profit and value, good businesses and not-­for-­profits would thrive and the extractive ones would be forced to change their ways or die. It seemed a simple and elegant solution: the economic system had a glitch that we needed to fix. I studiously ignored the political dimension of such sweeping changes. Politics was nasty. All my life, I had pursued narrower and, I thought, more productive pursuits. Running on the fumes of my intuition, I set out to turn this vision of aligning profit and value into reality. So began my wild journey through economics, philosophy, evolutionary biology and the science of measurement.

I STARTED WITH a question: when profit and value are not aligned, what is the source of misalignment? This led me to the world of ‘social and natural capital’. Books such as Jane Gleeson-­White’s Six Capitals, which explains that the way we measure profit today focuses entirely on financial capital but largely ignores other forms of wealth – the air we breathe, the trust in our communities, the rivers that quench our thirst, the fish in the oceans and the ecosystems that support life. This gave me a new language for describing the problem: profit and value were not aligned because social and natural capital, which not only underpin the economy but also make life worth living, were often invisible to markets and irrelevant to the calculation of profit. Because no one owns them, social and natural capital typically sit outside the economic system, unmeasured and unaccounted for. In the language of economists, they are ‘externalities’. A business can capture the value it gener- ates by producing and selling a widget (which it owns), but doesn’t have to

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 41 11/12/20 1:36 pm 42 GriffithReview71

pay for the impact its carbon emissions have on the climate (which no one owns). Meanwhile, a not-­for-­profit that runs a literacy program (which must be funded with hard cash) can’t capture the value that a more literate commu- nity brings to all of its members (a benefit no one owns). So why would anyone invest in reducing carbon emissions or improv- ing literacy when there is no one to buy these improvements? Conversely, why would anyone pay for the damage they do to social and natural capital, like degrading health or polluting the air, if there is no owner to hold them to account? This was where a conversation with my dear friend, the philosopher and ethicist Simon Longstaff, introduced a genuinely radical idea: one that remains a guiding light, at least morally. Simon pointed out that, in a way, social and natural capital is already owned: by everyone. Not in the private property sense, like having title to a block of land that gives the owner the right to exclude others from that land. But rather in a broader common property sense, in that we all have a stake in the literacy of our communities, the cleanliness of the air we breathe and the stability of our climate. He argued that all of human- ity already ‘owns’ the world’s stock of social and natural capital, irrespective of where they are born, how wealthy they are or whether political entities recognise this fact. He called this idea the ‘Universal Commons’. To my untrained mind Simon’s idea sounded idealistic, but not crazy. Dreamers both, our thoughts leapt beyond mere moral claims. If we could find a practical way to recognise this common property right, we reasoned, then people would act in their shared self-­interest and hold to account those who negatively impact our social and natural capital. Equally, this same shared self- ­interest would incentivise all of us to reward businesses who preserve and enhance our common property rights. Holding reality in a loose grip, I tried to imagine how to implement this universal property right. What if we created an organisation to claim symbolic ownership over the world’s social and natural capital on behalf of all of humanity, and then made every living person a member, issuing them with one indivisible and unsaleable share in the Universal Commons? Would this allow social and natural capital to be brought into the market alongside financial capital? If it worked, the implications for the economy would be stagger- ing. Current global GDP, measured in financial capital, represents only a

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 42 11/12/20 1:36 pm Alan Schwartz: Returning value to profit 43

small fraction of the value of the world’s unmeasured, unowned social and natural capital. Had we discovered a way of bringing untold riches into the market economy? At the time, my wise son Oscar gently warned me that I was in over my head. Even assuming that the technical challenges could be overcome, we would quickly discover that the politics of our imaginings were impossible. He argued that such a sweeping reset of property rights would be resisted by those with vested interests in keeping social and natural capital unowned or weakly regulated by governments. But, like any good entrepreneur, I was undeterred. I sidelined the magnitude of the political challenges of imple- menting the Universal Commons and decided to use it as a conceptual stake in the ground. Assuming this, or something like it, was possible, what was the next step?

HOW LONG IS a piece of social capital? How do we define clean air, a literate community or a stable ecosystem? To what exactly were we claiming property rights? It quickly became evident that our first technical challenge would be measuring social and natural capital. When I spoke to my peers about the issue of measurement, their contradictory responses baffled me. One group told me it was impossible or undesirable to measure things like trust or the health of an ecosystem; others – mainly environmental, social, governance practitioners and impact investors – said they were already doing it! Which was it? To get to the bottom of this, I spent over a year devouring a vast litera- ture on the science and philosophy of measurement. I met with some of the world’s leading experts. In a fit of exuberance, I attended a conference on the epistemology of measurement in Paris. My conclusions were encouraging: the history of measurement mirrors the history of human progress. New and improved measurements have consistently increased human welfare and prosperity. For example, more accurate measurements of air pressure vastly increased the efficiency of steam engines. Granted, some aspects of social and natural capital, like a parent’s love for a child or the beauty of a sunset, have value that cannot or should not be measured. But there are things like literacy, public health, biodiversity or climate stability that we can and should measure. There is also a critically important difference between measuring changes in the condition or quantity

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 43 11/12/20 1:36 pm 44 GriffithReview71

of social and natural capital and measuring changes in their monetary value. Scientific measurement does the former; markets do the latter. So we can’t directly measure the value of a literate person; rather, we can develop and agree on technical methods for measuring literacy, and then a properly designed market will place a value on improving someone’s literacy – or so I thought. The problem is not that the science of measurement is lacking. The science of measurement has advanced tremendously in the last few decades, and there is a high degree of confidence among the experts that we can already measure many important dimensions of natural capital. Measurement of social capital is more difficult, but will improve over time. The main problem seems to be that we have not yet reached scientific agreement on the metrics to be used. At last, I had found a useful project that I could sink my teeth into. While visiting London in 2018, I asked the National Endowment of Education Science and Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to undertake a research project on the viability of running a measurement prize to produce metrics for social and natural capital. It would be similar to XPRIZE, which runs competitions with large rewards to ‘crowdsource’ solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. We would award our prize to the team that developed a ‘measurement framework for social and natural capital’. NESTA thought the idea had merit but suggested that we first research a more modest project: the measurement of clean air for human health. With a measurement plan in motion, I returned to the pivotal question: how to bring social and natural capital into the market, so that the metrics from our prize could be turned, by supply and demand, into financial measures.

WHEN PURSUING A big opportunity, and confronted by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, an entrepreneur optimistically – and often naively – assumes these can be overcome and pushes on. By comparison, logical and well- ­grounded pessimists make poor entrepreneurs because they know in advance why opportunities may be unattainable. As an entrepreneur, I had optimistically planted the concept of the Universal Commons as my anchor. By extending ownership of social and natural capital to all people, we imagined the possibility of supply and demand – and thus a market. The ‘owners’ of social and natural capital would have a vested interest in

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 44 11/12/20 1:36 pm Alan Schwartz: Returning value to profit 45

preserving and improving it, thereby creating demand. That demand would then be met by businesses and other organisations that would, for example, invest in reducing pollution or improving public literacy. The time had now come to examine whether my anchor held. Let’s say the measurement prize yielded an effective, universally accepted metric for clean air. How could we use that metric to create a market for it? What would compel a business to reduce its air pollution, particularly if its competitors could gain a cost advantage by ignoring their impact on the atmosphere? At this pivotal moment two brilliant people entered my life and triggered my late political awakening. The first was Eric Beinhocker, executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford. Over a coffee in central London, Eric listened intently to my story, and commended my efforts to bring social and natural capital into the market. He agreed that scientific measures were a necessary condition for doing so. But he questioned whether measurement of social and natural capital was a sufficient condition. He pointed out that there was already a widely accepted metric for greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide equiva- lent. Even in the seemingly ideal case of carbon dioxide equivalent, where the consequences of inaction are catastrophic, the efforts of philanthropists, impact investors and concerned citizens, including two decades of voluntary markets, have barely made any difference. Because greenhouse gas emissions are neither capped nor taxed by law, carbon dioxide equivalent markets are voluntary, and those who participate do so altruistically, incurring personal sacrifice for the benefit of the rest of us. Most polluting businesses can, and have, ignored voluntary markets, making them too small to turn the tide. Only government action can turn weak voluntary markets into effective enforceable ones. The second was Reuben Finighan, who had worked with many of the world’s top economists and was completing his PhD at the London School of Economics. Reuben’s feedback to me, delivered as a twenty-­five-­page report, was sobering. While endorsing my aspiration to align profit with value, Reuben raised several economic, philosophical and political problems with the Universal Commons and encouraged me to think more deeply about the nature of markets and how they come into existence.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 45 11/12/20 1:36 pm 46 GriffithReview71

For example, property rights, which are the bedrock of markets, are the rules of the economic system embodied in constitutions and legislation – and enforced by government. Making the property rights envisaged by the Universal Commons enforceable would require setting up a global govern- ment. Was I suggesting wrenching some of these powers away from existing governments? Or did I intend to persuade governments to adopt revolution- ary change when they struggle to implement even minor regulations? This was the mother of all dead ends. I now understood what my son Oscar had meant when he said that my ‘technical’ economic fix was deeply political. I wanted to radically transform an institution that sits at the heart of capitalism: property. The government, with its monopoly on the use of force – a concept that was entirely new to me – would inevitably have to play a central role in implementing and regulating such a property right. I had started this project with my eyes wide open. Most ambitious projects fail. Reforming the economic system is more than ambitious. This was not the first time I had experienced the clammy feeling that I was in too deep. Nevertheless, I harvested my resilience, put the measurement challenge on hold and pushed on.

IN A MELBOURNE restaurant, Reuben explained that the misalignment of profit and value is far from a new problem. In fact, it is a modern manifesta- tion of an ancient and ubiquitous problem faced by every civilisation, every tribal group. He took a napkin and sketched a matrix, with individual profit on the vertical axis, social value on the horizontal, and the four quadrants labelled the mutualistic, the extractive, the altruistic and the folly. The mutualistic is where capitalist magic happens, where individual profits and social value are created. Adam Smith’s insight was that in well-­ governed markets, economic activity is mutualistic: the baker and butcher reap rewards for feeding the community; the wool spinner for clothing the community; and the builder for housing the community. Two people who agree to a transaction usually do so because it makes both better off. Over the past two centuries, the combined effect of billions of mutualistic transactions has been unprecedented economic growth. Capitalism in well-­ governed markets is mutualistic. This is why I felt entitled to be proud of my

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 46 11/12/20 1:36 pm Alan Schwartz: Returning value to profit 47

achievements as a businessman: in these terms, I had created value for society and I was entitled to my profit. The extractive is another story. It represents another ancient problem in biology and society: parasitism. Nature is full of extractive parasites, but parasitism is a flawed strategy: parasites that undermine their hosts undermine themselves. It is similar when businesses benefit by burning fossil fuels that damage the atmosphere or dump chemicals that poison drinking water. Their short- ­term private gain undermines the ground on which we, and they, stand. Poorly governed markets enable extractive behaviour by allowing business to make a profit while harming society. This section of Reuben’s diagram was an elegant expression of one of my Harvard speech gripes. Altruism is private cost and public benefit. When I pay my taxes, I incur a private cost. When the government spends that tax on public goods, such as public roads and schools, there is a public benefit. Similarly with philanthropy. When I donate to a charity that shelters and feeds the homeless, I am incurring a private cost and there is a public benefit. Sadly, altruism has always been a weak reed in biology and society. It’s not altruism that makes pollinators and flowering plants work together, nor, as Smith wrote, do the butcher or baker provide their services out of pure magnanimity. If the binding agent of a healthy society is altruism, it has its natural limits. And in folly, all parties lose. Sometimes we find ourselves here because of bad judgement, or because of spite, where one individual is willing to pay a cost to impose a bigger cost on another. As the least economically important and most avoided space, activities here serve no one. Reuben’s framework revealed a bigger picture, one that the evolution- ary biologist David Sloan Wilson calls the ‘fundamental social problem’. The problem is that while individuals will seek actions across the top half of the graph – profit – genuine economic growth requires activities down the right half of the graph: value. The absence of growth throughout most of human history is a testament to this problem. Without intervention, too much of what people do is parasitic, and too many essential public goods are underprovided. How do we fix this fundamental social problem and pull ourselves out of the mud? The trick is setting the rules of the economic game to align individual and group reward. This means introducing property rights so that people are punished for activities such as theft (in the extractive quadrant) and

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 47 11/12/20 1:36 pm 48 GriffithReview71

raising the payoffs of activities such as educating the poor or building roads (in the altruistic quadrant) by paying teachers and construction workers wages out of the public purse. Reuben argued that putting a price on carbon does exactly the same thing: it reduces the profitability of extractive activities that harm the atmosphere. It also raises the profitability of mutualistic activities, like renew- able energy, or altruistic ones, like planting trees. When the rules of the game include a carbon price, both parasites and altruists become mutualists. By these measures, the things I had complained about in my Harvard speech – profits earned at the expense of society and the unprofitability of not- ­for-­profits – were the consequences of setting the wrong rules for the economic system. By largely ignoring externalities, our current system could be termed ‘extractive capitalism’ because it enables businesses to make a profit while degrading social and natural capital. Can we blame businesses when they operate in the extractive quadrant – that is, when the rules of the game enable them to earn a profit at the expense of society? It depends on how they interact with the rules of the economic system. Businesspeople who advocate for changes to rules from which they personally benefit but that harm society or the environment, like billion- aire investor Warren Buffett saying he should be forced to pay more tax, are acting altruistically and should be lauded. However, relying on the altruism of business is no way to run an economy. What about businesses that avoid politics and play by the rules? Can we criticise businesses that employ no lobbyists, seek no favours from politicians, pay their taxes, lawfully dispose of their waste and pay award wages? I don’t think so. I know from personal experience how hard it is to make a profit in a competitive market. Asking law-­abiding businesses to exceed their legal obligations – for example, ensuring that their supply chains create no negative externalities – places them at a cost disadvantage relative to their equally law- ­abiding but more pragmatic competitors and threatens their survival. The real culprits are businesses – usually large, powerful businesses – that undermine rules already designed to align profit and value, such as environmental or food safety laws, or block necessary changes to the rules (for example a sugar tax) so that they can continue to profit at the expense of society. This is not only extractive, it is parasitic and unacceptable. The ‘compact’ between business and society is that business must seek profit within

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 48 11/12/20 1:36 pm Alan Schwartz: Returning value to profit 49

the rules that society sets. If, instead, businesses use their wealth and political clout to influence those rules to maximise profits at the expense of society, they undermine the logic of the whole system. The compact is broken and capitalism will not survive. Stopping this egregious behaviour is a vital change we need to make in capitalism today, and it’s a political minefield. Which businesses would willingly give up their power to interfere with the rules? I doubt there are any. We must take that power away from them. This is how I see it now. The goal of economic reform must be more than just calling for more altruism or mutualism within an inherently extractive system. We cannot rely on altruism; there is simply not enough of it. We cannot expect businesses to act against their self-­interest; they will at best do a little, and at worst they will fake it. We must instead reform the extractive institutions themselves or introduce laws to constrain them so that, as Smith hoped, the only way for business to do well is by doing good. If we measure our impact on social and natural capital, if we price in externalities, if we structure our institutions to promote what I call ‘mutualistic capitalism’, profit will be aligned with value. The legitimacy of profit will be restored and we will have an economic system that lives up to the promise of Smith’s vision. The path to this end, I’ve come to see, does not lie primarily in changing business. It lies in changing laws: in funding literacy programs, protecting natural places, introducing an effective carbon price. It lies in ensuring that our tax system lives up to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr’s famous judgement that taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society. It lies, as my son Oscar told me at the start of my journey, in politics.

WHY WAS THIS journey so difficult? Isn’t it obvious that everything, even economics, is political? Why did I resist the obvious? Because it would have required me to alter my entire worldview. If the economic system is indeed political, it undermines my lifelong belief that it is an efficient and fair servant of society, rewarding those who work hard and create value. If the economic system is political, it may be neither efficient nor fair. It may not be the servant of society I supposed it to be, but a handmaiden to capital, reward- ing those who use their wealth and power to mould the economic system to serve their purposes. Being curious and open-­minded is one thing. Shaking off a lifetime of ingrained belief is entirely another. There is another reason

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 49 11/12/20 1:36 pm 50 GriffithReview71

why I resisted my political awakening. If the economic system is indeed flawed, then no number of technical projects will fix it. It can only be fixed by politics, and that space is one I have avoided my whole life. So here I am in my late sixties, a freshly minted political radical, at least compared with where I started, calling for sweeping changes to the rules that underpin our economic system. I am aware of the powerful vested interests that will lobby mercilessly to maintain the extractive system that serves their interests. Like a good entrepreneur, I am sure I have underestimated the scale of the challenge. On the other hand, I know that institutions are not set in stone. They are not the natural order, nor a divine right; they are not ordained by God, and they are not discovered by science. They are ours to create and they are ours to change. Where to now? My first step will be to share my journey with my peers in the business, impact-­investing and philanthropic communities. This is the world I know, inhabited by decent men and women who are broadly content with our economic system, but who are racked by doubt and anxiety about its obvious shortcomings. That is, people like me before my late political awakening. I will ask them to promote the idea of ‘mutualistic capitalism’ by fighting for rules that better align profit with value. I will encourage them to re-­examine their own worldviews and apply their skills, energies and resources to support people and projects that seek to reform the laws that underpin our economic system and society. If we want large-­scale change, we cannot avoid stepping on toes. We have to get political and change the rules of the game.

Alan Schwartz is the managing director of Trawalla Group, and in 2017 founded the Universal Commons project. A former Chair of Philanthropy Australia and council member of Swinburne University, he was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2003 and an Order of Australia in 2007.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 50 11/12/20 1:36 pm REPORTAGE Tales from the frontline The emotional impact of climate change Jo Chandler

Melbourne: 31 August 2020 Covid cases: Australia 25,746; World 25,162,019 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 414.48 ppm

LIKE PRETTY MUCH everyone lucky enough to be working as the pandemic rages, we’re doing so from home. Him downstairs, me upstairs, yoked to our devices and summoning up spectral colleagues like a pair of sideshow psychics: ‘Can you hear me? I can hear you.’ The provenance of our terrace house suggests we may well share it with a ghost or two. I imagine them shaken out of their crannies by all the Covid carry- ­on, materialising cranky and befuddled in a Zoom room. The Gallipoli veteran. The mistress of the ladies’ college. The family who sheltered here through the Spanish flu, perhaps with some tips on running up a face mask from remnant fabric. My body may be locked down, but my mind is tripping. I’m kicking this notion (this paragraph!) around when there’s a knock at the door. A masked man, a local historian, scurries out of the radar boundar- ies of social distance. He’s brought a recently unearthed photograph of our house circa 1890. An elegant figure in a long white dress poses on the upstairs verandah. A stout woman in an apron stands below, hovering over four small children, three girls and a boy, trussed in Sunday best. All stare grimly into the camera. I sit with them a while by one of the fireplaces where they once warmed themselves. It’s still functional, but is rarely lit these days. ‘Can you see me? I can see you.’

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 51 11/12/20 1:36 pm 52 GriffithReview71

Inside coronavirus confinement, with all else spinning beyond control, the worldly concerns of my reporting life are miniaturised to scale. I become preoccupied with matters of domestic resources and resilience, health and history (that little boy in the photograph? Killed on the Western Front). Obsessed, it might – has – been said. I enlist this cataclysm as a warm-­up for the next. Flowerbeds are replaced with crops of edible greens. There is an actual hill of beans (tinned) in the cellar. Then there’s the spiralling anxiety over the winter gas bill that, due to round-­the-­clock occupancy, is eye- ­watering. It’s not about the money. Most mornings I run in the vanishing dark for the permitted recreational hour. Returning as light flushes the face of the old church across the way, I’m on my knees in the garden, genuflecting before the gas meter. A new ritual, yet familiar. Oh yes, the nuns did quite the job. I tap the reading into my phone, comparing consumption to yesterday, last week. Bless me Father, for I have sinned. For our comfort, we cast three billion blameless creatures on the pyre this past summer. I fashion bolts of cheap velvet into drapes and tuck towels under doors and wean us off the heating at least until 6 pm, when the next struggle of conscience is with the bottle: ‘Is it Friday? Is it nearly Friday?’ Stir- ­crazy and anxious about parents, kids, jobs, students: certainly. Distraught about what the virus means for the most vulnerable in our community, our world: utterly. By no measure are we ‘all in this together’. My house on the hill overlooks housing commission towers where 3,000 of my neighbours were locked in by government order. Income and geography are powerfully insulating, as they are in that other emergency, the one that consumes me even in the depths of Melbourne’s lockdown winter. I track the creep of atmospheric parts per million as religiously as the daily case tally, but on the former, there is never good news. ‘To have eyes wide open is to hold a broken heart every day,’ observes American climate activist Katharine Wilkinson. ‘It’s a grief that I rarely speak.’ I’m fretting about next summer and all the summers through to 2100, the horizon of imagination and so many rising temperature scenarios: Here Be Dragons. I’m impatient to be done with this crisis so we can go back to the urgent business of confronting the other one. For a minute there, in the aftermath of Black Summer, it seemed maybe that was possible. Throughout long weeks of lockdown, unable to venture out as a reporter, I spirit into my home some of the nation’s most distinguished climate experts.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 52 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 53

People who grasp the fearsome power of an unfriendly Earth and our vulner- ability as we wilfully, greedily, insanely tip it out of the sweet equilibrium that nurtured us and our ancestors. We speak of our distress and our anger and our strategies for keeping, reviving, practising hope. Mostly that hope is that the path out of this pandemic crisis might empower us to confront and contain the larger, fast-­looming planetary one. ‘Like trees extending their root system,’ says eco-­philosopher and ‘active hope evangelist’ Joanna Macy, ‘we can grow in connection, thus allowing ourselves to draw from a deeper pool of strength, accessing the courage and intelligence we so greatly need right now.’ The scientists Zoom in from their homes, interrupted by pets and children, in rooms festooned with laundry, wearing boots muddy from the garden, breaking off to let in the plumber or change the guard on the kids. It is a moment for raw conversations. Stripped of our workaday performative costume and manners, we sit by my empty hearth, absorbed by the shattering spectacle of global, catastrophic events banging up against each other. Is this, again borrowing from Macy, the Great Unravelling, humanity’s undoing as a consequence of rapacious industrial growth, or the Great Turning, to a life-­sustaining civilisation? ‘Can you see me? I can hear you.’

Townsville: 2 April 2020 Covid cases: Australia: 5,108; World: 896,475 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 413.42 ppm

ON 26 MARCH, marine biologist Terry Hughes interrupts the firehose of international COVID-­19 coverage with news from the other cataclysm. He posts a twenty-­two-­second film clip on Twitter, the shadow of a small aircraft passing over opalescent waters and, in the shallows, ghostly coral reefs blanketed by drifts of seaweed. ‘It’s been a shitty, exhausting day on the #GreatBarrierReef. I feel like an art lover wandering through the Louvre...as it burns to the ground.’ By then, he and his colleague, James Kerry, had been flying surveys for a week, from the Torres Strait to the Tropic of Capricorn. Every day cruising as slowly as possible without stalling and as low as is permitted: ‘150 metres, a safety thing, about hitting birds.’

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 53 11/12/20 1:36 pm 54 GriffithReview71

Some days the reefs unfurl below thick and fast, up to 150 a day, Hughes and Kerry with barely time to draw breath, recording a running commentary of observations over the thrum of the engines. They’re well practised, having refined this routine in 2016, 2017 and now 2020. On a good day, ‘you don’t find a single reef that is bleached’, says Hughes. ‘Unfortunately that has rarely happened in the three times we’ve done it.’ By 26 March they’ve seen enough for Hughes to confirm that the Great Barrier Reef has, as forecast given the too-­warm waters, suffered its third mass bleaching event in five years. Landing in a world seized and distracted by a fever of human anxiety, the news reverberates nonetheless. It’s immedi- ately reported by the BBC, The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian and, locally, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, but not by Rupert Murdoch’s Australian until well over a week later, true to form. Wrapping up the surveys on 2 April, Hughes posts an update. Not all the bleached corals are doomed. Some will ‘regain their colour and survive, because some species are tougher than others’. Worldwide, as Covid fatalities mount and the raw calculus of lives versus economy begins to gain traction, the fates of susceptible corals and vulnerable humans seem grimly aligned, and similarly viewed in some quarters as collateral damage. The coral death toll won’t be known for months, until Hughes gets in the water to do the mortality surveys. ‘I’m not sure I have the fortitude to do this again.’

ZOOMING INTO MY house from Townsville months later, Hughes is back from a short holiday and appears restored. But his anguish is undimmed. ‘Four hundred million people depend on coral reefs for their livelihood,’ he says. ‘How do I feel personally about the tragedy of coral bleaching? It is not something I like to dwell on.’ Nature has declared Hughes a ‘reef sentinel’. He wears his keening Irish heart on his sleeve as he wades into the treacherous waters of social media to defend the oceans, the planet. Witness his clarion 2016 tweet: ‘I showed the results of aerial surveys of #bleaching on the #GreatBarrierReef to my students. And then we wept.’ Not long ago, serious scientists kept their tears and fears to themselves, constrained by the conventions of so-­called ‘scientific reticence’, and by the risk of merciless retribution in the loss of research grants. But with no time

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 54 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 55

left to waste, Hughes uses platforms such as Twitter and The Conversation to broadcast raw observations of the climate emergency in real time, even as his analyses grind through the processes of peer review and publication. The pandemic very nearly obscured timely evidence of this latest bleach- ing, as water temperatures spiked while fears about Covid spiralled. Hughes ‘could see the gate was closing’ and scrambled to get his team airborne. All over the country – the world – scientists were tearing up fieldwork plans years in the making. COVID-­19 will be memorialised by gaping holes in climate databanks for posterity. Hughes is less worried about that than by the puncturing of momentum in the global climate movement – the powerful school strikes and Extinction Rebellion. And he’s angry, albeit unsurprised, by the Australian government’s disinterest in following the lead of ‘more enlightened countries, particularly [in] the EU, looking for a green recovery. This is an opportunity to change and deal with greenhouse gas emissions and all those structural issues.’ With the Great Barrier Reef having lost more than half its corals even before the 2020 bleaching, a key mission of this year’s survey was to check areas identified as refugia, hiding places for species to cling on and, someday, seed renewal. ‘The only remaining unbleached reefs are in the far south, far offshore,’ says Hughes. ‘They are not good candidates for helping reseed the rest of the Great Barrier Reef...and there’s too few of them to make a significant difference.’ For humans seeking refuge from the horrors of coronavirus and climate change, there’s been the odd glimpse of loveliness in the return of wild creatures during what some scientists have dubbed the ‘anthropause’, this unprecedented global slowing of human activities due to the pandemic. Hughes judges some of the rhetoric optimistic, possibly misguided. But it does, he observes, spotlight the critical, core connection between the COVID- ­19 and climate emergencies: habitat destruction. Human decimation and occupation of ecosystems created the conditions that allow diseases like this new coronavirus to cross from animals into human societies. ‘And you can argue it’s because of our disregard for the destruction of those ecosystems that we actually made ourselves more vulnerable.’ Hughes forwards me a cartoon, a city about to be hit by a wave labelled ‘COVID- ­19’, a larger ‘RECESSION’ wave looming behind, both dwarfed by a towering third wave: ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’. ‘Things like clearing

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 55 11/12/20 1:36 pm 56 GriffithReview71

forests, which releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases and forest fires, which destroys habitat, they’re all interlinked,’ says Hughes. ‘So that cartoon is quite misleading to the extent that they’re not separate waves; they are all very much interrelated.’

Casey Station, Antarctica: 22 January 2008 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 385.28 ppm

SHARON ROBINSON, PLANT biologist, picks her way past a couple of Adelie penguins on the East Antarctic coast. Tussocks of startlingly green velvety moss cling to bare rock: they send up little bubbles of oxygen, finding sunshine after as much as ten months of the year smothered by ice. Biology ‘right on the edge of existence’, Robinson says. In five visits over ten years, Robinson has monitored the effect of chang- ing climate on the moss. Some of these thin crusts of green have been growing for one hundred years, their progress easy to plot courtesy of markers trapping radioactive isotopes left by nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s. Things are not looking good for poor Schistidium antarctici. What does it mean, the potential loss of this little plant? It will barely be noticed, Robinson concedes. The moss sustains only its own near-­invisible, thriving community of invertebrates and crustaceans, a world within a world. ‘It’s a sentinel of change, really,’ she says. ‘It’s a loss of...something we don’t know enough about yet.’

AFTER A SIX-­YEAR absence, Robinson, these days executive director of the Global Challenges Program at the University of Wollongong, was due to fly south to her beloved moss beds in February 2020. Then in late January, the Australian Antarctic Division cancelled all scientific field trips rather than risk coronavirus finding its way into polar research stations. The call came ‘a week before our flight, after six months of planning’, says Robinson, Zooming in from her home in Wollongong. Hers was just one among many Antarctic summer projects derailed by the pandemic, most concerned one way or other with understanding climate impacts on the ice and in the Southern Ocean, changes with urgent global implications for sea levels, weather patterns and marine biodiversity. Robinson’s research includes extracting histories buried in the moss beds to bring more rigour to the climate models forecasting our future. ‘We can

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 56 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 57

record what the climate has been doing going back fifty, one hundred and more years; we’ve now got mosses that are 500 years old at Casey.’ Because of the close entanglement of Antarctic and Australian weather systems, this information helps predict future rainfall patterns. As she hunkered down on the NSW coast, encircled by the 2019–20 megafires fuelled by record temper- atures and drought, Robinson was keeping a weather eye on the distant ice. From Davis Station came word that it was so warm it was raining rather than snowing. The moss beds were growing lush on meltwater. Robinson set to work with colleagues in Antarctica, Wollongong, Hobart and Santiago in Chile, piecing together fragments to reveal a shocking whole. As Australia burned through January and February, Antarctica experienced a heatwave unprecedented in the observed record. Strong warming of the stratosphere had shrunk the ozone hole that had moderated temperatures on the continent’s east. Global media interest in this discovery, published just days after Terry Hughes’ alert on the reef bleaching, was huge, a distraction from coronavirus, albeit not a happy one. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet locks up 80 per cent of the planet’s ice, and this heatwave followed disturbing new clues about its vulnerability to warming. From this angle, it looked an awful lot like the third wave in Terry Hughes’ cartoon. I recall Robinson, when we met at Casey a dozen years ago, as a sunny, vivacious spirit who cooed as besottedly over her mosses as the penguin specialist over her fluffy chicks. Reaching out now I’m wondering about her state of hope, and whether she still has any. It was touch and go for a while there, it emerges. ‘I think I have had an underlying optimism; I have faith that humans can do things,’ she explains. But ‘it has been sorely tested’. Giving lectures to biology students, she felt ‘like either crying or apologising...how did we get to this?’ It became an existential grappling around her life’s work: ‘What was the point of science if it was ignored?’ She struggled to reconcile her analytical, dispassionate scientific voice with distress over where the planet was heading. While proudly born into a long line of activists – ‘I have pictures of myself in the pram on Ban the Bomb marches’ – she is not disposed to hand-­to-­hand combat with deniers and obfuscators à la Terry Hughes. She found resolution on a voyage to Antarctica in early 2019 with seventy other female scientists and Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Despite years pushing shit uphill in global climate negotiations, securing

Chandler-71.indd 57 16/12/20 3:56 pm 58 GriffithReview71

the 2015 Paris Agreement only to have the US pledge out, Figueres was, Robinson recalls, ‘stubbornly optimistic that we can still do something’ to avoid the worst. By the time she disembarked Robinson felt armed. She invokes stubborn hope strategically and defensively. Without it, ‘you’re not actually able to do anything that might help. And it’s not positive for you either. So that’s about self-­preservation as well.’ It wasn’t enough to stay in her lane as a plant biologist. ‘You just had to keep saying it: that if we don’t do something about climate change, we’re going to lose all this. And you know, I’m worried about my moss beds, but I’m also worried about Antarctica, about sea-­level rise, about people losing their homes because of flooding, and you have to make those connections.’ In January 2020 she co-­authored a provocative journal editorial in Global Change Biology measuring, recognising and endorsing the power of the student and Extinction Rebellion movements in raising awareness of the emergency. The piece came out of a ‘quite heated discussion’ at a bar in Oxford a few months earlier, where Robinson and other leading climate change biologists wondered out loud if they were just wasting their time. ‘We were basically saying that you need to have activism in order to see political change.’ She marched with her students on the climate strikes, citizen-­self and scientist-­self now inhabiting the same skin. Lately, maybe perversely, Robinson’s felt some resurgence of hope out of the back-­to-­back horrors of Black Summer and coronavirus. One of the powerful things about working in Antarctica, she explains, is that you can’t unsee what is in plain sight. Like watching rain falling at Davis, the summer inferno blew immediate, urgent reality into households across Australia, ‘and it seemed to me that everybody was impacted by that, whether you were sitting in Sydney getting smoke inhalation or actually in an area that was being burned...surely this has to be the tipping point.’

Brisbane: 5 June 2019 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 411.53 ppm

SOME 800 CLIMATE-­ANXIOUS citizens settle into their seats. There’s a buzz: former US Vice-­President Al Gore is due on stage. A month before, I’d listened to US journalist David Wallace-­Wells talk about his blockbuster book, The Uninhabitable Earth. ‘It is worse, much worse,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 58 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 59

than you think,’ is his opening gambit, and then he lets rip. Explaining his no- ­holds-­barred approach in a Longform podcast interview, he recalled how, as a latecomer to the climate story, he was shocked to discover the raw science was far scarier than mainstream reporting. He accused journalists of tiptoeing around the findings, of being so concerned by accusations of alarmism that they – we – buried the lead. ‘If you are terrified of these facts, you should be... And if previous climate writing allowed you to not be terrified of these facts, or enabled your own impulses toward complacency and denial...then it was irresponsible. Because the science is really clear, and it is inescapable.’ He struck a nerve, nudging me further down a track I’d been disconso- lately exploring for a while. Mindful of the cracks in that fraught construct of journalistic objectivity, I’ve nonetheless strived throughout my reporting life to apply objective method to news gathering. So it is that I understand climate change is real, human-­caused, urgent and fucking terrifying, and that the media has failed catastrophically to tell that story. Without wishing to over- ­egg my contribution, I am part of that failure. Which brings me to Gore’s Climate Reality leadership program, in search of new strategies. And to a position emboldened by the former Guardian editor- ­in-­chief Alan Rusbridger’s argument that journalists covering the climate emergency ‘have a duty not to be impartial’. As a citizen of burning Earth, I have skin in this game. Our table hails from construction, communications, the arts, finance, footy, faith, retailing. We’re surrounded by unlikely conspiracies of school principals and investment managers, tech heads and artists, Indigenous leaders and old white men, wild-­haired activists and slick entrepreneurs. Here we sit, gathered in hope. Clinging to our keepcups as the Adani mine gets sign-­off and atmospheric carbon spikes over 415 parts per million for the first time in three million years, galloping north at a rate unseen in sixty- ­five million years of geological record. ‘Hope’ in such a context should come with a trigger warning. Listening to my circle espousing variations of the same vision – a habitable world for themselves, their families, newborns, communities – roiling grief rises so violently that my skin pulses and my head spins and I wonder if I might be having a stroke. I start to cry. A decade ago I wrote a book about what I learned trailing climate scien- tists deep into their research, from the Antarctic to the tropics. I dedicated

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 59 11/12/20 1:36 pm 60 GriffithReview71

it to my kids, ‘with hope that you may dwell in an enlightened future, on a friendly earth’. That wasn’t a cavalier line. Now, hope appears to have left me. When the session breaks I spot David Karoly, one of Australia’s most eminent climate experts and explainers. In the many times I’ve interviewed him, I can’t recall asking this one consuming question: ‘How do you carry this knowledge? How do you bear it?’ ‘Oh that?’ he says, nodding to the latest iteration of Gore’s Inconvenient Truth slideshow. That ain’t the half of it, he says. The stuff that’s ‘really inter- esting’ – as in, really worrying – didn’t get a mention. He and Mr Gore had decided not to go there. It would have blown up hope.

KAROLY, LEADER OF the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub at the Australian Government National Environmental Science Program, is a glass-­ half- ­full kind of guy. Honestly, he assures me, dropping into my lockdown in 2020, there is cause for hope. But first we go back to what wasn’t in Gore’s 2019 presentation. Hang on tight. On the Paris global emissions ambitions, ‘it’s completely silly to talk about a 1.5 degree target – we have way overshot that’. Two degrees, perhaps, ‘but I would argue it is virtually impossible,’ he says, ‘because of the locked-­in existing infrastructure and the growth in emissions in developing countries’. The best estimate with current commitments is 3 to 4 degrees. ‘The world supposedly was seeking to reduce emissions,’ Karoly says. Since Paris, ‘they’ve grown every year except in 2020’, when a virus put a spanner in the works. That leaves us ‘locked in most of the way to a “hothouse Earth”, even with dramatic emission reductions’, he says. ‘Hothouse Earth’ is an epoch described by some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists as an ‘uncontrollable and dangerous’ planet of cascading tipping points – melting permafrost, rising seas, burning forests – presenting ‘serious challenges for the viability of human societies’. At a 4 degree rise – and it doesn’t stop there – experts theorise the global sustainable population will collapse to about one billion. ‘In other words,’ Karoly elaborates, ‘90 per cent of the population is lost.’ Sometime well before that, Karoly anticipates that the major powers and markets – the US, Russia, China and Europe – ‘will argue that the economies of the developed world cannot flourish without continued use of coal, oil

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 60 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 61

and natural gas...the only way to do that and not have hothouse Earth, or the same level of global warming, is to increase aerosols.’ That means deploy- ing countermeasures into the atmosphere, or the oceans, to try to haul back temperatures. ‘There are a number of scientists advocating that the only way to live through global warming is to invest in geoengineering, and particu- larly that the only way to do it quickly is through injection of aerosols into the atmosphere.’ They will argue, says Karoly, that this might be done safely if interfer- ence occurs high in the stratosphere. ‘The tricky part is it changes rainfall patterns, and changes stratospheric ozone. And it’s likely that the planet, or should I say the economy, might become addicted to it.’ Even if it provokes what are euphemistically labelled ‘adverse impacts’, we can’t pull the switch without the warming shooting back. Karoly expects that the wealthy north will deploy the geoengineer- ing heavy lifting across the Southern Hemisphere and the tropics, a hunch informed by the dynamics of power and history. Witness the atomic testing programs, and their lingering signature in the Casey mosses. It will mean our part of the planet will cop the worst of the fallout, again rebounding on vulnerable citizens who have done the least to contribute to this shitstorm. Karoly finds no comfort in the pandemic ‘anthropause’, which, as we speak, has caused an abrupt drop in global carbon dioxide emissions – a whopping 8.8 per cent in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, according to a Nature Communications paper published in October. He’s concerned that given the associated hit to global industry and economy, it will be argued that this demonstrates the price of lower emissions is just too high, buttressing the case for geoengineering and ignoring the profound differences between a managed transition and a pandemic shock. There is an alternative. ‘There’s going to be massive investment in rebuilding the economies around the world, and much of that investment could be pointing to zero-­carbon economy and infrastructure.’ This is the reset urged by so many economists and experts to use the opportunity of the Covid crisis to build a sustainable future. Which brings us back to that four-letter­ word. ‘I’m feeling better now than in 2019 because there’s been investment of money, there’s new opportunity,’ says Karoly. There’s the momentum and perspective on the urgency of action coming out of Black Summer. There’s

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 61 11/12/20 1:36 pm 62 GriffithReview71

also ‘young people getting active and involved, not just Greta Thunberg’ and ‘the rapidly declining costs of renewables and the positive signs from all the states’. Australian state governments, Labor and Liberal, are all committed to zero-net­ emissions by 2050. ‘I am still convinced that concerted action can make it less bad. And that is why I keep [talking about it,]’ booms Karoly. ‘And I’m not willing to give up.’

Melbourne: 25 February 2020 Covid cases: Australia: 22; China: 77,780 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 413.26 ppm

We are witnessing grief, existential dread, ecological anxiety and white-­hot anger, in both public and private spheres. These emotions are opening up new spaces and forms of conversation about climate change, and constraints on such conversation appear to be shifting. Masculine norms of ‘positive talk’ increas- ingly look out of touch, and cultural pressure to be optimistic with children has been shifted by kids themselves, taking to the streets to demand action on climate change... The summer has given us an expanded repertoire of permis- sible feelings, articulated a torrent of writing and discussion, that collectively resist the new normal. Lesley Head, Nature Climate Change (February 2020)

THERE IS DEEP cultural pressure in the West not to be a ‘doom and gloom’ merchant, observes Lesley Head in her 2016 book Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene. But, she argues, relentlessly accentuating the positive ‘is itself a kind of denial’. We must bear, and bear witness to, the pain of losing what we understood as our future, and the world we knew as our past. ‘The news is not good,’ writes Head, a professor who runs the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. ‘It feels as though we are hurtling down a hill without any brakes, through an unfamiliar landscape, to an uncertain destination... We need to deal with at least the possibility of catastrophe.’ This reflection applies equally to the pandemic moment in which we materialise inside one another’s Melbourne confinement. There is ‘this little weight in everybody’s heart,’ she observes as we compare notes on our

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 62 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 63

lockdown lives. ‘That “oh God this is horrible”, the dread when you hear the [case] numbers every day’, she says of the pall over our ghost city. Teasing out some of the connective threads between the Covid and climate crises, she reflects that ‘this precarity, this sense of being rather unmoored, is going to be with us for ages and is probably quite a precursor of how climate change will increasingly feel’. Or how it already feels, she immediately self-­corrects. We glimpse ourselves in our Zoom lenses, middle-­ aged, middle-­class white women marooned in the iso-­comfort of our homes. With Covid, says Head, ‘affluent white people are feeling what it is like to live a precarious existence for the first time’. As Gorrie writer Melissa Lucashenko succinctly put it, ‘so cry me a river, bitches.’ We reflect on the tentacles of this disruption, of living mundanity in extremis – something Head has written of often as the ‘double reality’ of the climate realm in which we accept the science, yet keep showing up for our part in a collectively constructed normality. In the pandemic’s undoing of this normality, in her role as a senior university academic, Head’s lockdown is consumed with the shocking mission of downsizing for institutional survival. Off the clock, she’s knitting up a storm. I wonder what the ‘anthropause’, having lured wild creatures back into open spaces, might have unleashed inside our homes and our hearts. Will any of it reverberate: the toilet paper embarrassment, the sourdough moment, the months of not spending, of out-­of-­control hair? Will we snap back, as our Prime Minister urges, or be reset by this rupture? ‘We’re all part of very connected and deeply entangled systems, combi- nations of social and ecological systems that include global-­scale things, but we’re not actually in control,’ says Head. ‘So there’s this tiny little virus that is shaping social life at the moment, and that is one of the dilemmas with the Anthropocene as well, of climate change: once things take hold in complex systems, there are limits on your ability to control it.’ As part of her work, Head has surveyed climate experts on that question I’ve poked around rather less scientifically: what can they teach the rest of us about hope, fear and responding to the climate emergency? Many of them painstakingly distance the professional from the personal, she discovered. They don’t talk to their kids about climate. Or to taxi drivers. They steer clear of places where they might get caught in the crossfire of the climate wars. They reassure themselves and anyone who asks that we have

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 63 11/12/20 1:36 pm 64 GriffithReview71

the technology and capacity to respond, to avoid the worst. When they allow themselves to see the bleakness of it all and push on regardless, they are, Head argues, performing ‘hope as practice’, which is the ritual she imagines will sustain the community of the next Earth, the Anthropoceans. Many cling to the notion of dispassion as critical to their authority, of keeping ‘the heart a long way from the brain’, as Sharon Robinson once did. But the dispassionate scientist is a myth, Head argues, citing recent studies exploring how emotions are pervasive in science. And this myth is danger- ous, she continues, perpetuating a culture of restraint and caution that skews the message to understatement when declaring something dramatic may be entirely appropriate. This echoes the 2007 appeal by NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen: ‘We may rue reticence if it means no action is taken until it is too late to prevent future disasters.’ It strikes me that for all these years, journalists aspiring to objectivity have looked to scientific method for guidance. And yet in both pursuits we are only the best we might wrangle in the context of our human fears, hopes, passions. We all have skin in the game. ‘Various analyses would say that the thing that is happening before our eyes is the death throes of capitalism,’ says Head, after some musing around what Covid has exposed of the limitations of globalisation and the risk of that spiralling into nasty nationalism. ‘The question is whether it will die quickly enough... The death throes could go on for decades, and we might be just going straight into survival mode rather than [finding] the wherewithal to create those new green systems.’ She breaks off, looking someplace past me. ‘God, this is depressing...’ Apart and together, we inhabit the doom and gloom. I’m so grateful for the company. ‘I can see you. Can you hear me?’

Casey Station, Antarctica: 21 December 2009 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 388.23 ppm

THE BAR AT the bottom of the world is convivial, stocked with bottles of spirits with the owners’ names scrawled on the labels and a fridge full of meticulously crafted home-­brew. Perched here, this night, grounded by poor weather, is a flying squad that’s conducting an epic multi-­year survey,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 64 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 65

Operation ICECAP, or Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate. Their mission is to map the bedrock buried under thousands of metres of ice and determine how vulnerable it is to warming. They are at the business end of the most contested scientific question on our heating planet: how much and how quickly sea levels will rise. Obliging my curiosity, glaciologist Duncan Young unfurls a fat roll of readings along a table, pinning it down with beer glasses. The squad’s core ambition is to get a fix on how vulnerable the monster Totten Glacier – which locks up six metres of potential sea-­level rise – might be, but it’s just too early to say. Young points to tracings from another glacier, the Denman. ‘It looks like there is ice three kilometres thick pretty close to where the glacier feeds into the ocean. So that’s kind of the ideal situation for this marine ice-­sheet instability.’ Which rather depends on your definition of ‘ideal’. Earlier ICECAP surveys caused a sensation when they revealed a vast, deep basin dipping below sea level, making the East Antarctic Ice Sheet infinitely more vulnerable than previously supposed. If the bedrock around the Denman connects back to that basin, it could ‘potentially collapse back into this huge hole and undermine this whole sector of the ice sheet’, says Young, rolling up his data and heading back to a lively darts game. Or not. ‘The Denman is also a fairly narrow glacier, so the effects might not be that dramatic.’ When everyone else has gone to bed, I surf the digital juke box. REM: ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).’

‘SEA LEVEL IS still, from an Antarctic climate science perspective, the real biggie,’ says Tas van Ommen, program leader of the Australian Antarctic Division and one of the leaders of the ICECAP collaboration, beaming in from Hobart. We’ve spoken many times over the years as researchers have made breakthroughs and provoked new questions around what might happen to polar ice as the world and its waters warm. Van Ommen – a self-­described ‘scientific centrist...partly out of a sense of optimism and hope, it’s just my nature’ – is a carefully calibrated voice on the slippery, seismic business of ice- ­sheet dynamics, but it’s nonetheless always a shattering conversation. In 2014, scientists declared the disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s ‘unstoppable’: three metres of rising tides, likely over centuries.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 65 11/12/20 1:36 pm 66 GriffithReview71

What else is in the pipeline – and when it will arrive – turns on ‘known unknowns’, such as what might happen as a consequence of disturbing the layers of temperature, density and freshwater balance in the ocean that shape global weather; and the Antarctic coast’s vulnerability to the recently recog- nised phenomenon of hydrofracture, where surface meltwater seeps deep into fissures and cracks the ice like a splitter through timber. ‘There is still a lot of fundamental stuff that we only know about quite poorly,’ says van Ommen. ‘How rapidly we could see the Totten or the Denman or certainly West Antarctica deliver large sea-­level rise is still an open question. There is a certain consensus emerging that it is more like one metre than two this century, but the fact that we’ve got large uncertainties still existing is in itself a real worry.’ Looking beyond the horizon of 2100, a paper published in Nature in September declared we are on track for rises of about 2.5 metres even if the Paris Agreement goals are met. The Antarctic ice sheet has endured for about thirty- ­four million years, but its future will be decided in our lifetime, one of the paper’s co-­authors Anders Levermann told The Guardian. ‘We will be renowned in future as the people who flooded New York City.’ Landscapes occupied by some 630 million people are expected to be inundated by 2100 if high emissions continue; 190 million are adrift even if we manage to haul them back. The cascading questions around the fate of these people chip away at van Ommen’s innate optimistic default setting, ‘not exactly keeping me up at night, but making me think: what are our priorities? What are we going to get answers for? They’re the things that are massively going to change the planet.’ Van Ommen’s hopefulness is charged with a grim pragmatism these days. ‘Technological change is bringing an inevitability to renewables. It could be so much faster and so much cleaner and so much better if we had the right policy settings, and at the end of the day that’s a massive political problem. But I am optimistic in the sense that 2 degrees is better than 2.5, and 2.5, God forbid, is better than 3.’ But to stay this side of ‘God forbid’ requires negative emissions, and ‘we’re not just standing still, we’re heading in the wrong direction’. In common with all the other experts I speak to, he sees a game-­changing

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 66 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 67

opportunity in the pandemic recovery to build a green, sustainable future, but little prospect of Canberra seizing it, ‘because that is this whole vested-­interest problem we’ve had with climate change action and fossil fuels all along.’

Silver Spring, Maryland, US: 27 September 1962 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 319.17

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been travelling is deceptively easy, a smoother superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork in the road – the one ‘less travelled by’ offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth. The choice, after all, is ours to make. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

THREE YEARS AGO, in between journal papers trawling the deep past to forecast future heatwaves, bushfires, droughts and floods, Sophie Lewis, the ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, penned an intimate piece for The Sydney Morning Herald about the shattering burden of her scientific knowledge. She desperately wanted a child – children. But ‘among my friends and colleagues, such ordinary desires are increas- ingly accompanied by long, complex conversations about the ethics of such aspirations’. She wrestled with her conscience, described why this planet doesn’t need another baby and why no baby should be condemned to this planet, then revealed that her daughter was on her way:

Our much longed-­for child will both exacerbate climate change and will have to fix the problems set in motion by its parents and grandparents. In essence, this burden is the choice I have made for my child. Having made the decision to multiply my own carbon footprint in perpetuity and to inflict an extreme climate future on my daughter, the question becomes – what now?

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 67 11/12/20 1:36 pm 68 GriffithReview71

When we Zoom, she’s in her Canberra home, a clothes horse draped with tiny garments propped behind her. I think about that painstaking detachment between home and work Lesley Head found among senior climate scientists, about their erosion in the pandemic. I doubt Lewis’ generation will ever know that luxury. ‘Certainly that kind of sense of grief and loss has permeated a lot of my career,’ she says. ‘It’s certainly ebbed and flowed.’ This past Black Summer, one she had long seen coming through her modelling, ‘was just a period of profound grief. I don’t think I experienced it in any way as a scientist’. The months of smoke that blanketed Canberra were indescribable, she says. Sometimes it would hang around all day, sometimes it came with the evening wind change and ‘looked like a dust storm blowing in... And it’s not just the smell. It had this profound, visceral effect, that this was something I should be fundamentally concerned about. There is a panic associated with it. Smoke indicates danger: this is not safe. I don’t know anyone who got a proper night’s sleep for months...the added layer of knowing that smell isn’t just smoke: it’s houses, and trees and animals burning. That was just absolutely horrific.’ She flew to her brother’s place in Hobart, spending the days looking after her daughter and nephew and the nights crying. Then she crunched gears into hope as practice: What now? ‘I emailed everyone who I thought had some influence on discourse or public life or leadership...offering briefings or advice or scientific information.’ She started work on a submission to the Senate bushfire inquiry. Watching the pandemic play out, Lewis was initially buoyed by the visibility of experts leading the policy response, of people listening to special- ists like our lives depended on it. She hoped that public engagement with the mantras of flattening the curve, of acting early to stop runaway consequences, of enlisting models to guide interventions in the pandemic response – a kind of scale version of thirty-­something years of argument for environmental action – might continue into the climate realm. Then she began to see darker synergies: the devaluing of expertise, campaigns undermining and eroding trust. And yet, coming out of the fires and the pandemic, Lewis sees a seismic ‘what now’ opportunity: ‘As a person hopeful of a future for my kiddo and wanting more children, that is, not a return to 2019.’ Building a sustainable future provides a path to recovery from the pandemic and for the planet.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 68 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 69

Melbourne: 7 November 2020 Covid cases: Australia: 27,652; World 49,195,865 Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 412.32 ppm

DRAGGING THE DOG to the park through the umpteenth stinking dawn back in the pre-­pandemic’s hellfire summer, I recall watching a teenage boy and his little brother going tree to tree, gently scooping up and bagging the possums that had dropped down dead. This would be their future, clean- ing up the mess. Other walkers tugged small children from my path as I vented profanities at the voices of delay and denial echoing in my head, my earphones. Powerless; hopeless. Yet to lose hope was to capitulate to doomism, too- ­lateism, do-­nothingism, just as the puppeteers decreed, those diabolical ‘FUCKERS!’. I was, by now, deep in a pitiful, private Great Unravelling. I’ve only once before tripped into such wretched despair. The troubles that sent me there look so pint-­sized from this distance, but the lessons have proved instructive. I climbed out then – eventually, literally – over a weekend at Mount Arapiles swinging from belay ropes. Find a secure handhold. A toehold. Another, and another. And up you go. Hence the rituals of the gas meter, meditation, a checklist of divestment, a dip into activism. I join a dozen strangers for civil-­disobedience training with Extinction Rebellion. We take turns shouting abuse in one another’s faces and turning the other cheek: me, a tattooed youth from the far-­flung suburbs, a gentlelady from Kew with a neat grey bob. We practise falling down with jelly limbs, all the harder to be pulled upright by police. I research strategies, spiritual and professional, to navigate the mess we’re in. Clinging on by the fingernails, jamming in the boots wherever they find purchase. Striving for the courage to cease the performance of ‘business as usual/what’s for dinner’ as it all goes to hell. One of the privileges of a reporting life is to encounter courage. A mighty nun from Ohio who spent decades in the PNG highlands caring for HIV/AIDS casualties, digging holes to bury them when no one else would; a trio of women from the village of Kup, also in the highlands, who broke every cultural taboo to rise up and save their children from endless tribal warfare. All those mothers sitting in the dust of the 2005 Malawi famine, cradling their doomed babies. I didn’t set out to list women here. Yet when I trawl my memory for courage, up they come.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 69 11/12/20 1:36 pm 70 GriffithReview71

Is it in me? Several years back I was working on a story in remote Papua New Guinea, where Malaysian land grabbers were clear-­felling forests and pirating the timber out. Driving across the splintered landscape with dispossessed landowners, we encountered a crew of loggers with a fearsome reputation. As their vehicle approached and slowed, I wondered: would I speak up for the activists risking themselves to expose this atrocity? Would I seek to save myself? The truck drove on by. I was not tested then, but I am now. Facing the climate emergency demands the courage of my convictions and I feel as nauseous as I did on that godforsaken track. Sprung from 112 days of Covid confinement in our house, many of them consumed with reading, listening, speaking, thinking about this crisis and the next, I am blinking in the light of a so-­far benign Melbourne spring. In captivity, I’ve been working out with my hope, flexing and exercising it. It feels rehabilitated, muscular, strong. I reframe that image from last summer, the boys in the park. The children of the Anthropocene, the Pyrocene, don’t have the luxury of indulgent grief. They practise hope, and so must I. Despite everything, I catch a whiff of optimism. Not for a restored future, but maybe David Karoly’s less worse one. Trump is defeated. Momentum toward net zero by 2050 is spiralling – China, Japan and South Korea all making the pledge. The smart money is pouring that way. A tweet lands with news that a giant superannuation fund has been compelled to the same target by a millennial who sued over climate risks. Might we see cascad- ing economic and social tipping points, delivering us into a stabilised Earth instead of the hothouse one? As one of the hothouse modellers, Earth systems specialist Professor Will Steffen is fond of observing, the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones. Then there is the lesson of this pandemic. As I write, Australia has heeded the science, flattened the curve and, for now, contained the virus. This required leadership that stared down the science deniers and the Murdoch media, that valued humanity over economy, that navigated and communi- cated complexity. The bug will return, and if it is allowed to run with a vengeance, that will be our choice. The parable of the pandemic is that we can cure what ails us. As Tas van Ommen said, ‘COVID-­19 exposes the flaws of ideology. While we do live in a post-­rational age in some ways, we can demonstrate what a stupid and dangerous approach that is.’

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 70 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jo Chandler: Tales from the frontline 71

And there are my ghosts. They are not the undead, but the unborn. I conjure them in my imagination and they are powerfully fortifying. The woman in white on the verandah 130 years ago I know now was called Kitty. Custodians of the same house, mothers up and down the same stairs a dozen times a day, trailing our hands on the same balustrade, Kitty and I are citizens of a different planet. In hers, horses pull the passing traffic, electric light is a couple of years away and the atmospheric carbon dioxide is 294.4 parts per million. She died at about my age, before her son was killed in France, before the Spanish flu. Kitty is not among my ghosts. We’ve not crossed on the stairs. She never did show up in a Zoom room. But I did happen on her spirit, her great-­great-­ granddaughter on an ancestry site. Four generations and counting. Back in the hellfire summer, in that haze in which we inhaled three billion blameless creatures, I couldn’t see a generation beyond my own children. And there’s the change. ‘I can see you. Can you see me?’ 5 November 2020

For references, see griffithreview.com

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Jo Chandler is an award-­winning Melbourne-­ based journalist, educator and author. Her books include Feeling the Heat (MUP, 2011). This work is supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, through the Griffith Review Reportage Project.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 71 11/12/20 1:36 pm INTERVIEW ‘A poem is a unicycle’ A conversation on poetry, politics and post-truth Barbara Kingsolver and Ashley Hay

IN LATE 2020, Barbara Kingsolver published How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons), her first poetry collection in almost twenty years. Many of these poems operate as spare and elegant suggestions for navigating the various ruptures, changes, remakings and accommodations of a life. Griffith Review is delighted to extract three here, along with some of Kingsolver’s thoughts on the potential of this form, the impetus for this new work, the year that was and what she’s doing next.

Ashley Hay: There’s a lovely combination of gentle instruction, sharp obser- vation and humour in the ‘How to’ poems – what was the impetus for this series in particular?

Barbara Kingsolver: I wonder if we can ever really name the seed from which a piece of writing grew, or if we’re just applying backward logic to convince ourselves we’re in control of the process. I do think of myself as a very inten- tional writer, almost scientific about mapping themes and plots, and still there’s so much that happens subconsciously, before I see it coming. This is especially true of poems, which tend to land in my lap half-­formed without much warning. I’d written a handful of these – ‘How to be hopeful’, ‘How to have a child’, ‘How to fly’ – before I noticed the trend. Then I was attracted to the whimsy of it: collected instructions for things nobody actually wants

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 72 11/12/20 1:36 pm BARBARA KINGSOLVER and ASHLEY HAY: ‘A poem is a unicycle’ 73

to do. How (not) to shear a sheep, get a divorce, do absolutely nothing, give thanks for a broken leg, etc. I loved the challenge of balancing the practical with the ridiculous, posing as a savant with the blissful ignorance of a child, embracing the unknowable and the wondrous. Really, isn’t that what we all want? For someone to tell us how to be alive.

AH: Your writing encompasses work as an essayist (both thoughtful and advocating), a novelist and a polemicist. What spaces does poetry give you as a writer that these other forms haven’t provided?

BK: I love poetry for its close, elegant focus. Pure language, the execution of a perfect moment, an explosive meeting of two previously unacquainted thoughts. I like to think of different forms – novel, essay, short story, journal- ism – as so many vehicles at my disposal in my writing garage. I size up the package I want to deliver, then decide what to drive. A novel is a station wagon; you can stuff a lot of big themes in there, whole families of characters, and take them for a long ride, even picking up hitchhikers along the way. A poem is a unicycle. It can convey only a small parcel, exquisitely balanced. And delivering that package is not even the point, it turns out. Just climbing up there and holding it all in motion is the wow.

AH: And does poetry itself have a different potential as a form? Can it do work that other words can’t do?

BK: Absolutely. I probably feel sturdiest as a novelist, so I had a crisis of confidence when my publisher first gave me the green light to revise and organise a ream of my recent poems into a book. Not about ordering the shape of it – that’s probably my forte. (Trained as a scientist; book alphabetiser; possibly a little over the top as an organiser.) And revision, ditto. Rewriting is my favourite part of writing. My problem was that some of these are formal poems: couplets, sesti- nas, shaped poems, even a villanelle. I love formal poetry: Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare and Shelley all make my first string. I wrote a hundred sonnets in my twenties to teach myself discipline, so I still tend to think in iambic pentameter, and even my loosely constructed poems are often veiled sonnets, with that dramatic turn in the final line or couplet. I love the challenges

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 73 11/12/20 1:36 pm 74 GriffithReview71

of constraint. But when I thought about presenting this work to readers, I panicked. I mean, who am I to write a villanelle? And rhyme? Won’t modern readers find that corny? What if we’ve all been too conditioned by Dr Seuss to accept end rhymes as appropriate for adult consumption? I started backpad- dling in my revisions, trying to disguise the shape of the shaped poems, swallowing rhymes, breaking up the metre and form of the sestinas. Luckily, I had a wonderful poetry editor at Faber (my UK publisher), Lavinia Singer, and several other professional poet friends who held my hand and talked me down from the ledge. They used almost the same words you did in this question: don’t be afraid to let your poems do what only poetry can, and go the places that poetry alone gets to go. That advice helped me embrace and improve the work, marrying form and content, engaging the joy of language. Poetry is a cradle that rocks us in the mother tongue.

AH: Am I right in thinking this is your first book of poetry? If so, is that an odd experience for someone so well-­versed (as it were) in publishing in other forms?

BK: You’re completely forgiven for not knowing this is my second poetry collection. The first, Another America, was published by a small press (Seal) in 1992. The poems reflect my involvement with refugees and the human-­ rights crisis on the US-­Mexican border, where I lived at the time. The book is bilingual, with each poem appearing in English and Spanish on facing pages, translated by my colleague Rebeca Cartes. It was early in my career, and the book didn’t have a huge circulation. But the warm reception to How to Fly seems to have nudged the publisher that now holds the rights to that first collection, which they’ve asked me to review and update for re-­release next year. I’ve written poems all my life, and published them intermittently in poetry journals, but mostly they tend to collect quietly in a drawer while my readers eagerly await something else – mostly the next novel. I wasn’t sure anyone wanted the poems I had accumulated in recent years, but my publishers persuaded me to give it a shot. This book was a happy surprise.

AH: In the strange world of post-­truth, how has the value of words changed, and the potential view of a writer’s worth?

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 74 11/12/20 1:36 pm BARBARA KINGSOLVER and ASHLEY HAY: ‘A poem is a unicycle’ 75

BK: I have to believe that words still matter, and, more importantly, that most people still have a moral, legal and physical attachment to truth. People are still teaching their kids to read, and to tell the truth, so the fundamentals haven’t left us. These are unprecedented times, with economic and biological systems under enormous strain, creating privation and frustration for a lot of people. Denying reality is very tempting. I get that. We’ve all done it, at some level. (One more drink won’t hurt me. That guy is not my president.) We’re still pretending we won’t have to pay the terrible environmental bill, when it comes due. But it’s due. What I see around me is a lot of denying and a lot of yelling (mostly from young people) about paying up, both at the same time. It’s messy, but also exciting. Complacency rarely breeds greatness. But urgent necessity – as we all know – breeds invention.

AH: These poems read like beautiful resources – things that can be returned to or drawn on in times of need, like talismans or touchpoints. Have your own ideas or definitions of resources, and resilience, changed throughout the interesting year that was 2020?

BK: I’m so glad you think so. In 2019, when I considered what sort of book I should launch next into this disrupted and scary world, I realised I’d been relying on poetry as medicine for the soul. It wakes up and quiets the mind, both at once. It crosses barriers and breaks down arguments using pure emotion, reminding us of our common humanity. I thought, if I could do that for other people, I could be of some use. So this is the relief package I prepared to send out into 2020. Little did I know what a year it would be.

AH: What happens next?

BK: A novel. I’m more than halfway through a first draft. I’ll be the first to agree it’s been a terrible year for humans. I’ve lost people I loved. My heart aches for all the lost jobs, the fear, the workers on the frontlines. I’m also proud of how we’ve all worked to innovate, adapt and make more from less. And here’s a confession: writers are professional introverts. A year or more of solitary, undistracted quiet is kind of a dream come true.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 75 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 76

Barbara Kingsolver

How to have a child

Begin on the day you decide you are fit to carry on. Begin with a quailing heart for here you stand on the fault line. Begin if you can at the beginning. Begin with your mother, with her grandfather, the ones before him. Think of their hands, all of them: firm on the plow, the cradle, the rifle butt, the razor strop; trembling on the telegram, the cheek of a lover, the fact of a door. Everything that can wreck a life has been done before, done to you, even. That’s all inside you now. Half of it you won’t think of. The rest you wouldn’t dream of. Go on.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 76 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 77

How to shear a sheep

Walk to the barn before dawn. Take off your clothes. Cast everything on the ground: your nylon jacket, wool socks, and all. Throw away the cutting tools, the shears that bite like teeth at the skin when hooves flail and your elbow comes up hard under a panting throat: no more of that. Sing to them instead. Stand naked in the morning with your entreaty. Ask them to come, lay down their wool for love. That should work. It doesn’t.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 77 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 78

How to do absolutely nothing

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin but: Do not take your walking shoes. Don’t take any clothes you’d wear anyplace anyone would see you. Don’t take your rechargeables. Take Scrabble if you have to, but not a dictionary and no pencils for keeping score. Don’t take a cookbook or anything to cook. A fishing pole, OK but not the line, hook, sinker, leave it all. Find out what’s left.

Barbara Kingsolver’s books of fiction, poetry and creative non-­fiction are widely translated and have won numerous literary awards, including the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, awarded to The Lacuna (Faber, 2010). Flight Behaviour (Faber, 2013) was also shortlisted. She is the founder of the PEN/ Bellwether Prize, and in 2000 was awarded the National Humanities Medal, the US’s highest honour for service through the arts. These poems are extracted from How to Fly (Faber, 2020).

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 78 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Generation Covid Crafting history and collective memory Katie Holmes

APRIL IS MY favourite time of year in Melbourne. The weather is compara- tively stable and the days warm, richly complementing the autumn colours. In 2020 there was even more time to enjoy them than usual, and the late summer rains seemed to have deepened the autumn hues. Or perhaps the unfolding pandemic sharpened my vision. The skies were clear, absent of planes and the usual April smog, and the sounds of nature were no longer buried by the constant cacophony of industrialised cities. As I took the opportunity to breathe and look up, the rapid unravelling of the world as I knew it created its own kind of vertigo. ‘Unprecedented’ quickly became the word of the year. In Australia it had already had a good workout with the megafires that engulfed the country during our ‘savage summer’. The smoke from that ecological catastrophe had only just begun to clear when a coronavirus started to ravage the world. If climate change was already playing havoc with our sense of time – a projected future of environmental Armageddon pressing ever closer – the COVID-­19 pandemic, itself a symptom of ecological breakdown, further upended our temporal realities. Early on in the pandemic, journalists looked repeatedly to historians to help make sense of what was happening and to read from the past the possible impacts of this moment on the future. Experts on past pandemics tried to shed light on how we might recover, and on the prospective local and global consequences of this COVID-­19 catastrophe. Many sought equivalence,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 79 11/12/20 1:36 pm 80 GriffithReview71

hesitating, as historians usually do, to use the word ‘unprecedented’. But just as the fires of last summer were unprecedented in scale, intensity and devastation, so the speed with which the COVID-­19 virus infected the world and the dramatic nature of its fallout is without parallel. From the enforced intimacy of Melbourne’s extended lockdown to global geopolitical struc- tures, any certainty we had felt about the future has been thrown into doubt. What might the past offer us at this moment, and how will future generations reflect on this year? How will this present become the future’s past? Historians find remnants of the past in libraries and archives, in objects, monuments and buildings, in fields and forests, in music and art and images, in memories and stories. These are our laboratories, our test tubes, our data. This is where we find the roads not taken, the possibilities foreclosed, the thinking that shapes a culture, the choices made that, sometimes through the slow accretion of time and action and sometimes suddenly and dramatically, change outcomes and ‘make history’. We know that history is not always a good guide to predicting the future, that the lessons from the past are too complicated to fit into a comfortable slogan that history might ‘teach’. We also know that history can offer startling insights into the present, explaining how and why we got to where we find ourselves, or even how people and states are likely to behave when a pandemic reaches their shores. History has other offerings in times of crisis: it can be an anchor, a solace, a source of meaning. As a storeroom of individual and collective memories it can nourish our souls; as a dark place of conflict and pain it can remind us of how close the abyss can be, and how we might survive it. These memories and stories are crucial as we look towards the future and wonder how the past might help us face the unknown. Rebecca Solnit writes, ‘The stories we tell about who we were and what we did shape what we can and will do.’ Different kinds of stories help us imagine possible futures.

‘COLLECTIVE MEMORY’ IS a term historians use to refer to the ways the public ‘remembers’ an event or a period of time. It is the version that gets publicly told, endorsed and reworked through films and history books, commemorative activities, monuments and school curricula. The further back in time an event occurred, the more abstracted the collective memory of it becomes. Think Anzac, now one of our most carefully curated memories. In the immediate post-­World War I period, understandings of what the war had

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 80 11/12/20 1:36 pm K aTIE Holmes: Generation Covid 81

meant for the nation were highly contested. Defeat at Gallipoli, 60,000 lives lost (the highest death rate among the Allied forces), a divided and grieving home- ­front community and an economy in shreds were not obvious raw materials from which to build a narrative about heroic manhood and the founding of the nation. Historians played a key role in creating that narrative. CEW Bean crafted it carefully, selecting the stories that would best illus- trate the history he wanted to tell, and then campaigning for a monument and museum that would house and celebrate that story – the Australian War Memorial. Anzac provided a healing narrative that gave solace to grieving families and the nation alike. It helped make sense of unimaginable loss. But the battle over who would control the legend continued for decades. The resurrection of the Anzac legend began in the 1980s, seventy years after the Dardanelles defeat, and while the reasons for that revival are complex, it was fuelled by government, powerful interest groups, the media, filmmakers and writers captive to the myth and its endless potential for reinvention. By the time Alec Campbell, the last surviving veteran of the Gallipoli campaign, died in Tasmania 2002 aged 103, he had become ‘The Last Anzac’, an ‘Anzac Legend’. Campbell’s lifetime activities as a unionist and peace activist were written out of the script for the state funeral that celebrated his life. The six weeks he had spent at Gallipoli carrying drinking water from the beach to thirsty troops were harnessed for national agendas that had nothing to do with him as a soldier or civilian. His long and varied life, including as a jackaroo, carpenter, railway-­carriage builder, mature-­age university student, public servant, research officer, historian, husband and father, became irrelevant, and his socialist, anti-­fascist politics were too radical for the Anzac embrace. Many historians have contributed excellent work to complicate the public memory of Anzac and to contest the easy platitudes of nation-­making mythology that have conveniently distracted us from other, more troubling stories: mental illness and suicide among returned servicemen; the intergen- erational legacies of war for families; and the wars fought against Aboriginal land owners on our colonial and state frontiers, to name a few. A collective memory that turns defeat into victory and only celebrates the comfortable, reassuring narratives of fortitude and collective endeavour in the face of hardship does not serve a nation well when it is faced with a pandemic that has exposed the fissures and fractures in every system the virus infects.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 81 11/12/20 1:36 pm 82 GriffithReview71

When the COVID-­19 virus derailed our lives in March 2020, our nation’s fixation with World War I and Anzac seemed even more askew. It was to the stories of the Spanish flu, the Great War’s tragic endnote, that we needed to turn – but where were its histories? Why was there no collective memory of this event, no monument to the nurses who cared for the afflicted, no memorial commemorating the 15,000 who died in Australia alone? In compar- ative terms, that would correspond to about 75,000 deaths in this country today. It wasn’t that we hadn’t known about the pandemic, but it had mostly been relegated to a devastating epilogue to World War I – despite killing fifty million people worldwide, perhaps twice as many as military and civilian deaths caused by the war itself. The handful of historians who had been paying attention to the Spanish flu pandemic were suddenly in demand, sought by a media and public keen for stories on how that quarantine had been managed, what restrictions were imposed, how people had coped. Historical pictures of masked civilians walking the streets provoked a shock of recognition.

HISTORIANS KNOW THAT the stories a nation tells itself matter; collec- tive memory can suppress competing versions of the past, while individual and family stories might hold conflicting memories. Our work has been crucial in shaping and dismantling, telling and retelling the narratives through which we have come to think of ourselves as a nation. We have colluded in the silences of colonial dispossession, the erasure of women’s voices and the celebration of environmental-­wreckage-­as-­progress, as much as we have, ‘in alliances with communities of action’, found voices that have challenged the racist and sexist hierarchies on which such histories were founded. History is no longer the preserve of elite white men. Today’s writers of history, as a group, better reflect the diversity of the histories we now tell. These histories have enabled a more robust and complex understanding of the nation’s past, one with reservoirs of stories about community cohesion in the face of extreme adversity, agency and resistance in response to generations of subjugation. It’s important to note, however, that many of those stories have not been framed as ‘national’, but rather as histories of specific groups of people. Their essence has not been abstracted to a national stage and inflected with the power to carry us forward as Australians in periods of existential crisis. It is time to bring these marginalised group stories into the national story so that

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 82 11/12/20 1:36 pm K aTIE Holmes: Generation Covid 83

we all learn from them as a nation: understand their morals and enact their lessons. Such an embrace would provide the opportunity for a more honest reckoning with our past, a more authentic reflection of our collective present and richer traditions from which to draw as we face an uncertain future. Aboriginal Australians’ stories of living with changing environments over at least 60,000 years, and their stories of continued survival despite 240 years of colonisation and its devastating legacies – including deadly pandemics – contain deep reservoirs of knowledge of adaptation and ‘ancient sovereignty’ that, as the Uluru Statement from the Heart so profoundly proclaims, ‘can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nation- hood’. This radical reimagining of the nation’s history and future is possible if settler Australians accept the invitation offered in the statement to ‘walk with’ Aboriginal Australians ‘in a movement of the Australian people for a better future’. The offer remains open. The post-­World War II migration narrative is frequently told as one in which the settler Australian community gradually came to embrace the riches of multiculturalism and grew stronger and more tolerant in the process. ‘We’ welcomed ‘them’ and on their backs built the prosperity of our postwar world. But the extraordinary hardships faced by post-­World War II refugees and immigrants also hold powerful and poignant examples of human fortitude and extraordinary courage, and many within those communities celebrate their resilience and survival. Those stories have been marginalised in the national narrative. It is time to move them centre stage, time to recognise that the sacrifices that make nations are not only made on battlefields, but in fleeing wars and their aftermaths, in navigating uncertainty, in working to rebuild shattered lives, livelihoods and families. The survivors from generations who lived through the Great Depression or World War II, many of them subsequently Australia’s postwar migrants, are among the Covid casualties from our aged-­care facilities. They are the generation that helped create our contemporary world. Daily obituaries in The Age told their stories, their experiences of mass unemployment, war, widespread rationing, poverty and few social services, and presented illumi- nating stories of hardship, endurance and the importance of community. But if these histories of survival, community and resilience offer stories from the past that might provide anchorage and solace through this pandemic, the pandemic itself is generating its own stories – and it seems unlikely that

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 83 11/12/20 1:36 pm 84 GriffithReview71

they will be as readily forgotten as those of the Spanish flu, particularly by Victorians. By late spring 2020, the disruption to our lives and the economic and psychological fallout were already so profound that the year had etched its way ineluctably into our collective consciousness. But beyond the COVID-­19 case count, the exposure of an economic system contingent on precarity and inequality, and the incriminating tally of aged-­care deaths, what memories might linger and take shape in the generations who live to look back on this watershed year?

IT IS FAR too early to predict where this particular historical tide will settle and how this moment of crisis will be recalled. We are still living this story, still captured by the drama of its unfolding, navigating our way along a shoreline none of us has walked before. We can know, however, that there will be different versions of this story and contests over who gets to tell them. That contest began early as the initial wave of infections was receding. Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared Australia the poster child for the world on how to handle the coronavirus, nodded to New Zealand’s success and, in May, urged Victorians to get out from under the doona – there was an economy to rebuild. When Victoria endured an extended stage-­four lockdown through August, September and October, and the economy entered its deepest reces- sion in one hundred years, the debate sharpened between how many lives we were prepared to lose versus how many livelihoods we would sacrifice. The economic hawks were circling. Yet from the pandemic’s beginnings, one narrative forecast it as the moment when the world’s axis might tilt towards something more equal, caring, humane and ecologically sustainable. Like previous pandemics, suggested the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, this one provided the opportu- nity to imagine the world anew: ‘a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas… Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.’ In Australia, former Greens senator Scott Ludlam imagined the white supremacist mask slipping, an aversion of ecological catas- trophe and a society where ‘the oldest living culture on earth’ became ‘the foundation for a movement of justice and peace’, while writer Anne Manne imagined the birth of the ‘Universal Caregiver Society’.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 84 11/12/20 1:36 pm K aTIE Holmes: Generation Covid 85

If 2020 does prove to be a rupture in our previous trajectory, that contin- gency will entirely depend on what happens next, be that further pandemics and climate catastrophes or a radical rewind of our carbon emissions and a restructuring of our economy. Either way, the memories we take forward from this time will be a mix of stories. They will be drawn from individuals and families and gradually coalesce into a broader cultural narrative, one in turn shaped by more powerful forces seeking to draw national significance and meaning from the disaster. There will be battles over this collective memory, just as there have been with Anzac. The ‘Covid generation’ will bring their own distinct memories to shape the national story. The sense that a generation carries a distinct identity is forged by sharing the ‘experience of profound and destabilising events’. Those events have their greatest impact if people experience them young, typically in their late teens and early twenties. Generational consciousness is shaped by the sharing of those dramatic events, their subsequent remembering and the recognition, often by older generations, of the distinctiveness of a generational experience or mode of self-­representation. The generation currently in their late teens and early twenties – the Covid generation – already had cause to be worried about their future. Indeed, in 2018 and 2019, hundreds of thousands of them had filled city streets to call for action on climate change and for an end to our depen- dence on fossil fuels. Fearful of the ecological breakdown overshadowing their futures and inspired by the example and leadership of Greta Thunberg, the climate strikers demanded that adults start behaving as adults should when their house is on fire. With an intoxicating sense that millions around the world shared their passion, and undaunted by the white male leaders who dismissed their rage with a mixture of condescension, misogyny and ridicule, this generation thought transformation was within its reach. ‘Climate momentum’ was building, and with it the hope that it might not be too late to stall the creeping catastrophe of climate change. In 2020, those young people found themselves stuck at home with remote learning, their rites of passage cancelled, their plans upended, their casual labour no longer required, their collective protests in city streets ruled illegal, their sense of agency curtailed by a microscopic virus with its origins in the ecological breakdown they fear. Many joined the long unemployment queues snaking outside Centrelink offices. While they are in the age bracket

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 85 11/12/20 1:36 pm 86 GriffithReview71

least likely to suffer serious health effects from the coronavirus, they are the generation most likely to struggle to find employment in the post-­pandemic world, and the ones who, along with their younger siblings, will be carrying the debt burden of the government’s relief measures for the longest. The fragility of their future is suddenly even more immediately apparent. Not since their great-­grandparents were young has an Australian generation lived with such uncertainty, such a profound sense that the future is out of its control. When the cataclysmic events of the Great Depression imploded into another world war, they left a lasting legacy on the generation who lived through these twinned disasters. The scarring impact of economic insecurity and the embodied knowledge of the fragility of life went on to underpin a commitment in the 1950s and ’60s to secure employment and a belief in the values of thrift and personal sacrifice. For the Covid generation, the return of overwhelming uncertainty cuts deeply in a cohort for whom anxiety and depression were already being described as a pandemic and in a context where mental health was a growing source of national disquiet. They might remember that feeling in their future – or it might not be mere memory. In fifty years’ time, living with anxiety and uncertainty may be a normal part of the human experience, a consequence of the disruption and havoc of environmental degradation. Which stories will the Covid generation remember from 2020 – twenty, thirty, fifty years from now? They might remember their mothers. One of the fault lines of the pandemic has been gender. More jobs have been lost in female- ­dominated sectors than in male-­dominated ones, and yet the govern- ment’s ‘road to recovery’ and the federal budget paves the path ahead with millions of dollars for the construction industry but nothing to support women’s employment. Gender inequality is being fortified. While men’s participation in childcare has increased slightly with working-­from-­home arrangements, women have continued to carry the major load, as well as the bulk of the housework. The juggle of working while home-­schooling their children has taken its toll on women. But it is not just their mother’s physical, reproductive or educative labour that today’s children might remember as adults. It’s the exhaustion, the fractious tone, the worried face, the weight of emotional labour carried by the maternal body that seeks to keep the family peace amid job losses, health concerns, aged parents, anxious children and a future, including her own, that suddenly looks as fragile as the one

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 86 11/12/20 1:36 pm K aTIE Holmes: Generation Covid 87

her grandparents faced in the Great Depression. Handed-­down stories of telephone books used for toilet paper suddenly made sense of the supermarket scrambles to fill trolleys with precious rolls of soft white tissue. The Covid generation might also remember living in families where precarity and uncertainty were daily realities. The pandemic has functioned as an X-­ray of inequality, revealing the cracks in our social fabric. Will the image of Melbourne’s public housing towers – in which, as the Victorian premier admitted, some of the state’s most vulnerable communities lived – locked down and encircled by police, or the anxious face of a young child gazing from an upper-­floor window, become part of the city’s collective memory? Maps have shown a swathe of privilege cutting through Melbourne’s suburbs, marking those areas least affected by COVID-­19, while those who lived and worked in the most Covid-­affected suburbs were predominantly the lowest paid and those who keep our city functioning: aged-­care workers, health carers, delivery people, transport drivers, meat workers, cleaners, child-­carers. Let them remember, too, alongside all the failures of our systems that have been exposed by the pandemic, the many examples of community strength and collective endeavour. For more than eight months, five million Victorians sacrificed personal freedoms to protect those most vulnerable to the virus. Many thousands also acted with generosity and selflessness to support and care for those in need. Australians around the country made similar sacrifices. Thirty years of neoliberalism’s promotion of individual merit and rights may have dented our sense of community and our belief in collective responsibility, and left us in a weakened state to confront a pandemic – as the US example has so vividly exposed. But we are not the US, and we have not sunk so far into reactionary individualism that we have abandoned a sense of collective responsibility. The body politic is not yet terminally ill.

IT IS LATE 2020 as I write this, and the vertigo of the pandemic’s early days has subsided. A surety of footing, however, remains elusive. ‘Covid-n­ ormal’ is a world still in the making, and its contours are only slowly becoming defined. In a time of radical uncertainty, however, we have the space to reimagine the future, to create it with ideas and actions, ‘new visions of what can and should be’. But if we are to transform this ‘great unravelling’ into what ecophilosopher Joanna Macy calls the ‘great turning’, we need to not only rebuild our economic system based on renewable energy and protecting

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 87 11/12/20 1:36 pm 88 GriffithReview71

people over privileging profit; we also need to articulate the ethics and the values that we will carry through this portal. The national stories we tell at this time are crucial. We need stories of adaptation and survival, of resilience and sacrifice, of rebuilding lives shattered by world events, of campaigning for justice, of hope and possibilities. It is time to tell new national narratives about ourselves. To step away from the abstracted stories drawn from Anzac mythology, to embrace the margins of our past and the fault lines of the present in stories from our First Nations peoples, from our immigrant and refugee communities, from women, the disabled, the marginalised, from those who have struggled against oppres- sion in its myriad forms. Stories to guide us as we navigate paths unknown. Too many obituaries have already been written as a result of this pandemic. But I hope for one more. I hope for an obituary to neoliberalism. When the Covid generation remember 2020 and the time that came just after, may they remember the power of community action, collective responsibility and the strength of our diverse body politic. May they remember the way the passion for change that they carried onto the streets in 2018 and 2019 gradu- ally infected us all, countering the poison of complacency and the power of the fossil-fuel industry alike. May they recall a government that, as in the postwar period, invested heavily in employment schemes, in the welfare state, in social housing and higher education; a government willing to make the connections between the droughts, fires and floods that have ravaged our land in the past three years and the pandemic that has ruptured our world, and to act in response – belatedly but definitively – to protect the future. And may they celebrate and commemorate a community whose vision, sharpened by these unprecedented times, determined that the history they made and bequeathed would be infused with the values of care, stewardship and justice. 21 October 2020 For references, see www.griffithreview.com

Note: This essay has been shaped by many conversations. In particular I thank the Melbourne Life Writers, especially Chips Sowerwine, Ian Britain and Alistair Thomson, as well as Lindsey Earner-­Byrne and Roland Burke.

Katie Holmes is professor of history at La Trobe University and director of the Centre for the Study of the Inland. She is the author of Between the Leaves: Stories of Australian Women, Writing and Gardens (UWAP, 2011), and most recently co-author with Richard Broome, Charles Fahey and Andrea Gaynor of Mallee Country: Land, People, History (Monash University Publishing, 2020).

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 88 11/12/20 1:36 pm MEMOIR Verdigris The elements of corrosion Lesley-­Anne Houghton

COPPER IS AMONG the earliest of metals to be used by humans, and has been smelted, cast and moulded for over ten thousand years. It is also one of the first to be purposefully alloyed with another, so that copper and tin become bronze, and copper and zinc become brass. I’m not sure how I feel about the word ‘alloyed’. It means to mix a fine metal with one less valuable, to debase something by adding something inferior. But which is the finer and which the less valuable? I know that sometimes I feel alloyed. When exposed to air, copper forms a layer of copper oxide that protects the underlying metal from corrosion. This is clever. Unlike iron, which continues to rust and corrode when exposed to the elements, copper resists corrosion from atmospheric influences. Copper is also incredibly malleable and has a high thermal conductivity. I like both these words: ‘malleable’ and ‘conductivity’. Malleable feels passive and accommodating, soft and comfort- ing. Conductivity is more active and formal, with its hard consonants. In any case, these features mean copper is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, perfect for the electrical wiring that is used for power generation and transmission, telecommunications and electronic circuitries. An attempt was made at some point to replace copper electrical wiring with aluminium to save money, but buildings caught fire, and so copper was returned and has never been replaced. Other forms of copper wire are essential for electric

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 89 11/12/20 1:36 pm 90 GriffithReview71

motors, transformers, inductors, generators, headphones, speaker coils and electromagnets. The world runs on copper wire, which is fine because at today’s rates of extraction there remains five million years’ supply of copper. Some of the most extensive copper deposits in the world are found in the marine sediments of the Stuart Shelf in South Australia. One of these deposits is the Mount Gunson copper mine, approximately 400 kilometres north of Adelaide, although it feels a lot longer than that when you’re crammed in the back seat of a station wagon late at night with your four siblings and the bitumen rolls like a never-­ending ribbon and the sky is black as pitch and Dad won’t stop for anything, not even if you need to go to the toilet. Leaving Adelaide, you drive out past Port Wakefield and Gawler, past the Port Pirie turn-­off and then out past Port Augusta on the only road heading north, to Woomera. Just before you hit Pimba, an old railway siding and the last servo before you enter serious outback territory, you turn off onto a dirt road. That dirt road might have had a name, but everyone just calls it the access road. Every mine site has an access road, graded just enough so that no one complains, but still you have to watch for potholes that appear out of nowhere, stones that fly up to shatter your windscreen, and bulldust that grips at your tyres and turns to mud with the first flickers of rain. Mount Gunson is a mining town perched on the edge of Pernatty Lagoon, a name that makes it sound prettier than it is. It is really a large mud pit, a salt lake that looks best when it is dry and the salt crystals that fill it glint white and bright in the sun. Those who had lived in the area awhile knew when the salt had dried just enough so you could drive out onto the lagoon and spin doughnuts in the centre. The crust still soft enough that the tyres would catch and spray mud on everyone sitting in the tray of the ute, but not too soft that you would get bogged and spend hours digging and pushing and tamping hard tracks. Copper has been mined out here since 1875. In 1971, a new and larger copper deposit was found in the area and an open-­cut mine was gouged into the land. My dad left Adelaide and moved to Mount Gunson for a job where the pay better allowed him to take care of the five children he found himself raising. He worked there for a year, travelling back to Adelaide for his one weekend off a month before he, or my mother, or my mother’s affairs, led us to pack up our house in the suburbs and move to the outback.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 90 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley-A­ nne Houghton: Verdigris 91

WHEN WE FIRST arrive in Mount Gunson, I am disappointed that it doesn’t have a welcome sign. It doesn’t feel like a proper town without a welcome sign, and of all the things to worry about, this is the easiest on which to focus. I set myself a project to make the sign I feel the town needs. There are only two very short streets on site, each with about ten houses, and a caravan park at the bottom with fifteen more families and couples. The single men live in quarters closer to the mine, in steel dongas with small bedrooms and shared bathrooms, and a large mess serving large meals and beer at any time of day. There are no single women. The houses in the two streets are all prefabricated and sit above the ground on built-­up brick footings for ease of construction and dismantling. They are all of similar size and layout, so when you visit your neighbour you sometimes forget whose house you are in. We have only been in town a month, but I know all the families in all the houses, and I sit down and count them up. There are 176 people. I don’t count the single men. Dad helps me nail a large square of plywood onto an old wooden post, and I paint on it:

Welcome to Mount Gunson Population: 176

We dig the sign in at the start of the access road, and I am pleased that our town is now official. Mount Gunson, after which the mine is named, is the tallest peak in the area, standing out among the long, flat stretches of salt lake and gibber plains. It is really just a small hill, barely above sea level, but we still take visitors out there, scrambling up through the spinifex and mulga as if we are intrepid explorers of the inland. On the top is a rock cairn and every time we climb, we place another rock, flat and shale-­like, into a crevice in the cairn, leaving something of ourselves for the future. The afternoon before my youngest sister’s death, we drive out to climb Mount Gunson. I have a schoolfriend up from Adelaide for the holidays and we are showing her the sights. There is a photograph of us all, piled around the cairn. My brother is holding up something small and rotted, one sister has her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, another is crouching, peering into the dirt. I am laughing with my friend, and my youngest sister is smiling, clear- ­eyed, straight into the camera, her ponytail crooked on the side of her head. It is the last photo we have of her and I wonder, did she remember to leave a stone in the cairn?

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 91 11/12/20 1:36 pm 92 GriffithReview71

Mining copper at Mount Gunson is a complicated process, requiring blasting and drilling and hauling, using dynamite and chemicals and trucks as tall as buildings. To extract the copper from the ore, the rock is bathed in sulphuric acid in dams constructed on the bed of the lagoon. The surface of the dams swirl bright with hues of green and blue. We know not to go near the edges, but still we scavenge the banks for dead lizards and snakes and rocks of crystal. The dams, we are told, are well lined to protect the leaching of copper and acid into the water table. The average human body generally contains between 1.4 and 2.1 milli- grams of copper per kilogram. My youngest sister was four years old when she died and would have weighed twenty kilograms at most. Her coffin was heartbreakingly small. She would have had fewer than forty milligrams of copper in her body. The average male working at the mine would most likely have had 200 to 250 milligrams of copper accumulating in their liver, muscle and bone. Long-­term exposure to copper significantly damages the liver and kidneys, and these men were already doing enough damage to these organs. Copper can be absorbed through the skin, and the impacts of copper poisoning can mimic mental illness, with symptoms including mood swings, depression, excitement, difficulty focusing and manic behaviour. I’m not sure copper is the reason, but living in this town is like living in a cheap replica of the real world. Everything seems the same, but falls apart under the slightest pressure. We are isolated, strangers living together with nothing more in common than the fact that we, or our husbands, or our fathers, occasionally our mothers, work for the same company. Most of the people on site are in their thirties, like my parents, or single men in their twenties. Everyone is earning the best money they have ever earned in their lives. Some of them are building futures, others are running from their pasts. There is a party every weekend, all weekend, with Skyhooks and AC/ DC migrating from house to house – unless the yanks working on rockets and secrets in Woomera come to visit, and then we hear Neil Young and Joe Cocker instead. Kids play in the shadows and husbands go home with other men’s wives. It is not unusual to come home from school in the middle of the week and find Mum smoking weed with the neighbours. Not long after we had moved into town, a neighbour was showing mates his new gun. ‘I hope that’s not loaded, with all the kids around,’ someone said. ‘No, of course it’s not,’ the neighbour said, and put it to his temple and pulled the trigger to prove his point. His brains must have splattered onto his

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 92 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley-A­ nne Houghton: Verdigris 93

mate’s shirt, but I hope not onto his wife, who held their six-­week-­old baby in her arms.

AFTER MY SISTER’S death, my mother went mad. But I think this was to be expected, and not anything to do with copper poisoning. And technically, my sister’s death had nothing to do with the copper, although we were all in this town because of it. My mother was driving along the access road when she lost control of the car. My sister was small and liked to look out the window, and so she was standing on the back seat. She was not wearing a seatbelt. Her window was wound down because one of the last things she did was lean out of the window and wave goodbye to her sister. Lean out of the window and wave goodbye to me. When my mum lost control of the car, the car left the road. As the car left the road, it hit the edge where the dirt had been piled by the grader, and the car rolled. As the car rolled, my sister fell out of the window. As my sister fell out of the window, the car rolled over my sister. A tyre had blown. It happened out here; peels of black rubber were always littering the side of the road. When the tyre blew, the steering wheel was ripped from Mum’s hand. There would have been a moment when she wondered what was happening. A moment when she wondered why the world was vibrating, gravel spraying and spitting as the car fishtailed down the dirt. Perhaps the cigarette she held lightly in her left hand fell to the floor as she gripped back the wheel, wrenching it left as she tried to regain control. Perhaps her foot lifted and hit the brakes to try to slow the momentum. Maybe those moments felt stretched or maybe they felt like no time at all as the car slipped and skipped until it hit the edge of the road and rolled. When the car in which I was travelling with a friend of my mum’s arrived at the scene, my mum’s car looked as if it had just driven off the road and stopped. Suddenly, but sedately. And then you notice the small (though you refuse to admit it) dent in the rear car door. And then you notice the small (though you refuse to admit it) mound on the ground that is covered by the blue checked blanket from the boot. The blanket Dad used to wrap his tools in, and that smelled of oil and mould. I don’t imagine it was Mum who put the blanket over my sister. Maybe it was the person who first noticed the car parked in the middle of nowhere

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 93 11/12/20 1:36 pm 94 GriffithReview71

and my mother standing by the side of the road, or maybe she was kneeling in the dirt, or maybe she was cradling my sister in her lap. I hope that person held my mum gently, turned her away from my sister, kindly and slowly. I am grateful they thought to open the boot of our car and get the blanket. It is, as I said, not unexpected that my mother went mad. When the drink and drugs proved not enough to stem the tide, she was committed to a psychiatric hospital for three months. Neighbours whispered of a nervous breakdown, but now we might speak of post-­traumatic stress or depression or suicidal ideation.

THE ANCIENT SYMBOL for copper is also the ancient symbol for Venus, goddess of love. Venus is the second planet from the sun and is known as the evening and the morning star, because it is, after the moon, the brightest object in the night sky. After my sister died, our parents told us to look to the sky for her, and she would be the brightest star. It is the only conversation we had about my sister’s death and was the full extent of our grief counselling. We barely spoke of our sister until well into adulthood, and even now she is only mentioned occasionally. I said her name out loud recently and the shape of it felt strange in my mouth. For months after my sister’s death, I wanted to drive out to the welcome sign and change the population from 176 to 175. Everyone in town had rallied for a while with casseroles and careful condolences, but then drifted back to their everyday lives. Lives still whole and complete. I wanted to remind them she had been here. I wanted to remind them she was gone. But I was twelve years old and couldn’t drive and changing the sign wasn’t something I could ask my parents to do with me. They were hollowed and broken, barely able to speak, and we never really asked them to do anything for us again. When copper is exposed to the elements, it oxidises and forms a blue-­ green layer of protective verdigris. I like the word ‘verdigris’ – it makes me think of vertigo, vertiginous, a dizzying whirl of a word. But none of us had enough copper in our bodies to make this shield, and so we rusted and corroded with no protection at all.

Lesley- ­Anne Houghton is a Queensland writer, and has just completed her Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) at Deakin University.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 94 11/12/20 1:36 pm REPORTAGE Eating for the climate Reframing the debate about ethical diets Matthew Evans

IF THERE’S ONE area in which the battle for the food dollar has met the battle for the climate head on, it’s meat. In particular, meat from grazing animals. Those who believe we should all abstain from eating meat have found the ultimate enemy in ruminants, or livestock whose digestive system releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. According to the author of one scientific paper, the single best thing you can do for the environment is stop eating meat. His quote has appeared in headlines around the world and been used to energise plant-­based food proponents. The problem is, it isn’t the best thing you can do. In 2018, Science published a paper by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek, ‘Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers’, that examines the impact of eating meat on agricultural land. When asked about the paper after its release, Poore was quoted as saying: ‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.’ He added, ‘It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.’ But Poore and Nemecek’s paper doesn’t look at anything other than food. Not coal. Not fugitive emissions from fracking or natural gas extraction. Not petrol. Not the embedded energy in steel or concrete. It doesn’t actually look at flights and electric cars. The meta-analysis relies on consolidated data

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 95 11/12/20 1:36 pm 96 GriffithReview71

with a median reference year of 2010, including a life-cycle carbon account- ing system that allows for emissions from livestock, but not carbon cycling in pasture and the earth that grows it. It compares carbon emissions, but not capture, and a great range of new research has been done in this field. The Poore and Nemecek paper was useful work – groundbreaking research – exploring the complexities of mitigation. And Poore’s soundbite is right in some respects, of course – there are huge problems with livestock production globally. The fatal flaw is to ignore farming. And to ignore soil.

HEARING THAT THE best thing you can do for the climate is to avoid eating meat set the anti-­livestock movement in motion. Finally, their cause wasn’t about just the exploitation of animals or selflessly giving up a nutrient-­ dense and historic dietary staple. It was about saving the world. Eating for the climate has become a buzz topic of the times. And as with all things, it’s starting to become tribal. Depending on your bent, you can find studies to back up just about any diet you’d like to espouse. Vegan, vegetarian, paleo, low carb and high fat. There’s no doubt that what we eat has an impact on the world, but just what that is, and how to fix it, tends to get caught up in slogans, simplicity and slanging matches. I’d like to reframe the debate. As a farmer, cook, consumer advocate and campaigner for more ethical food, I’m interested in how we can feed the world. But first, we need to consider what the aim of the debate is, and how we can perceive diet within the bigger constructs of community, society and nationhood, as well as the environment. First, we need to recognise that all animals, humans included, have to eat something that has already lived. Our goal as eaters is to ingest something between its death and its complete rot, be that something a carrot or a cow. In doing so, we will always have an impact on the world. The question isn’t whether growing food (or foraging or hunting or fishing) damages the world. The question needs to be if we can repair the damage we do when we grow (or find) food. We need to ask, ‘Is what we consume sustainable in the true sense of the word? Can we keep doing what we do now forever?’ This doesn’t just come down to the food we eat, but to the ecosystems that nourish us and the population we want to sustain. The global population, now 7.8 billion, is forecast to hit about 9.6 billion by mid-­century. So let’s take feeding 10 billion people as the medium-­term goal. We already produce

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 96 11/12/20 1:36 pm Matthew Evans: Eating for the climate 97

enough food for about 11 billion. We waste about 40 per cent of it. If we stopped wasting food and kept our yields stable and our farming land in good repair, we’d already have hit the mark. The difficulty is that we will continue to waste food. And we also don’t seem to have the political will to get the food we do produce to all the people who need it – not just in quantity, but in nutrient density. (Up to three billion people suffer some kind of micronutrient deficiency, most notably in iron and vitamin A.) Tragically, barring some unforeseen political upheaval on a global scale, problems with both waste and distribution are unlikely to magically resolve. So we need to grow more, and grow it better. Most food, about 70 per cent globally, is grown on small farms. These farms are often mixed, which means they grow crops and raise livestock. Most food is grown by women. And a lot of farming, small and large scale, has had a bad impact on the land that feeds us. We’re losing topsoil, the bit that does all the world’s growing, at a remarkable rate. Some estimates suggest that for every breakfast, lunch and dinner every one of us eats, nine kilograms of topsoil are lost. That’s often because we haven’t concentrated on feeding soil, which is the thing that feeds us. And soil won’t thank us for the slight. If we’re losing topsoil, what are we doing wrong? Well, bare earth is obviously the worst thing you can do for soil, and that bare earth includes land that’s overgrazed by livestock. Every time you plough the ground – turn it over to grow vegetables or grain or pulses – you actually leave it even more open to erosion than grazing. Raindrops hit the ground at up to thirty kilometres an hour. It’s estimated that the energy of annual rainfall on a hectare of land is equivalent to the explosive force of fifty tonnes of TNT. And bare earth isn’t just washed away – it’s also easily blown away. If you plough, you lose topsoil one hundred times faster than it’s made, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If you grow crops using a no-­till method, which means directly drilling seeds into the ground instead of ploughing, you can still lose topsoil ten to twenty times faster than it’s made. Growing annual crops is, by definition, unsustainable the way we’re currently doing it. Another, perhaps worse, issue is the loss of carbon from soil. Soil holds more carbon than all the plants, animals and atmosphere combined. There’s three times more carbon in soil than in atmosphere, and four-­and-­a-­half times more than in all living things. And that’s after about half the carbon in soil

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 97 11/12/20 1:36 pm 98 GriffithReview71

has been lost from agricultural land since we started ploughing. Carbon, the same stuff that’s in carbon dioxide, is the same carbon in carbohydrate (sugars), protein and fat. It’s the same carbon that cycles from the ocean to the air, to plants, to animals, to soil and around again. But more carbon in the soil, unlike more in the air, is usually a good thing. The origin of all energy on earth is the sun, and plants capture that energy and convert it into a form we can use, sugars, through photosynthe- sis. Plants make sugar out of thin air, using carbon from carbon dioxide and hydrogen and oxygen from water. They give some of that sugar to things in the ground. Carbon in soil can take the form of humus, the magical dark part of topsoil that holds moisture in the land. It can take the form of fungal threads, with their soil superglue, glomalin, that gives soil structure. There can be ten kilometres of these fungal hyphae in a single teaspoon of healthy soil. Carbon in soil is trapped in the bodies of microbes. It not only becomes food for that soil life as the microbes eat each other, but also creates a better home for the trillions of bacteria, protists, nematodes and algae that inhabit every square metre of the earth. Carbon in soil is good for soil health, good for soil fertility and good for soil resilience. If you look at pretty much any research on how to restore at least some of the carbon that has been lost from arable land, the sort you grow crops on, then the first suggestion is to turn it into pasture. Pasture helps feed soil, as grasses convert carbon dioxide into sugar. And grasslands need grazing to trigger growth, which in turn can store more carbon. So land that has been used for crops (vegetables, grain, pulses) is improved if it’s turned into pasture. We can’t digest the cellulose in grass. But ruminants can. They ferment the cellulose and can thus turn grass into energy for themselves. This energy means they can become meat and milk for us. They become a conduit for nutrition. They can also convert plants such as barley and wheat stalks into human-­grade, nutrient-dense­ food. One of the downsides of ruminants is that this very wonderful conver- sion of cellulose into food we can digest comes at a cost. Much of the energy stored in the cellulose is converted to methane, not meat. And methane, as we’re all learning as we become more climate conscious, is a powerful green- house gas. By some estimates, it’s about twenty-­eight times more warming than carbon dioxide. But a group from the Oxford Martin School in the UK now estimates – by looking less at theoretical results and more at its actual

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 98 11/12/20 1:36 pm Matthew Evans: Eating for the climate 99

effect – that methane is about eight times more warming. Which just means it’s less bad, in theory. But methane only lasts in the environment for about a decade, as opposed to carbon dioxide’s hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And the carbon in the methane from the grass a cow ate, which was breathed out, was previously in the air, not locked away in the form of fossil fuels. It’s carbon that is in a constant state of flux in the soil/ocean/plant/animal/atmosphere cycle. Methane’s short life means that if we don’t increase our herd, then we won’t cause an atmospheric rise in methane, and there will be a negli- gible effect on warming. While ruminant numbers have stagnated in recent decades, atmospheric methane has kept climbing. So if cows and sheep and goats aren’t to blame, where’s the increase coming from? The answer, as is often the case, is fossil fuels.

WHEN YOU DIG coal, when you extract gas and when you frack, you release methane. This is new carbon in the modern world, carbon that hasn’t been in the atmosphere since long before the emergence of humans. Much of it has been stashed away underground for 300 million years, from a time when dragonflies were a metre in wingspan and mammals didn’t exist. A time when atmospheric carbon dioxide was multiple times what it is today. This was the appropriately named ‘carboniferous’ period, when rampant plant and algae growth meant that dead plants piled up – they couldn’t rot quickly enough and a whole heap got trapped underground, compressed and turned into energy-­dense fuel. Oil and coal and gas are made from fossilised plants, essentially. Hence the name fossil fuels. Even the gas industry’s own figures support the contribution of fossil fuels to atmospheric methane levels. In 2015 it was estimated that the gas industry released seventy-­six million tonnes of methane. By comparison, it’s estimated that the world’s 1.5 billion cattle produced between 105 and 180 million tonnes in the same period. One is new carbon going into the atmosphere, the other is (potentially) cyclical carbon. When I say potentially, that maths only works if you don’t feed cows something grown using fossil fuels, like grain or artificially fertilised pasture. You can point the finger of blame at ruminants all you like, but they’ve been around a long time, and fracking hasn’t. If methane levels are rising, fossil- ­fuel extraction is the cause. Even so, we could kill all the ruminants and

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 99 11/12/20 1:36 pm 100 GriffithReview71

keep fracking. This would cause a one-­off cooling event, but after ten years (the lifespan of all the methane that would be emitted from the ruminants alive today) we’d be back to square one. Except without ruminants to turn cellulose into human-­grade food. Ruminants can do something else fracking can’t, and something grains and vegetables really struggle to do: store carbon in soil. Soil carbon could well be a huge aid in slowing climate change. According to an initiative spear- headed by the former French Minister for Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll, if all the world’s human-­managed soils absorbed just 0.4 per cent more carbon, we could offset a year’s worth of fossil-­fuel emissions, buying ourselves some time to transition away from their use. Far from hurting the climate, livestock has the potential to store carbon far more easily than crops. Growing rice, for instance, emits as much methane as the equivalent carbon dioxide from 1,200 coal-­fired power stations. And rice doesn’t usually store carbon in the soil when it’s grown. We also need to take account of the only way we know how to get rid of atmospheric methane. Most is broken down by sunlight, which we have no control over. But about 20 per cent is broken down by methanotrophs, microbes that live in soil and consume methane. They do better under soil where methane is emitted (grazing land), and they do very badly in ploughed land. The best way to increase methanotrophs is to have healthy soil. We could cover all our land with forests, which might help, but we’d not grow a lot of food in the process. The problem with many simplistic arguments around climate solutions, such as adopting a one-­size-­fits-­all diet, is that they ignore topsoil. They ignore communities. And they ignore the complexity of the food system. For instance, because many of us don’t want to eat animal fat anymore, much of the 540,000 tonnes of beef fat (tallow) Australia produces annually is used for industrial purposes instead. But at the same time, about 95 per cent of the oil from the soybeans grown around the world (including those in the Amazon) is fed to humans. The soy pulp, in a strange dichotomy, is considered food waste and fed to livestock. Then there’s our dependence on palm oil. Clearing for palm planta- tions is devastating ecosystems in high-­rainfall areas throughout South-­East Asia. In 2015, Indonesia cleared more than six million acres of rainforest and upended its carbon-­rich peat land mostly to plant palm. Emissions from

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 100 11/12/20 1:36 pm Matthew Evans: Eating for the climate 101

clearing Indonesian rainforest have at times exceeded all the emissions from the US economy. So replacing beef fat in biscuits, frying oil or pastry with ‘vegetable’ oil (almost invariably soy or palm) is an unseen ecological disaster.

DIETS NEED TO reflect place. Farms are ecosystems, reliant on soil. All terrestrial ecosystems need animals, either wild or domesticated, to function, from the soil up. Where you live, it may make environmental sense to avoid all meat, because that role of cycling nutrients in the ecosystem can be filled by birds or lizards or insects. In other places, that won’t be the case. But the concept of veganism as somehow above reproach has no basis in science. Diet options and their effect on the climate are more nuanced than simply avoiding a whole food group. Of course processed, transported food has its own costs. It’s been noted by some researchers that the vegan diet might not have the lowest environmental footprint. That’s because, as a 2019 review of vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous diets by the University of Copenhagen puts it, ‘vegans tend to replace animal-­based products in their diet by industri- ally, highly processed plant-­based meats and dairy substitutes.’ Most of the world’s food, as we saw, is grown on small farms. Many of those use animals to upcycle waste – the things we humans don’t, can’t or won’t eat. Originally, pigs and chickens were recyclers, turning garden waste or leftover milk into meat or eggs. Nowadays we grow grain specifically for them to eat. But to say going vegan is best for everybody, for every farming system, for every community, is an oversimplification. Research out of the US shows that a vegan diet, or a diet very low in meat products, could indeed reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But modelling also shows that a completely animal-­free diet could only reduce America’s total emissions by about 2.6 per cent, while at the same time leading to more micronutrient deficiencies (calcium, fatty acids, vitamins A and B12). Already in the US, which is usually a decade or two in front of Australia, over half the calories consumed come from hyper-­processed foods. Junk food. And much of that is plant based, from the three grains that provide half the world’s calories: wheat, rice and corn. The growing of these grains is generally extrac- tive, and releases soil carbon. Research suggests a diet that excludes animal products will focus even more on these grains, meaning an oversupply of calories compared with micronutrients. That’s bad news in the diet stakes, when rates of type 2 diabetes and other non-­communicable diseases that can be caused by what we eat are skyrocketing.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 101 11/12/20 1:36 pm 102 GriffithReview71

I think it’s up to the individual to frame their diet the way they think is best. For some that means abstaining from all animal products. For some that means being an omnivore. But making those decisions should be based on sound science, not on soundbites. Poore and Nemecek’s paper hit the headlines and is frequently used as evidence to support removing all animals from farming systems. Those who work in the field of growing food, especially in vulnerable, poorer nations, know it’s more complicated than a single review. They know that animals are part of the solution, but only if they’re managed right. There are lots of ways to eat for the climate. Buying local may well be one. Every time something has been trucked, it adds to the environmental cost. Air-­freighted food is worse still, having about one hundred times more greenhouse gas emissions than things sent by boat or land. Eating less meat, for many of us in affluent nations, may be another way to reduce our impact. So could eating meat, as the IPCC recommends, that comes from sustainable, low greenhouse gas emitting farms. What that looks like might vary from place to place. For instance, research shows that organic meat is less damaging than many greenhouse-­grown vegetables. Ruminants that eat grass, grown on land that can’t be used for crops, that doesn’t have fossil fuel-­derived fertiliser put on it, is probably about as low impact as possible. Pigs and chickens raised on a mixed diet, including waste from the human food chain, would be considered low emission. And it should be noted that many of the world’s nutrient deficiencies, such as anaemia and vitamin A deficiency, are tied to low protein consumption and are more readily fixed with the intake of meat. Some of us eat so much meat that our impact on the globe is actually unsustainable. Australia, for instance, eats a diet with a high environmental cost, both in terms of unsustainable meat and processed foods. In fact, if the whole world chose to eat like us, it would take 1.6 worlds to feed it. And we don’t have 1.6 worlds to farm. We do have both animal-­ and plant-­based farming systems that are bad for the Earth. But neither growing grains nor growing livestock is good or evil by definition. Eating industrially produced meat probably is bad for the climate, but eating no meat isn’t a guarantee of sainthood, to stay with the language of belief systems. All farming, all humans, all plants and animals rely on the thin veneer of topsoil that does the entirety of the world’s growing.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 102 11/12/20 1:36 pm Matthew Evans: Eating for the climate 103

Caring for that, while marrying community concerns, environmental imper- atives and dietary necessity, should be the goal, not focusing on arbitrary lifestyle choices. If you want to eat for the climate, buy from a farmer who puts the land first. Who cares for the soil. Who feeds the earth that feeds us. Buy from those who are trying to regenerate landscapes, to heal some of the harm caused by farming before we knew better. There are wonderful growers out there producing nutrient-­dense food without ruining the world. Fresh, seasonal and local food is better than processed, whether or not you eat something that came from an animal. It’s as boring as the advice your mother gave you when she suggested you eat your greens, but just as valid. Eat a balanced diet. Buy produce at its peak. It isn’t as catchy as ‘give up meat to save the world’, but it does have more evidence to back it up.

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Matthew Evans is a chef, farmer and writer who runs a mixed smallholding, Fat Pig Farm, in southern Tasmania, where the produce is grown on site to serve in his farm-­based restaurant. He’s the author of more than a dozen books on food, including On Eating Meat (Murdoch Books, 2019) and The Commons (Hardie Grant, 2019). He’s currently writing a book, Soil, due out in July 2021.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 103 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY It’s more than just the fruit Consequences of climate change on Australian agriculture Robin E Roberts

MANGOES ARE DEEPLY embedded in my childhood. Even now the smell or taste of the fruit connects me instantly to hot summers in Brisbane. I can see myself as a seven-­year-­old sitting under the sprinkler with mango juice running through my fingers, fighting my siblings for the seed. Sweet, sticky mangoes signalled that summer had begun, school was over and holidays had started. Mangoes just seemed to arrive – and in abundance. How that happened, of course, meant nothing to me. Looking back, I think my lifelong passion for mangoes began to bud in that time. For over a decade, I have been working with mango industries as a social scientist to understand purchasing attitudes towards mangoes in Australia, Hong Kong, China and, more recently, across five South-­East Asian countries. While consumer demand for mangoes is increasing across the region, and my work with the industry sector is dynamic, it’s not all good news. Farmers have been struggling to manage the impacts of a changing climate on annual mango crops that have already resulted in fewer mangoes for the Australian season. I see this when I go into a supermarket, an independent grocer or a farmers’ market: mangoes are not arriving with the abundance they did when I was a child. If I was unaware of the mechanics of mango supply as a child, the issue is now front and centre for me. The mango is considered by many as an essential summer fruit, and its popularity continues to grow in Australia and South-­East Asia. However, this

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 104 11/12/20 1:36 pm Robin E Roberts: It’s more than just the fruit 105

‘king of fruits’ is under threat from the effects of climate change. Mangoes prefer tropical climates where cool, dry, frost-­free winters bring on flowering, and humid, hot summers produce fruiting. The emergence of fruit on trees in Australia follows the arrival of summer across the continent in the later months of the year, first in Darwin, then in northern Western Australia, and then North Queensland and down the eastern seaboard. These three regions are characteristically Australia’s major mango regions. Typically, tiny pink flowers, known as panicles, appear on mango trees across tropical and subtropical Australia in late May and June each year. For farmers, this signals the start of the pre-­season. In the lead-­up to flowering, a farmer in far northern Australia growing Kensington Pride or R2E2 mangoes will be preparing their orchard. Around this time, fertilising soil – which ensures healthy flowering rates – takes up much of the farmer’s day as the weather begins to cool. In the last decade, these flowers have been appearing later, and at a lower rate, than usual. As overall temperatures increase due to climate change – and hotter weather arrives earlier in the year – we might expect the mango season to start earlier. But mango production also depends on the cooler weather in winter months to induce tree flowering – and cooler weather is arriving later, and lasting for shorter periods, in northern Australia. The increase in average temperatures in northern Australia – indeed, across the world on average and in some equatorial locations especially – means that summer is arriving earlier, and winter is arriving later. Mango flowering is induced by low temperatures at night and can be inhibited by high temperatures during the day. Which means that if cool durations are not long enough, trees can produce vegetative growth instead of flower panicles. This year, in the north-­ west of Australia, flowering did not occur until August. Impacts from such climate changes are significant. Yields are ­decreasing, production costs per mango are rising and overall farm productivity is greatly reduced. Many farmers are now questioning the economic ­viability of their mango orchards. The loss of industry and livelihoods is driving significant change, impacting the varieties farmers grow, new genetics, micro- ­environmental manipulation and the location of orchards across Australia. For instance, farmers in the Top End of Australia are losing out as mango farming begins to migrate south to align with the required climate

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 105 11/12/20 1:36 pm 106 GriffithReview71

conditions. We’re now seeing production in areas previously considered warm temperate regions, such as Gingin, one hour north of Perth, and Harvey, two hours south of Perth (at 33 degrees south of the equator, roughly on par with Sydney) in southern Western Australia, with ideal growing conditions. There, the climate is described as Mediterranean (warm temperate) with hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters. Fifteen years ago, a farmer here planted 250 trees and for the last six years the trees have fruited – to everyone’s surprise. This farm is now a viable mango producer. But these apparent successes in new growing regions do not mitigate the overall negative consequences of a changing climate. CSIRO ­researchers studying climate change and horticulture in northern Australia have been monitoring increases in the rate and range of temperature change for a number of years. One of their priorities has been to identify the temperature triggers for mango flowering and fruit set in order to understand the variability of fruit growth. Now, mango growers are working with this research to plan for and respond to the increasingly variable seasons. New varietals are being developed and climate projected threshold data sets are being used to inform the geographical relocation of orchards.

SUCH RESEARCH WORK and changes in farming practices are playing out across agricultural industries in Australia and around the world. As temperatures fluctuate and become more extreme, natural disasters are becoming more likely and more devastating, and the all-­important resource for producing food – water – is becoming scarce. This has significant impacts on when and where we can produce food, and how much is available to service regular supply lines. Greater temperature extremes mean more frequent and longer-lasting heatwaves, which impact the agricultural sector in a number of ways. One prominent recent example is the impact of bushfires and heatwave condi- tions on milk supply in Victoria in 2019–20. Record-­breaking temperatures and extended periods of severe drought amplified that series of mega-­fires across southern Australia, and milk supplies during this period were severely compromised. Apart from the loss of stock, the fires destroyed fodder and farm infrastructure. Cows have to be fed and cows have to be milked, sometimes twice a day. In these catastrophic conditions, some cows were not milked for up to sixty hours, damaging cow health and halting supply – and

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 106 11/12/20 1:36 pm Robin E Roberts: It’s more than just the fruit 107

during this period milk supplies very nearly ran out in Gippsland, Victoria and on the south coast of New South Wales. Mangoes are another organism that’s sensitive to temperature. After flowering has been triggered at the required minimum temperature, an orchard needs to avoid extreme heat or the trees will not fruit. Climate change projections suggest traditional mango-­growing regions will get a lot warmer in the coming decades. Of course, rising temperature also affects rainfall and water distribution. Dorothea Mackellar famously described Australia as a land of ‘droughts and flooding rains’ – this is as true as ever; however, the length and nature of these droughts and rains are changing with the temperature. Progressively higher temperatures in Australia are directly linked to climate change and extreme weather events. Climate modelling projections show, although not conclusively, that heavy rainfall events – including torrential downpours and hail storms across the country – will increase in the next twenty years. As a consequence of climate change, droughts will be more regular, perhaps longer in duration and apply more broadly across the country. This will mean that farmers and those living in rural areas are likely to experience drought more often. Some communities that have been living with drought over several generations will live to see it intensify. Given that the impact of drought is directly linked to farm productivity and profitability, the conse- quences are dire for farming, businesses and communities. In the mid-­2000s, the CSIRO research program Water for a Healthy Country advanced the national conversation on the impacts of climate- change- ­induced water scarcity on agricultural production. They found that changes in water scarcity would directly affect food security due to variable supply of fresh produce to domestic and export markets, changes in avail- ability, and changes in prices paid by retailers and consumers. The effects of this have already been particularly evident in Australia’s key wheat- ­and rice- ­producing areas in the southern parts of the country. In winter/spring periods, crops in these regions are dependent on seasonal rains. But as the climate warms, these regions have effectively dried out, as seasonal rainfall patterns have altered. In particular, this has been evident in south-­west Western Australia, where annual rainfall decreases of approximately one fifth (compared with the previous seventy-­year period) have been observed

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 107 11/12/20 1:36 pm 108 GriffithReview71

since the 1970s. In 2018, this decline increased to more than a quarter. Core cereal regions – once significant commodity producers – are now in a downward spiral. Another particularly notable impact of climate change on food production – and on the environment more generally in Australia – is the worsening of bushfires. Unplanned, out-­of-­control fires, such as those that made inter­national headlines in summer 2019–20, have a devastating impact on Australia’s wilderness and wildlife. Bushfires shock natural ecosystems and biological communities, change plant composition, and reduce growth and the c­arrying capability in the next season. Specifically, the impacts on pasture will differ with the intensity of the heat, fertility of the soil and subse- quent rains. Researchers categorise pasture recovery against three levels of fire intensity that explore how hot a fire was and for how long. In cool–­ moderate burns, most plant material is burnt with some seed and subterranean clover ­surviving. In hot burns, all plant material and many seeds are burnt, with the topsoil usually presenting as charred. Finally, in very hot burns, the soil is – for all intents and purposes – sterilised. All plants and seeds are destroyed along with the top organic matter layer of the soil. In the long term, in very hot burns, a pasture does not gain any additional nutrients as a result of the fire. Original density has to be returned – paddocks need to be heavily harrowed to unearth buried seed and improve germination, sow new pasture seed and leave off livestock for a season – to improve recovery. In addition to these obvious effects, other unanticipated and more novel consequences emerge from such unprecedented disasters. The 2019–20 Australian bushfires produced incredible amounts of smoke, which at their peak travelled as far as Chile and Argentina. Locally, the smoke drastically worsened air quality, even in urban areas untouched by the flames. It also affected grape growers and wine producers across the country. While the total loss of vines to fire was diminutive (less than 1 per cent), the extent of the smoke damage to grapes was widespread and significant (as at January 2020, this equated to 4 per cent – or 60,000 tonnes – of the national grape crop). In fact, bushfire smoke travelled to, and lingered on in, wine-­growing regions as far-­spread as the Huon Valley, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Smoke adversely affects the quality and taste of grapes by interfering with the sugars and compounds of the fruit, and this will result in wines with the notably undesirable flavour profile of an ashtray.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 108 11/12/20 1:36 pm Robin E Roberts: It’s more than just the fruit 109

It is beyond question that these issues – water scarcity in particular – will drive national agricultural productivity downwards, and this will directly impact regional and, ultimately, global food trade. However, broad economic and political engagement with these effects is worryingly low, a consequence of improved commodity pricing, changes in supply chains, and financial support for irrigators that currently allow the management or reduction of climate change impacts to improve productivity. While these short-­term fixes have provided some relief for a struggling industry, refusing to acknowledge and address ongoing underlying issues, including changes in rainfall patterns and water allocations, poses substantial medium- ­and longer-term threats to agribusinesses nationally and, consequently, to trading and food security issues in domestic and regional markets.

I CAN ONLY describe the production-­side impacts of climate change on agriculture in Australia very briefly here. These issues are most often the focus of political manoeuvring and media coverage; they feature in ­environmental assessments and government reports. Less discussed are the ways climate change is impacting the experience of consumers, in terms of which products are available to consumers and how consumers’ decisions are affected by an understanding of climate change and its impacts. The economic – as well as environmental and social – impact of climate change is profound and undoubted. An increasingly variable climate impacts the confidence of consumers – and, therefore, their buying choices and ­spending patterns. Consumer confidence in services and goods is also being put to the test. As climate change is now considered a financial risk, the growing demand for services provided by publicly listed companies to disclose the risks that climate change poses to businesses and consumers is critical. Consumers are increasingly aware of sustainability (such as sourcing local products and energy-­saving initiatives) and give preference to businesses that adopt initiatives that seek to reduce or prevent the impact of climate change. The implication of this is that consumers reward businesses with loyalty if they deem that business to be ethical. Though most of us might not be aware of it, the impacts of climate change can already be felt in supermarket grocery aisles. The volume of the mango crop available during summer is already declining as regions warm up and experience increasingly varied rainfall events. This decrease in

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 109 11/12/20 1:36 pm 110 GriffithReview71

volume, as with any consumer product, leads to an increase in price – which, for mangoes, is amplified as the season progresses from October through to March. Other iconic and staple foods are also already affected, including beef and lamb, other seasonal fruits, and red and white wines. In 2006, Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry made landfall in Far North Queensland, wreaking widespread destruction – including to almost 90 per cent of the country’s banana crops. This resulted in a 500 per cent price increase and affected supply for almost a year. While cyclones are a common seasonal occurrence in Queensland, they are also another weather event predicted to become more frequent and more severe with the changing climate. Intense droughts are also reflected in food prices. In the first three months of 2020, consumer prices in Australia rose 0.3 per cent, but annual food prices went up 2.2 per cent – to a five-­and-­a-­half-­year high. A combination of supply challenges (drought, bushfires and cyclones) and consumer hardship (rates of unemployment and increased price points due to the COVID-­19 pandemic) saw April 2020 register as one of the worst retail periods in history. By late March, the shutdown of non-­essential services and enforced trading restric- tions due to the pandemic revealed a strikingly different story in the jobs and labour market statistics. Unemployment had increased to 13.7 per cent (1.8 million people) and the collective unemployed and underemployed had risen to 19.9 per cent. Fall in consumption was notable in food c­ ategories – with the exception of the ‘meals out and takeaway’ category. The sharpest price rise in agriculture products was seen in vegetables. For instance, broccoli and green beans – staple food items in many households – experienced a 9.1 per cent increase over the first quarter of 2020, putting their pricing well beyond the means of many consumers during a period of economic hardship. Everyday fresh fruit prices rose 2.4 per cent, while beef and lamb rose 3.5 and 2.8 per cent, respectively. While consumer preferences and behaviours are being altered by forces beyond their control, some of the key drivers for these changes are personal. As purchasing habits change, there is increased awareness of issues including food waste in supply chains and dietary health. In 2018, the ABC series War on Waste provided an important source of coverage for the many avenues of consumer waste, sparking moral outrage at our collective apathy and a renewed interest in reducing, reusing and recycling. But that apathy wasn’t total: the Australian Government’s

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 110 11/12/20 1:36 pm Robin E Roberts: It’s more than just the fruit 111

National Food Waste Strategy – in place since 2017 – aims to halve the nation’s food waste by 2030 by ensuring sustainable consumption is linked directly to production. This strategy is explicitly connected with the United Nations’ program Transforming Our World: 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and speaks to Australia’s obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The plan aims to divert food waste away from landfill and, nationally, to develop a sophisticated and technologically supported approach to food waste that links to production, processing, supply and retailing of fresh and processed food products. As well as the development of tools to make better choices for producing, purchasing and consuming, food rescue charities and like-­ minded groups have redirected food products into channels that provide productive and affordable sources of supply for those more vulnerable in our communities. In 2020, Australia’s food waste and loss were estimated at over $20 billion a year and near 1.3 billion tonnes. With the disposal of food stuffs in landfill clearly linked to the production of greenhouse gas emissions, opportunities to repurpose or avoid waste have emerged in new studies of the ‘circular economy’. One illustrative example came with grapes damaged by the 2019–20 bushfires. Smoke taint affected the fruit for two to three months following the bushfires, which led to significant losses for many growers. However, in the Huon Valley in Tasmania, the Hartzview Vineyard picked their smoke-­tainted fruit and removed the skins, usually kept for soaking and fermenting to bring about the rich pinot colour. Removing the use of sulphur, the usual compound for distillation, they raised the alcohol level to 18 per cent per volume and applied a fortifying approach. The base was stable, providing time to consider the type of product that could be produced. The outcome was a rosé brandy, a delightful fortified product, repurposed for sale. While individual action is important, significant short-­term changes to the practice of food production require new and innovative strategies. A top- ­down approach, backed by government policy, is needed not only to spur the process along, but also to contribute to raising public awareness of the quantity and value of food waste. Consumer preference is also impacted by the intersection of personal and planetary health. In Our Food in the Anthropocene: Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, Professor Walter Willet from the Harvard School of Public

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 111 11/12/20 1:36 pm 112 GriffithReview71

Health argues that by 2050 we will need to double our consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, and reduce our red meat and sugar consump- tion by more than half. A diet that is rich in plant-­based foods, with fewer animal- ­sourced foods, will directly improve our environment and our health. Unhealthy diets now pose a greater risk to life than alcohol, drug and tobacco use, collectively. In developed countries, the shift towards healthier diets is occurring more rapidly, driven by government initiatives, dietary trends, community health and lifestyle programs, and consumer preferences for non-­animal protein alternatives. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has estimated that more than a quarter of the world’s population will require access to plant-­based proteins by 2050. Plant- ­based proteins are not only valued for their nutritional qualities and their ability to repair nitrogen and enhance soil health, but also for their potential to deliver profitability in an ailing grains sector. Australia produces, on average, 2.6 million tonnes of pulses, which equates to $3.6 billion for the national economy. The new Australian Government ten-­year pulse protein project seeks to raise the country’s value chain from production on-farm through to consumers by building new capabilities across this food sector for Australia.

THE PULSE PROJECT is just one of a variety of adaptations required in our food systems that will generate changes in our food consumption patterns and lifestyles. These adaptations will be widespread and complex in the agricultural sector in Australia and globally, impacting the types of food products available. This not only affects farmers and their communities as well as local, national and global trade; it will also affect Australian culture, as foods that once marked seasons and times of celebration become increasingly difficult to produce. The mango industry has been observing these changes for some time, and there have already been efforts to ensure the continuation of supply in Australia. Given that common Australian mango varieties, such as Kensington Pride, are sensitive to the changing climate, a joint venture between CSIRO, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland has worked together under the National Mango Breeding Program since the mid-­1990s to cultivate new, more resilient varieties with climate-­adaptive traits. These new varieties, at an early stage of development, are known only by

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 112 11/12/20 1:36 pm Robin E Roberts: It’s more than just the fruit 113

their numbers –1243, 1201 and 4609 – but commercial names will emerge when their branding phase is complete. The traits of these new mangoes will provide opportunities to grow early-­season and late-­season varieties, as well as ­varieties with a more robust capacity to travel to domestic and international markets undamaged, ensuring our traditional ‘taste of summer’ doesn’t disappoint. Mangoes are not the only fruit that needs to change. A study by the University of Melbourne revealed that by 2030 the winters in places including Manjimup, Western Australia, and Applethorpe, Queensland, may be too temperate to support current apple and pear production. Consequently, some growers are adapting orchards to cope with significant sun damage during days of extreme heat. New varieties are being bred, such as Golden Delicious apples, which require fewer cooler days. Without enough cooler weather, spring flowering will be limited, and this in turn will mean less availability in- ­store and less profitability for the farmer. Conversely, increasing heatwaves have seen a variety of the traditional Royal Gala apple bred to withstand the January and February summer season. Adaptive practice, industry and policy support, coupled with consumer awareness: all are required in the face of an inexorably changing climate. Inaction against climate change is leading us to a catastrophe – well beyond my own enjoyment of mangoes or the chance for future generations to appre- ciate this iconic Australian fruit, in all its new varieties, as part of the flavour of summer life.

Robin E Roberts is an agribusiness researcher with the Griffith Asia Institute. She is internationally recognised for a dedicated interest in Australia’s agriculture and food trade with Asian markets.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 113 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 114

Chloë Callistemon

urgent biophilia

wrist-deep in dirt for something less particular satisfaction more tasty than butter lettuce wilting kale curling towards sun cabbage grubs chew chew chewing cabbage butterflies pupating try a decoy moth mobile the bean vine sprints 10cm a day are carrots after carrots okay? a tender snap and crunch in sunset hues greens too fast for a single mouth a campaign to run against the grubs time yet to prevent the brassica massacre only carrots have orange skin here the parsley grove finally enough peas and beans go vine to mouth marigolds flame the gloaming moth mobiles flutter dusk possums pace the wire somewhere between intention and chance pulling a weed is in hand planting a seed is out of hand dirt under fingernails holds fast

Chloë Callistemon is a photographer, writer and multidisciplinarian whose poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including Cordite, Rabbit and Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 114 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Food insecurity in uncertain times Ways forward post-pandemic­ Bronwyn Fredericks and Abraham Bradfield

Wistfully she muses on / Something bartered, something gone / Songs of old remembered days / The walkabout, the old free ways / Blessed with everything she prized / Trained and safe and civilized / Much she has that they have not / But is hers the happier lot? / Lonely in her paradise / Cookalingee sits and cries ‘Cookalingee’, Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1981)

‘COOKALINGEE’, BY QUANDAMOOKA poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal, tells the story of fragmenting relationships within colonial frontiers. Working as a kitchenhand, Cookalingee, an Aboriginal woman, finds herself having to leave behind the ‘old free ways’ in hope of attaining the so-­called ‘safety’ and ‘civility’ that white society has ‘trained’ and ‘blessed’ upon her. It portrays a time when Aboriginal peoples were increasingly beholden to white resources and rations because of colonial dispossession and threats of violence. Cookalingee appears to adopt the ‘white man’s way’ in order to survive, but it comes at a cost. Entering the realm of the colonisers, Cookalingee cries – she is not only removed from kin, but also knows that in the eyes of the colonis- ers, she will remain something ‘other’. To escape a fate similar to Cookalingee’s, Indigenous Australians must have greater input and control over the policies that impact and govern their lives. COVID-­19 has exposed a pre-­existing and ongoing concern regarding Indigenous peoples’ access to affordable and healthy foods. But food insecurity is just one aspect of a wider narrative about Indigenous voice and Australia’s failure to include Indigenous perspectives in governing and policy-­making processes. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must be empowered

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 115 11/12/20 1:36 pm 116 GriffithReview71

with the means, finance and resources necessary to deliver the best outcomes for their communities. Access to affordable healthy food is a fundamental right recognised under the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Amid concerns about Australia’s capacity to feed itself during COVID-­19, the government emphasised the country’s position as one of the world’s top nations in terms of food security. This is based on indexes measuring undernourishment, afford- ability and availability. While it may be the case for the national average, analysing data pertaining to Indigenous Australians separately shows that the story of Australia’s food wealth is far from secure. In early 2020, the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council stated that approximately one third of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have faced food insecurity at some point in their lives, while 20 per cent had run out of food in the previous twelve months. Access to affordable, nutritious and fresh produce is particularly difficult for those who live in remote Australia – so it’s not surprising that only 8 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples meet the recommended daily vegetable intake, and only 54 per cent eat the recommended daily fruit intake. Poor nutrition coupled with excessive consumption of discretionary foods high in sugar, fat and salt contributes to health complications. This often leads to chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease, among others. Socioeconomic factors and the affordability of fresh food significantly impact what Indigenous peoples consume and what they are able to access. Dr Megan Ferguson and her colleagues conducted a study comparing the price of food baskets in urban supermarkets in Darwin and Adelaide and remote stores in the Northern Territory and South Australia, finding that products from remote locations cost an average of 60 per cent more. In addition to this, Indigenous peoples earn an average weekly income of $250 less than non- ­Indigenous Australians. This means that in remote Australia – where employment opportunities are scarce and reliance on welfare a necessity – people must stretch their income just to feed themselves and their family. Purchasing cheaper and often unhealthy processed foods is one way to achieve this. In 2008, one of the recommended targets of the Close the Gap initiative was to ensure that 90 per cent of Indigenous families could access a healthy

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 116 11/12/20 1:36 pm FREDERICKS and BRADFIELD: Food insecurity in uncertain times 117

food basket using less than a quarter of their income by 2018. Over a decade later, this has not been achieved, and problems relating to food affordability and access continue. In some cases, Indigenous peoples are paying up to 80 per cent of their entire income on food alone. Despite the government’s ongoing concerns about food insecurity, price differences between remote and urban stores remain. Geography and the logistics of supply and transportation contribute to high prices in remote areas – but wider socioeconomic determinants, govern- mental policies, infrastructure, profiteering, and a systemic failure to listen and respond to the needs of Aboriginal communities all impede Aboriginal communities’ capacity to access healthy and affordable foods. In settings such as Australia, Indigenous peoples’ dispossession from country, changes to diet, disconnection from traditional food practices, environmental harm, housing and overcrowding, and numerous other factors arising from colonisation also contribute to food insecurity.

IN THE WAKE of the pandemic, we find ourselves in a situation where Indigenous health – which is often compromised by pre-­existing (and preventable) health conditions – is placed at greater risk because the under- lying issues informing food insecurity and wider socioeconomic disparities haven’t been addressed. Pat Turner, CEO of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO), observes this in relation to Outback Stores, a government-­owned company servicing thirty-­ nine food and general stores across remote Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. In an interview for the ABC, Turner spoke of the government’s delayed and reactive response to food security that in some cases contributed to food shortages during the early days of the pandemic:

Given the fact that we have had Outback Stores for a long time and so on, I’m just really disappointed that the pre-­planning wasn’t done to ensure ready access to healthy and affordable food… Our people need access to fresh produce and they need, now more than ever, healthy food to keep their immunity system up.

While COVID-­19 took many by surprise, researchers and communities have been exposing food insecurity for many years. Government responses

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 117 11/12/20 1:36 pm 118 GriffithReview71

have lacked the foresight and structural framework needed to ensure that Indigenous peoples have an accessible, affordable and healthy food supply. The federal government is only now conducting an inquiry into food pricing and food security in remote Indigenous communities, as this topic has attracted heightened public exposure due to the pandemic. The inquiry is both overdue and timely, as the strategies employed to help curb the virus’s spread have on many occasions further inflamed and threatened food security and Indigenous peoples’ health. The restrictions imposed as a result of COVID-­19 have had numerous repercussions for often underfunded and under-­resourced services in remote and discrete communities. Greater pressure and financial strain has been placed on service delivery – particularly in healthcare, food provision and education – while available resources have had to be stretched to meet increas- ing demands and needs. Major disruptions to essential services such as schools have also emerged as a result of community lockdown. School closures in some areas have been inconvenient for many parents and educators; but for the majority of non- ­Indigenous Australians, it’s safe to say that these closures have probably not affected their ability to feed their families. For Indigenous peoples, school closures potentially deprive the access of students to the nutritional food programs some schools offer. Inability to access these programs combined with the unaffordability of food means that some have no option but to purchase cheaper, less healthy options or go without food altogether to ensure their money goes further. With limited financial capital and living outside their home communities, access to food has also been a major source of anxiety for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students. But the challenges associated with curbing the spread of ­COVID-­19 have forced state and federal governments to reassess many of their policies in relation to income support, caring for community members, employment and industrial relations. Ironically, in some cases, Aboriginal health and access to food have improved because certain pre-­Covid policies and programs have been suspended. This potentially points to how food security policies and practices may be reformed to achieve better outcomes for Indigenous Australians in a post-­pandemic setting. For example, according to anthropologist Professor Jon Altman, defer- ring the mutual obligations associated with the Community Development

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 118 11/12/20 1:36 pm FREDERICKS and BRADFIELD: Food insecurity in uncertain times 119

Program (CDP) means that putative penalties resulting in reduced or withheld welfare have ceased this year. Alongside temporary increases in welfare payments, this has enabled some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to re-­engage with country and customary food practices, contributing to greater food security, nutrition and transmission of cultural knowledge. The punitive penalties of the CDP and the inability of many Indigenous peoples to meet its requirements directly affect food security. Many research- ers and community members have expressed how such measures further enshrine poverty by depriving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of income for food and essential items. Post-­lockdown, it’s time to rethink welfare and government funding arrangements and frame them as a form of economic stimulus and investment in Indigenous healthcare and wellbeing. NACCHO observes that increased welfare has been crucial to improving the food security and health of those who are unemployed, particularly in remote communities. They estimate that these measures will increase the total income flowing to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in very remote areas by more than a quarter. Welfare, financial assistance and investment in Indigenous-­run initiatives can also provide significant returns by alleviating pressures placed on other industries and services, such as healthcare. Like many strategies that aim to address social disadvantage, investment in preventative health – including food security – is fiscally and morally responsible. Restrictions on movements in urban centres have resulted in many Indigenous peoples returning home to remote communities. Although this has increased pressure on already under-­resourced and overcrowded commu- nities, some have noted the positive aspects of Aboriginal peoples being on country during lockdown. For many Indigenous peoples, being on country is a form of rejuvenation and an aspect of health and wellbeing. It is a means of re-­engaging with place and building relationships. At a time when our everyday lives have been radically altered because of the pandemic, return- ing home has given many an opportunity to re-­centre themselves culturally and spiritually. In a piece for The Conversation, Professor Claire Smith and her colleagues quote the chair of the Sunrise Health Service Aboriginal Corporation in Barunga, Northern Territory, observing that ‘people are looking more healthy’ as a result of sourcing and consuming traditional

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 119 11/12/20 1:36 pm 120 GriffithReview71

foods. The increased consumption of traditional foods, as well as the physical activity of gathering it, has provided opportunities to reconnect to country and kin, which brings physical, mental and cultural benefits. However, in some cases, restrictions on movements and community lockdowns have prevented Indigenous peoples from returning to remote communities. The inability to access traditional foods has cut many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples off from a food source that may have been consumed regularly, or that was used to supplement unafford- able foods and groceries. This reiterates the necessity of incorporating traditional food practices – including sourcing, consumption and potential sale – in policies and strategies that aim to ensure food and economic security. Associate Professor Julie Brimblecombe and her colleagues note the necessity of incorporating traditional food systems within all frameworks that address food security and nutrition in Aboriginal communities. The pandemic has also emphasised the necessity of helping those in need through calls for greater philanthropic support. NACCHO and others have noted that in many cases, the crisis has strengthened relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider community. However, although the partnerships developed through philanthropic endeavours are welcome and necessary, they must not be reduced to one-­off charitable payouts. Food security depends on building the necessary resources, frameworks and infrastructure to continue partnerships well into the future. Food insecurity existed before COVID-­19, and still exists today. It is essential that the current food crisis is recognised as arising from systemic failures that have come under the spotlight as a result of COVID-­19 rather than being directly caused by it. The report of the 2017 Queensland Productivity Commission Inquiry into service delivery in remote and discrete communities states that Indigenous communities and their representative bodies must lead negotiations with governments and service providers, setting the terms and expectations of agreed-­upon outcomes. Large companies such as Coles and Woolworths, mining firms, and government and non-­government organ- isations alike have provided resources and assistance to many communities during the pandemic. But local community members and Indigenous-­run services have primarily been the most effective at identifying and responding to their community’s needs.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 120 11/12/20 1:36 pm FREDERICKS and BRADFIELD: Food insecurity in uncertain times 121

In ‘Reconciliation Week’, an article for The Conversation in May 2020, we noted, as have others, how Indigenous communities took the initiative long before government intervention, locking down and closing access roads while addressing service provision. Although many community members, leaders and health professionals saw the decision to lock down as necessary, it did pose additional consequences that further affected people’s access to affordable food. Indigenous communities are often forced to triage disadvantage in order to compromise and settle for the lesser of multiple evils. In this case, the risk posed to the community due to COVID-­19, particularly for Elders, was too great, meaning that access to cheaper food in more populated urban centres had to be cut off. Many communities needed to enforce lockdown measures because some community members broke social distancing to travel to cities, towns and regional centres in search of cheaper food. Those who were able to travel to populated areas with large supermar- kets faced the additional barrier of purchase limits. COVID-­19 has further emphasised a disconnect between remote communities and regional/urban centres. Confronted with the prospect of quarantining at home and restricted movement, many people in urban and regional areas began to hoard food, which significantly contributed to food shortages and supply-­chain disrup- tions. In response, supermarkets imposed buying limits. While this is an effective strategy for those who live close to a supermarket, it prevented people from remote communities – many of whom travel hundreds of kilometres to the nearest chain supermarket – from stockpiling supplies to cover several weeks or months. Dependence on what is often the only food store in a regional commu- nity is also affected by environmental and circumstantial factors, and Covid can exacerbate these. Food security in the community of Walgett in NSW, for example, was significantly threatened when the local IGA burnt down in 2019. Although a smaller store has since been built, it only received 26 per cent of ordered stock during the pandemic. This suggests a significant rupture in the supply chain and further highlights the vulnerabilities attached to having just one food source. In addition, a drought caused increased salt to leach into Walgett’s water supply, making it undrinkable. Community members were thus forced to rely on bottled water that had to be purchased and was in limited supply because of Covid panic buying. In other areas, flooding and environmental factors often block roads and hamper supply deliveries.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 121 11/12/20 1:36 pm 122 GriffithReview71

Climate, inferior infrastructure, lack of healthy water supply, inadequate sanitation services and unreliable power also affects a community’s ability to adequately store, refrigerate and prepare food in a safe manner. Only 6 per cent of houses in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland have the recommended infrastructure for safe food storage and preparation. An inability to safely stockpile food and resources during lockdowns is of particular concern. Locality, housing concerns such as overcrowding and infrastructure, access to healthcare and other services, and food security have all increased COVID-­19 risks, further intensifying an already dangerous and life-­threatening situation. The service provid- ers appointed to respond to issues such as housing, food and employment are primarily controlled and overseen by non-­Indigenous officials and are situated within white governing structures.

IN OODGEROO NOONUCCAL’S poem, Cookalingee occupies a space that exists on the borders of two worlds: that of the white settler and that of her own Aboriginal culture. Throughout the poem, Noonuccal presents the complexities of colonisation, assimilation and Indigenous sovereignty. Cookalingee’s adoption of the ‘white man’s way’ means that she has had to compromise on aspects of her own cultural identity, described as ‘something bartered, something gone’. Having entered the so-­called ‘paradise’ of the white world, Cookalingee hopes to share in all its bounties, but instead remains alienated. COVID- ­19 has highlighted numerous systemic failings and social disadvantages that have contributed to ineffective service provision and food insecurity for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Achieving food security by ensuring equitable and affordable access is undoubtedly a key issue that has faced greater pressures as a result of COVID-­19. But concerns over access to healthy and affordable food and the prevalence of food insecurity are nothing new. Discussed by Indigenous commentators, experts and community members in copious reports, investigations, news articles, social media posts and academic works, food insecurity is part of an ongoing discourse relating to voice, representation and Indigenous peoples’ exclusion from the matters that impact their lives, families and communities. Despite the challenges of COVID-­19, we must continue to demand that governments are responsive and accountable to Indigenous peoples. The

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 122 11/12/20 1:36 pm FREDERICKS and BRADFIELD: Food insecurity in uncertain times 123

ongoing push to enact the Uluru Statement from the Heart and establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament demonstrates the unswaying and uncompro- mising call for Indigenous representation and participation in the policies that affect their lives. For better or worse, many Indigenous peoples have accepted that they must work within existing governing structures in order to create real systemic change. Their voices are key to developing and implementing responsive and culturally appropriate policies that may help address numerous areas of disadvantage, including food insecurity. Indigenous peoples will never forget the ‘songs of old remembered days’, which will continue to inform their past, present and future. But Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ inclusion must not be tainted by the assimilationist condition that they barter away their culture, sovereignty and eternal place as Australia’s First Peoples. Ultimately, through constitutional reforms, Indigenous peoples can have their voices acknowledged and work with governments to achieve systemic and structural change. Enshrining Indigenous voices within decision and policy-­making practices will create new opportunities and possibilities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-­Indigenous peoples and will ultimately contribute to wider reconciliation.

Professor Bronwyn Fredericks is the Pro-­Vice-­Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at The University of Queensland.

Dr Abraham Bradfield is an early career researcher and a research assistant with the Office of the Pro-­Vice Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at The University of Queensland.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 123 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Sitting with difficult things Meaningful action in contested times Sophie Cunningham

AS A CHILD in the early 1970s I would sometimes overhear my parents discussing how much commercial television I should be allowed to watch. The shows in question included Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space and The Brady Bunch. Even though I was only eight years old, I remember being mildly interested in the argument. I understood that what was at stake was a genuine concern for the kind of person I’d grow up to be. But imagine the conversations that started when you were eight years old were still going. The shows being discussed stopped being made decades ago. You’re almost sixty. And the conversation has escalated to an intractable argument. I appreciate the obvious: this forced anecdote has a limited value in today’s overheated political (and actual) climate. Watching The Brady Bunch wasn’t going to kill me, let alone millions of humans, as temperature rises of 2 degrees Celsius or more will. But nonetheless it’s the analogy that came to mind when I was at the Byron Writers Festival in 2019 and someone asked scientist and writer Tim Flannery about Australia’s chance of meeting its targets for the Paris Agreement. Flannery went on to answer in such a way as to indicate that the situation we are facing is so much more serious, it renders that perfectly sensible question irrelevant. This is my cynical take on the situation – a cynicism bolstered by the fact that since the Paris Agreement was signed, Australia’s big four banks have financed new fossil fuel projects that will cancel out the national emissions-­ reduction target twenty-­one times over. The targets were inadequate in the first place; they are unlikely to be met; our rapidly over-­heating atmosphere

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 124 11/12/20 1:36 pm Sophie Cunningham: Sitting with difficult things 125

gives precisely no fucks about some complicated equation involving ‘extra points’ and ‘Kyoto Protocols’, nor various other statements made in bad faith. Novelist Kim Stanley Robinson disagrees with me though, and I’m always pleased to read positive takes on the current situation. ‘The Paris Agreement is crucial. It’s a major event in world history. It could turn into the League of Nations, in which case we’re screwed. Or it could turn into something new in history, a way to decarbonise without playing the zero-­ sum game of nation against nation.’ We need Robinson’s capacity to see the positives because – and I’m quoting from a paper by CSIRO’s Russ Wise and others here – ‘climate adaptation is not separable from the cultural, political, economic, environmental and developmental contexts in which it occurs and is therefore only part of a range of societal responses to change.’ Earlier this year I read papers by several other scientists from CSIRO and their colleagues, who have been working with this idea that managing climate change isn’t so much a scientific question as one of governance. The work requires a capacity to be strategic, to accept failures and to respond radically to a complex and unprecedented set of environmental pressures. I wanted to understand more, and Dr Mike Dunlop, a co-­author of several of these papers, was kind enough to host a conversation between a group of us on how necessary work can be implemented in a timely manner, given the current political climate. (The what has been widely documented and exists in a multiplicity of research papers. Indeed, the Climate Council has recently released two reports pointing the way forward: the Clean Jobs Plan and Primed for Action: A Resilient Recovery for Australia.) It has taken me a while to really understand what scientists have been saying for decades – that even if we stop emitting carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels today, it could take forty more years for the climate to stabilise. This decades-­long lag between cause and effect means we don’t just have to stop carbon emissions; we have to draw down on the carbon already in the atmosphere using a range of carbon-­sequestration methods. We need to store carbon underground, in the soil, in our forests and in the oceans. Methods for doing this are too various to get into here, but range from a ‘natural’ though slow approach – such as planting trees – to the mechanical. (Think machines that act like super trees and capture large amounts of carbon dioxide. Think iron dumped into the ocean to encourage algae to grow.) The effect of these, and other solutions, will be piecemeal – but perhaps that’s okay. ‘The future will likely arrive in part by design and in part by

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 125 11/12/20 1:36 pm 126 GriffithReview71

disaster,’ Samuel Alexander, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, told Voice of Action in June 2020. ‘Our challenge is to try to constitute the future through planning and community action, not have the future constitute us.’ The concern is that the future will constitute us unless we move rapidly. Flannery, one of the many scientists who is extremely concerned about timeframes, recently wrote:

Beginning with the UK in May 2019, one nation after another has proclaimed a climate emergency. And they are acting strongly to deal with that emergency. By mid-­June, the UK (the country where industrial coal-­burning started) had gone two months without burning coal. But Australia has neither declared a climate emergency nor acted decisively. Despite our abundant sunlight and wind resources we are still 60 per cent dependent on coal for our electricity needs.

That is, in Australia time is now so short that we cannot wait until the next federal election for action. Furthermore, Australia, with only 0.33 per cent of the global population, is responsible for about 1.4 per cent of green- house gas emissions, a figure that increases by 5 per cent if fossil fuel exports are counted. During my conversation with the cohort from CSIRO, senior research scientist Dr Nicky Grigg told me that ‘Ecologists are charting the decline of so many things that it can be hard not to be pessimistic. We need to engage with reality and it’s uncomfortable to sit with difficult things.’ Grigg is right to point out how difficult it can be to sit with the truth at the moment, but sit with it we must. I (and we) need to stop being surprised. We have to stop looking forward to a time when we can go back to the beach and things go back to ‘normal’. ‘Normal’, if it ever existed, is over. I don’t mean by that we can’t go to the beach. I mean that if we go it might be eroded or have disap- peared entirely. It might be dangerously polluted. It might be so hot when we arrive that we can’t spend time there. Instead of being where we swim, the beach might be where we stand for two days as a bushfire rages around us. The reason we have to stop being surprised by the – long predicted – horrors that are rolling in like a perfect set of waves is that being surprised takes up energy, and human energy, like all forms of energy, is a precious resource.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 126 11/12/20 1:36 pm Sophie Cunningham: Sitting with difficult things 127

The energy we have needs to be spent on finding ways to work together even when we’re not all in agreement with each other. If we can’t agree on a goal in any given situation, we need to find a goal we can agree on. And we can all agree that we don’t want to lose our houses, our land or our lives to fire, even if we disagree on how we might mitigate that possibility.

AN INCREASING NUMBER of organisations, including the Climate Council, are providing the direction and leadership Australia’s government refuses to give. The law is doing what it can, and at the end of 2019, eight separate Environmental Defenders Offices across Australia joined to form a single organisation – the largest public-­interest environmental-­law community legal centre in the Australia-­Pacific region. This is a good move, particularly given that a lack of meaningful environmental protection laws continues to be a problem – and an amendment that weakened the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was rushed through the lower house in September 2020. This, after a report released in July found that the existing act was failing to curb our loss of habitat and species. This, in the wake of devastating bushfires that destroyed as much as thirty-­million hectares and killed or displaced some three billion native animals. An increasing number of organisations are making the transition towards a carbon-­free economy as well as implementing their plans for adaptation. The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria has developed a Landscape Succession Strategy (2016–2036), which was the first of its kind for any botanic garden in the world. Climate change projections suggest that in seventy years, Melbourne could have weather similar to that of Dubbo, Algiers or Tijuana, so one of the targets for the Landscape Succession Strategy is that within fifteen years at least three quarters of the Melbourne gardens’ plants will be able to tolerate a hotter, drier climate. ‘The majority of the plants that we grow need to be resilient,’ one of the architects of the succession plan, senior horticultural- ist Peter Symes, told me. ‘We can’t afford to wait to 2090 to see what actually happens. We have to make some informed decisions now, so essentially we’re taking a risk-­based approach.’ Similar projects are taking place across Australia. Lending to the thermal coal industry is at a four-­year low, though Market Forces Executive Director Julien Vincent believes this is partly due to the increasing use of non-­disclosure agreements. ‘The industry and the lenders know they’re being watched,’ Vincent says. ‘It’s reputationally risky to be seen lending to the coal sector and expanding it. So instead of trying

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 127 11/12/20 1:36 pm 128 GriffithReview71

to change behaviour, or operate more cleanly, the banks and companies are trying to keep this information from public view.’ But at least it’s now considered a bad look to continue to invest in fossil fuels – and in the case of some of the smaller banks, including Bank Australia and Adelaide Bank, the commitment seems genuine. Relatedly, Samsung Securities has withdrawn financial backing to Adani’s Carmichael coal project. South Korean company Hanwha Investment & Securities backed out of financing the project as well. The Norwegian energy giant Equinor has abandoned plans for exploration drilling in the Great Australian Bight. Mining magnate Andrew Forrest recently invested in the world’s largest solar farm, with energy generated from the project to ultimately power Singapore. On 11 October 2020, South Australia was (briefly) powered 100 per cent by renewables for the first time in an initiative led by a Liberal government. The ACT already runs on 100 per cent renewable energy. A significant proportion of superannuation investments – which currently sit around $2.7 trillion – support Australia’s largest companies, including big corporate emitters. However, an increasing number of super- funds are proactively investing in green technologies and initiatives – and around a fifth of these funds have expressed an aspiration to achieve net-­zero emissions by 2050. In late October, Japan announced a 2050 net-­zero emissions target, as did South Korea. China is planning to be carbon neutral by 2060. All of which means that Australia will steadily lose its biggest fossil-fuel customers. Across the board there has been a significant jump in the number of businesses going carbon neutral. Bunnings Warehouse, Officeworks, Kmart, Target and Woolworths are among the sizeable retailers who have commit- ted to sourcing 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025 and are aiming for net-­zero scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. Scope 1 emissions relate to those they release from their own buildings. Scope 2 relates to the power they consume, and whether they use renewable energy. This is good news, but it has to be acknowledged that far fewer businesses are aiming to reduce scope 3 emissions, because that is far harder work and involves taking some respon- sibility for the emissions your industry causes. So, for example, an increasing number of mining companies are using renewable energy, but that alone can’t offset the carbon emissions created by that industry.

CURRENT APPROACHES TO science tend to focus on careful and considered process rather than an outcome, which I understand. Process,

Cunningham-71.indd 128 17/12/20 10:08 am Sophie Cunningham: Sitting with difficult things 129

ignored, can lead to wildly unpredictable results. To illustrate this you only need to consider debates around the pressing need for a vaccine for COVID-­19 versus the risks of a hasty development. However, the stakes are even higher when it comes to climate change, and implementation needs to become a priority. One of the many challenges that face us is the fact that making big changes rapidly requires consensus. Corporations are pouring money into misinformation campaigns on the subject of climate change. According to UCL’s Professor of Earth System Science Mark Maslin, ‘The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.’ Other powerful players (such as News Corp) are putting their human and economic resources into convincing us that consensus doesn’t exist. It does exist. Ninety-nine per cent of climate scientists are in agreement that we are on the brink of runaway climate change – and it is already having a catastrophic effect. Eighty-two per cent of the Australian population agrees that something needs to be done. Even this level of consensus has not been enough to break the monkey-grip that exists between the Morrison govern- ment and the fossil fuel industry. We aren’t just reaching a tipping point in terms of the weather, but also in our capacity to solve the problems before us. As disasters increase in frequency and severity, opinion is becoming more polarised. When things deteriorate further socially, the conditions for consensus will no longer exist. It’s possible that in the United States – which has the highest carbon emissions per capita in the world – they no longer do.

IN THEIR LATEST book, Surviving Autocracy, Masha Gessen provides a useful analysis of the way in which language both frames and constrains political debate:

If we use the wrong language, we cannot describe what we are seeing. If we use the language developed for describing fish, we cannot very well describe an elephant: words like ‘gills’, ‘scales’ and ‘fins’ will not get us very far... Now the same thing was happen- ing in the United States; we were using the language of political disagreement, judicial procedure, or partisan discussion to describe something that was crushing the system that such terminology was invented to describe.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 129 11/12/20 1:36 pm 130 GriffithReview71

‘Consensus’ is just one of the words that is degraded in the current political environment. Any number of words have become distorted or emptied of meaning. George Orwell tried to warn us of this back in 1949 when he wrote 1984; Roland Barthes tried back in 1957 when he wrote that the ‘definition of myth in a bourgeois society [is] that myth is depoliti- cised speech’. Constructed identities are presented as natural ones. Think of phrases and words such as terra nullius, fake news, unprecedented, one-in-a- hundred years, carbon tax, Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister. The weight of colonial history, of capitalism in those arrangements of letters. The weaponising of language. Language, degraded, affects our ability to imagine a better future. It corrupts our capacity to think or talk our way out of the problems we are facing. According to Dr Sandra Waddock, Galligan Chair of Strategy at Boston College, ‘Since World War II and particularly since the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the early 1980s, the world has been under the influence of a powerful economic narrative. That narrative or story, often called the neoliberal narrative, like all good narratives, is based on a resonant set of core words, values, phrases and ideas that are called memes.’

SO HOW DO we work our way, imaginatively, towards a more expansive understanding of what our future might look like? The need for smarter narratives was one of the recurring themes that arose during my conversations with scientists. According to Mike Dunlop: Many scenarios have failed because people have only imagined slightly better versions of the present. We need to build a new normal. We need to make the energy economy work differently and to understand there is a trade-­off between efficiency and resilience. Systems that are more efficient tend to be less resilient. Transformational change doesn’t fit into the mainstream systems, but nonetheless that’s what we need. What Dunlop is talking about here is the way current political systems are risk-­averse. Organisations are punished for perceived failures rather than supported in finding new ways forward. Dr Griggs elaborated: ‘We need narratives of accountability rather than narratives of blame.’ Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel, The Ministry for the Future, takes up this conversation, fictionally:

Cunningham-71.indd 130 16/12/20 3:57 pm Sophie Cunningham: Sitting with difficult things 131

There is no single solution adequate to the task. And so what can we expect to see? Failure. But assuming success, just for discussion’s sake, what shape might that take? The shape of failure. Expand on that please? A success made of failures? Yes.

Robinson’s novel has one of the most devastating descriptions of what it might mean to live in an overheated world that I’ve ever read, but that initial ‘disaster’ sequence is followed by an animated Greek chorus of a novel about public service and political process. In this fictional world, no possible solution is off the table. Indeed, the stakes are so high that Robinson seems to have abandoned concern for any conventions of fiction and often slips into a genre recently described by Rob Nixon in the Sydney Review of Books as ‘speculative non-fiction’.­ ‘It’s hard to imagine a positive history, but it’s not impossible,’ Robinson said in an interview with Jacobin:

And now, yes, it’s easy to imagine the end of the world because we are at the start of a mass extinction event [but] can you morph, by stages, from the political economy that we’re in now, which is neoliberal capitalism, to what you might call anti-­austerity, to a return to Keynesianism, and then beyond that to social democracy, and then beyond that to democratic socialism, and then beyond that to a post-­capitalist system that might be a completely new invention that we don’t have a name for.

Of course some people have a name for a new system they think would stand us in good stead: socialism, but that is only one of the traditions that Robinson is harking back to. ‘We’re in an all-­hands-­on-­deck situa- tion,’ he says. ‘There is no excuse for ideological rigidity about something this important.’ During my conversation with CSIRO scientists, environmental ecolo- gist Dr Russell Gorddard made a similar point. ‘I find hope in a collective rebuilding and redesigning of our institutions,’ he says. ‘It is in revealing the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 131 11/12/20 1:36 pm 132 GriffithReview71

richness of the rules that shape our economy and society that we can start to identify the range of options and address the emerging issues. But at the same time calls to dismantle the capitalist system, and the capitalist-­socialist polarisation, are pretty unhelpful. We can recognise the major issues within the current system without having to reject it all. There is still plenty of scope for reform that can be quite transformative.’

ANOTHER QUALITY – ANOTHER human resource if you like – that we will need to get us through the months and years and decades to come is hope. We need to make hope the muscle and sinew of our working day. We need to build through small steps, sincere conversations had in good faith and constructive action. Hope is an act of love. And by love what I mean is connection and community. It includes care and concern for others as well as love of place. When Mark O’Connell, the author of Notes from an Apocalypse, was asked back in April 2020 if he’d consider living in a bunker to ride out the end times, he said he’d reached a conclusion that had surprised him. ‘I think I’d rather be dead. I’d rather be outside and take my chances because it seems, from an ideological perspective...if you’re preparing for the collapse of civili- sation in that way, I think for you civilisation has already collapsed.’ I believe that O’Connell is talking about love here. The need for it if we are going to be in a position to use the resources at our disposal. I too would rather be outside and take my chances. Which isn’t to say I don’t hope that my chances will be good, not bad. ‘Radical hope is not simple optimism, or the opposite of despair,’ the Australian novelist and essayist James Bradley wrote recently. ‘It involves accepting the fears so many of us are grappling with and using them as the basis for a new set of priorities... Like deep adaptation, radical hope is a psychological practice as well as a political position. It requires us to accept the past is gone, and that the political and cultural assumptions that once shaped our world no longer hold true.’ So, to my mind, the question to ask is not ‘do you have hope?’ The question has become ‘what are we hoping for?’ What do I hope for? I hope that some of the glories of this world survive. Koalas. Seahorses the size of a grain of rice. Snow gums. Elephants. Giant sequoia. The superb lyrebird has particularly been on my mind because a third of its habitat was lost in last year’s bushfires and its conservation status shifted

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 132 11/12/20 1:36 pm Sophie Cunningham: Sitting with difficult things 133

very quickly from secure to less certain. We must hold these beautiful birds in our heart, keep them in our mind’s eye and ear, remember the perfection of their shimmering, flouncing tail feathers, the virtuosity of their song. Another hope I have is that we keep the temperature rise closer to 2 or 3 degrees Celsius than allowing it to get to 4 or even 7 degrees. Two degrees is optimistic these days, and even that won’t be pretty – we’ve all experienced what just shy of 1.5 degrees is leading to: increased fire and storm activity, rising sea levels and extinction rates. But we won’t even get under that low bar if we continue to take our lead from self-­serving governments and corpora- tions – if we play it safe, if we don’t seek common ground and if we don’t imagine a better world.

TO GET BACK to those TV shows I grew up with, and our constrained imaginations. Those shows, which emerged out of a particularly American brand of mid-­twentieth-­century capitalism, still have cultural traction. In 2019, some cast members of The Brady Bunch reunited to make A Very Brady Renovation, a reality show from 2019 in which the Brady siblings renovate the house they ‘lived’ in back in the early ’70s. Lost in Space was remade in 2018, perhaps because the original imagined that the human race would be colonis- ing solar systems throughout the universe by 1997. I Dream of Jeannie still appeals: a blink of the eye and we could undo, say, Donald Trump. But of all my favourite old shows, Get Smart, written by the brilliant Mel Brooks, seems the most prescient: mobile phones on our person, Maxwell Smart missing his targets by ‘that much’ and saying ‘I asked you not to tell me that’ on the receipt of bad news. If we are to transition to a world where we will not just survive but thrive, we need to start writing new narratives. We need to embody them through action. We need to choose our words carefully. Towards the end of our two hours, Mike Dunlop presented me with some words that I think are useful. I’ll leave them with you: ‘Ripples can turn into a wave,’ he said. ‘And even if they can’t be focused on the end point, they can be focused on a direction.’

For references, see griffithreview.com

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Sophie Cunningham is the author of six books, including City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest (Text, 2020). She is also the editor of the collection Fire, Flood, Plague: Australian writers respond to 2020 (Vintage, 2020).

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 133 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 134

Declan Fry

The Biyula novels

We pause in front of a fallen eucalypt blackened trunk glistening with charcoal grids decode species-information:

the time of its seeding and the intensity of the fire which consumed it.

Declan Fry is a writer, poet, essayist, and proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta. Born on Wongatha country in Kalgoorlie, in 2020 he was engaged as a critic for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, awarded the 2021 Peter Blazey Fellowship, and received a Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Award. His work has appeared in Meanjin, The Saturday Paper, Liminal, Overland, Australian Book Review, and elsewhere.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 134 11/12/20 1:36 pm FICTION

PROVENANCE

JANE DOWNING

THEY WENT TO a broker. Working their way through the maze of the air market felt beyond them, if they wanted to get the best possible price. Brokers knew buyers – collectors and connoisseurs, dabblers and dilettantes. They took a percentage cut. The broker’s eyes started popping like the ones on their great-­grandmother’s Papuan death mask when they placed the bottle on his desk. Otherwise, he managed to maintain a composed demeanour. ‘It all depends on the provenance,’ he explained. ‘Buyers demand an airtight history.’ He paused. His pun was definitely for effect. His office was a hermetically sealed pod on the fifth floor of one of the glass buildings in Downtown. It had a view over the skyline. Obscured that day, as it was increasingly, by smog. ‘The China market is huge,’ he added, his hand reaching across his vast rosewood desk to caress the rusted lid on the two-­ounce bottle. He slid his glasses to the tip of his nose to better read the label. Returned them to his eyes to survey the couple who’d walked in off the street on spec. There was a look of doom about them, like a pair of star-­crossed lovers in manga comics, reincarnated as sister and brother. The aura was probably just suppressed greed for the money. ‘So tell me the story.’ The sister started. She scratched the line where her roots met her forehead then rubbed away the resulting dandruff. The broker eyed his bespeckled rosewood with barely disguised distaste as she described her great-­great-­grandmother, a bit of an adventurer in her day, a woman with itchy feet as the saying went, and a penchant for curio shops in exotic destinations.

135

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 135 11/12/20 1:36 pm Provenance

The label on the bottle, discoloured by a good amount of time, read Rabaul Air 1963. The broker interrupted – directed the preamble into something usable for buyers. ‘So she bought this in a shop. A curio amongst others?’ ‘No, no,’ corrected the woman. ‘She bottled it herself in New Guinea last century.’ ‘Good, good,’ the broker echoed her cadence. A good story, he meant. One old lady owner, only drove it to church on Sundays and so on. The narrative flourishes of the used-­car business were surprisingly often apropos in the air trade. The great-­great-­granddaughter fiddled with the face mask on her lap, alternating pulling at the elasticised band and picking at the tiny pilling on the fuzzy fabric. It was a cheap knock-­off, not a Chinese original, which were acknowledged to be the best on the market, neces- sity having been the mother of invention as air quality deteriorated at an unprecedented rate with both viral and pollutant contamination. ‘She was there, in Rabaul, coming back from my grandmother’s christening on Manus Island. My great-­grandparents were there with the Australian navy.’ ‘Los Negros Island,’ interrupted the hitherto silent brother, an almost bald man. Maybe they were twins. He’d made up for lack on top by sporting a luxuriant beard. Red. ‘Los Negros, off the tip of Manus.’ ‘A causeway connects them. They’re joined now. And everyone knows Manus,’ argued his sister, ‘Because...’ They both faltered into silence, watching the broker’s face. Keep it simple, they’d been told. There were already too many greats and great- ­greats in the ancestry to be ironed out, and brokers liked a slick provenance, easy to condense in the sales catalogue, stupid. KISS. KISS. ‘Go on,’ the broker purred instead. ‘The more the better. Adds to the...’ He conjured his hands in the air like a magician. ‘Creates authenticity.’ ‘We have proof. Grandma’s christening certificate.’ The brother stopped there. He appeared to have had his say. His sister was

136

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 136 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jane Downing

guppy- ­mouthed beside him. Had they blown it by pushing the idea of proof? ‘Proof is a delicate subject,’ the broker acknowledged. ‘We will run tests for verification, of course. The bottle?’ He picked it up and turned it in the light. ‘For a condiment, I hazard. The experts have archives of factory specifications, size, shape, dates of manufacture. It can be tracked. Similarly, this unique label. Pre-­sticker technology. It appears to be from the end of a sheet of postage stamps, a couple of gutters still joined – like your islands,’ he winked. His brief laugh was a heehaw. ‘The dimensions and shape of the perforations will be invaluable pointers. Australian colonial stamps have a large society always willing to work with the esoteric.’ The siblings were finally smiling. ‘Both bottle and label, clearly, can be verified as of the era without authenticating the actual contents.’ The smiles were as brief as spring rain. ‘As say, a forger of a new Shakespeare play would carefully source parchment from the era, manufacture ink from the tannins of the galls of oak trees, pluck a goose’s bottom for a quill, so an air fraudster would...’ Vehement shaking of heads ensued. We wouldn’t, said the eyes of the siblings. ‘Now, the air within. That is the question.’ ‘The rust?’ whispered the woman. The broker once again leaned forward to close in on the object. Rust indeed took time to accumulate over seals. He flicked a spec of the valuable proof off. It flew ten centimetres and nested in the snowfall of the sister’s dandruff. ‘Yes. So. Proceed.’ ‘So.’ The sister started up like a lawnmower, sputtering, hitting a roar, settling into a practiced whine. ‘So she went to Manus for the christening, of our grandmother, and all the flights to and from went through Rabaul. 1963. This was pre-­independence, pre-­volcanic eruption, pre-­detention centre. On her last night in Rabaul, staying with the family of a colonial administrator, she said, Oh, I will miss this

137

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 137 11/12/20 1:36 pm Provenance

clear island air. So her host had a houseboy grab an empty bottle from the kitchen, and he swooped it through the air and sealed it up. For you, to take with you for always. See, she even dated it.’ If the broker was sceptical he didn’t show it. Because he’d be on a commission, he’d want the highest price too. He let the silence stretch. ‘So,’ continued the sister, ‘it was in her curio cupboard for decades with her Hawaiian dancer doll and her picture-frame made from World War II spent cartridges and her parade of ivory elephants from East Africa.’ ‘We handed in the ivory,’ her brother hastily clarified. ‘We’ve obeyed all the laws.’ ‘Then it passed down the generations...’ said the sister. ‘To us,’ concluded the brother with the finality of the last word on the subject. ‘Do you think...’ she squeaked. Last word on his last word. ‘It is not up to me to believe or disbelieve.’ The broker fixed his line-of-sight on some mythical castle in the middle distance. ‘I weave the story into its best possible shape. Display it in the best possible light.’ Now was his turn to smile for the first time since they’d entered the brokerage. ‘We deal mainly with investors. They could lay this down for another hundred years, or sell it on for a profit, or, indeed, open it to celebrate a significant anniversary or business success in the full knowledge there’s no more where it came from. The frisson of breathing the last air...’ ‘Does this mean you’ll represent us?’ ‘I will represent this.’ He caressed the bottle of Rabaul Air. 1963. The line of the condiment bottle took on the curves of a beautiful woman. Now they all smiled. The broker pressed his intercom. ‘Priscilla, bring in some refreshments.’ His secretary carried in a tray of Air-­Everest cans. They each pierced a seal and vacuum pumped the fresh air from atop the Himalayas into their mouths, Priscilla generously included in the toast. The siblings blinked in mirror image of each other. The air was

138

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 138 11/12/20 1:36 pm Jane Downing

so much better than generic OzAir from the Green Range, itself one of the most successful exports to China since the turn of the century. They reaffixed their facemasks in the lift and stepped back into the city air, the receipt for possession of their great-­great-­grandmother’s greatest gift secure in an antique plastic sleeve along with the grand- mother’s original christening certificate. Once they had the money from the sale, they’d be able to move to the country and breathe easy. Each and every time they stepped outside.

HIGH ABOVE THEM, the broker locked his office door and lowered the blinds against the blurred skyline. He carefully prised the rust from around the seal, collecting it in a Ming Dynasty china dish. Then he left the desk and lay on his leather couch. Propped his feet on one armrest, his head against the other. Broke the seal. Gulped down the escaping breeze. He was sitting on a verandah looking out over the bay in Rabaul. On an old planter’s chair. Cane. Cushioned. Pat Boone crooned from a turntable indoors, beer flattened on a table. The sky was infinite out beyond the edge of the man-­made world. Each star a world of light reminding him of the miracle of life. A million, million times over. He vertiginously fell into the sky. A stick of cane scratched the soft underside of his left arm where it rested on the chair – then he was back. On the couch. In a suit. He stayed there with his eyes closed. As always, even the strong aftertaste of colonialism was not unpleasant as long as there was still money to be made in it. He wrote the sale’s catalogue spiel against the back of his eyelids. Collecting himself before carefully gluing the rust back around the seal of the bottle. He was certain the bottle would not get to the scrutiny of a public auction. He knew a certain brazillionaire who’d want to snap up a sweet Rabaul ’63 for her air loft.

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Jane Downing’s stories and poetry have been published both in Australia and overseas, including in The Big Issue, Antipodes, Southerly, Island, Westerly, Overland, Canberra Times, Cordite and Best Australian Poems (2004 and 2015). Her latest novel, The Sultan’s Daughter, is published by Obiter Publishing. She can be found at janedowning.wordpress.com

139

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 139 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Accords and antagonisms Making progress in the combat for climate policy Tony Wood

THE PHYSICAL AND scientific evidence of human-­induced climate change continues its depressing march towards greater evidential reality. Yet emissions continue to grow and policies around the world remain short of what is needed to address the problem. While some countries are taking urgent action to tackle this more existential crisis, Australia is mired in a debate between a gas-­led or a renewables-­led recovery from the Covid reces- sion – the climate war continues. Perhaps a pragmatic review of the status of our climate change policy debate and the challenges ahead can shed some light on possible ways forward for politicians from both sides, and for Australians in general.

GLOBALLY, NEITHER REDUCTION targets for emissions nor progress towards hitting those targets is consistent with the Paris Agreement. For Australia, as a signatory to the agreement, this presents a clear and present danger to our international credibility and domestic policy direction. The key objective of the agreement is to limit the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-­industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. The global community, including Australia, is expected to update its targets and policies in the next few years. The Australian Government has

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 140 11/12/20 1:36 pm Tony Wood: Accords and antagonisms 141

also accepted the recommendation of the 2017 Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market that it ‘develop a whole-­of-­ economy emissions reduction strategy for 2050’ by 2020. Last September, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, announced that the government is committed to ‘completing the development of Australia’s long- ­term emissions reduction strategy before COP26’. COP26 is the next international conference on global climate change, now scheduled for November 2021 in Glasgow. Australia has benefited from its mineral and petroleum resources for many decades. We now export about twice as many emissions through our fossil fuel resources as we produce domestically, and these exports are a valuable source of revenue. As the world moves to reduce emissions towards the global objective, there are obvious consequences for our economy and for jobs in carbon-­intensive industries. Australia is not well prepared for such consequences. Domestically, Australia’s national carbon accounts provide the hard numbers that set out our challenge. Australia’s emissions have fallen from 611 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2005 to 513 million tonnes in 2020, a reduction of 16 per cent. Government projections published in December 2020 show that this average annual reduction of 6.5 million tonnes is expected to slow to an annual average of only 3.5 million tonnes over the next ten years, leading to a low of 478 million tonnes. To meet the current Australian commitment of a 26 per cent reduction by 2030 – that is, annual emissions of 452 million tonnes – more action will be needed. All Australian states and territories, and many businesses, have already committed to targets of net-­zero emissions by 2050. Yet targets without actions and actions without national co-­ordination are likely to be at best highly inefficient. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will not make such a commitment at the federal level, but has suggested such a target is absolutely achievable. Achieving a target of net zero by 2050 would require a major increase in average annual reductions to about twenty-­four million tonnes year on year. The good news of the past five years is that emissions from the electricity- ­generation sector have been consistently falling, and that sector is on track to over-­deliver its proportionate (one third) share of the 2030 target. This outcome flows mostly from federal and state government subsidies for

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 141 11/12/20 1:36 pm 142 GriffithReview71

utility- ­scale wind and solar farms and rooftop solar, and from the closure of coal-fired­ power plants. The bad news is that emissions from other sectors (the remaining two thirds) – including transport, agriculture and industry – are either flat or growing, and there are no policy mechanisms to drive reductions in these sectors except for the Climate Solutions Fund. This fund, a voluntary offset program that allows for carbon credits to be created, bought and sold, has been a relatively efficient way to secure limited emissions reduction through a tendering process. However, it is insufficient by itself and its very existence requires ongoing funding from the Commonwealth’s budget.

IT MAY BE slow, and it’s certainly not obvious, but the Prime Minister has been repositioning on climate change. In this, he is responding to the step increase in business and community demands. Businesses are responding to pressure from institutional and retail shareholders, regulatory authorities and the growing expectation that action on climate change is inevitable. Community concerns ramped up after the 2019–20 summer bushfires. The recession triggered by COVID-­19 may have partly blunted the policy impera- tive, but it will be there when that recession subsides. The Prime Minister’s strategy has two arms. The first is to point to the falling emissions of the past fifteen years to support the argument that the government’s 2030 target is achievable and, by implication, that any future targets will be as well. The problem with this claim is that the past success was driven not by current policies but by not-­to-­be-­repeated land-­use changes, the now- ­finished Renewable Energy Target (RET) and coal plant closures. And even if the 2030 target is achieved, the post-­2030 challenge will be tough – not only in the electricity sector, but also in the sectors that generate the other two thirds of Australia’s emissions. The second arm of the Prime Minister’s strategy builds the case for future emissions reduction on technology and not policy, thereby avoiding setting the firm targets that are poison within the Coalition. This is the political ratio- nale for the Technology Investment Roadmap, released in September 2020. Presumably, the Prime Minister feels he must focus his narrative on a positive technology story without quantifying the costs of either these actions or of inaction. His argument is partly justified by the fact that it is sound economic policy for governments to support early-­stage, low-­emission technologies that

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 142 11/12/20 1:36 pm Tony Wood: Accords and antagonisms 143

have real cost-­reduction potential. The limits of this approach will become apparent when the challenge turns from technology development to large-­ scale technology deployment. The government is constrained by its own past political success in killing carbon pricing mechanisms – even though existing policies it has overseen, such as the Climate Solutions Fund and the RET, incorporate explicit and implicit carbon prices, respectively. As a result, the Prime Minister’s language has moved considerably to embrace narratives of lower emissions through economically efficient, low-­emission technologies. On this journey, gas retains an important role in providing energy that can be dispatched on demand to balance wind and solar energy. In that context, however, his enthusiasm for a gas-­led recovery is at best a distraction or at worst will lead to assets with no value in the future and more, not less, greenhouse gas emissions. This is a high-­wire act for a pragmatic leader who is surely intent on not joining the political corpses of other Australian political leaders on the climate war’s battlefield. Yet Scott Morrison’s ‘selling’ job is easier than that of Anthony Albanese.

THE OPPOSITION LEADER has almost certainly made the right politi- cal call to embrace the target of net-­zero emissions by 2050. He is on the right side of the broad Australian debate. Yet this call brings its own challenges. Labor probably has only until about the middle of 2021 to develop a clear and compelling economy-­wide policy framework through which to achieve that target. Labor must provide enough substance to be credible but avoid getting bogged down using economic modelling as a precise forecasting tool. Policy-­ makers are often expected to provide economic analysis to assess the future impact of their proposed policies on issues such as the average cost of living. However, while this may be reasonable within the typical forward estimates period of four years, to suggest precision – and then defend such precision decades into the future – is a fool’s errand. Labor must also detail the role of government in supporting struc- tural adjustment as the lower emissions economy emerges. In the 2019 federal election there were seats where large numbers of well-­paid workers, particularly in carbon-­intensive industries such as coal mining, were more concerned about losing their jobs than about tackling climate change – and

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 143 11/12/20 1:36 pm 144 GriffithReview71

they were not placated by Labor’s vague promise of a ‘just transition’ to a new economy. Labor seems captured by its past political failure with carbon pricing, such that Albanese argues a carbon price is now unnecessary. At the same time, he sees the abandoned National Energy Guarantee as the sort of policy he could support, without apparently recognising that it would have included a form of carbon pricing and trading. Albanese has one big advantage over former Labor leader Julia Gillard, who as prime minister introduced a so-­called ‘carbon tax’ – he can harness the widespread support across many areas of industry and the community for a target of net-­zero emissions by 2050. His challenge is to build a firm policy framework on that base. As this summary of the current positions of Australia’s major parties strongly suggests, the problem is not the economics of climate change. Nor is it a battle of ideology about the need or otherwise to tackle climate change as the great moral challenge of our time. The problem, for both sides, is one of classic naked politics. The current policy stand-­off is unlikely to change until the Labor leader believes he can win an election with a credible climate change policy, or the Coalition Prime Minister believes he will lose an election without one. The COVID-­19 pandemic clearly shows that governments can galvan- ise in response to an immediate big threat and can secure support for that response from the community, business and across the political spectrum. Common purpose means that what normally act as financial constraints can be removed with little resistance. It is true that providing an economic stimu- lus after a sharp recession can also secure support. The Australian Government’s fiscal policy decisions in 2020 were designed to stimulate the economy, get people into jobs, and support the sectors and people hardest hit by the economic lockdowns. These actions necessarily have a short-­term focus, but they should be consistent with the longer- ­term goal of a net-­zero emissions economy. The concept of a gas-­led recovery is a poor fit.

EMISSIONS MUST BE reduced across the economy, and the objective should be to do so at the lowest cost. Intriguingly, both sides of Australian politics now agree on this core premise. Business groups and economists

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 144 11/12/20 1:36 pm Tony Wood: Accords and antagonisms 145

recognise that an economy-­wide carbon price is the best way to meet this objective, and there are pathways that we could follow. Yet, at least for now, politics dictates that any such policy is beyond reach. Other approaches have been followed, and we can learn from them. Over the past decade, we have seen two markedly different attempts towards a national climate change policy with some form of emissions-­pricing mecha- nism. The Gillard Labor government introduced a fixed-­price emissions trading scheme that existed from 2012 to 2014. Tony Abbott successfully labelled this scheme as a tax and then made ‘axing the tax’ a key part of his successful 2014 election campaign. Labor has not yet recovered from this defeat. Greg Hunt, as Minister for the Environment in the Abbott govern- ment, established the $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF, now relabelled as the Climate Solutions Fund) to pay directly for emissions-­ reducing projects, and the safeguard mechanism to avoid unconstrained emissions. Although criticised for funding some projects that do not deliver additional reductions, the ERF has contracts to deliver about 200 million tonnes of reduction at a cost of well under $20 per tonne. Projects include regeneration of vegetation, reduced emissions from landfill sites and changes in savannah-­burning practices. The safeguard mechanism was intended to ensure that emissions reduc- tions purchased through the ERF were not displaced by significant increases in emissions elsewhere in the economy. It was intended to constrain the very biggest emitters (that generate more than 100,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide equivalent) from exceeding agreed baseline levels. This mechanism has never been used as a real emissions constraint in the way its creator probably envisaged. Sector- ­based policies have had greater success in delivering emissions reductions and surviving political battles. The RET was created as an industry policy to subsidise the growth of renewables and help drive down their cost. It has been so successful in growing renewables’ share of the sector that its specific role is unlikely to be renewed on the grounds that it is no longer necessary. In a similar vein, the ACT and several state governments have programs to support renewable energy within their boundaries. They too have delivered.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 145 11/12/20 1:36 pm 146 GriffithReview71

Governments have also provided direct funding for low-­emissions projects through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This approach can push technologies down the cost curve and, as indicated above, there are sound economic reasons to support early-­stage technologies. Yet this approach provides neither the necessary carrot nor the stick that drives their deployment to achieve either economy-wide­ or sector-­specific targets. Climate- ­change policies, the rejection of which provides political opportunity – or those that challenge the strongly held views of those with influence – are unlikely to be successful. Sector-­based approaches and/or having governments pick winners can reduce emissions but will always come at a higher cost than giving the incentive to the widest possible range of stakeholders. In the absence of first-­best policy, progress can and should still be made, messy and inefficient though it will be. At a federal level, the Coalition government could build a framework that connects the 2020 Technology Investment Roadmap, the Climate Solutions Fund, the safeguard mechanism and a 2035 target to form its proposed long-­ term emissions-­reduction strategy. A combination of commercial obligations, sector- ­based targets and stronger evidence – even alarm – could emerge before the next federal election, and this could prompt the Prime Minister to adopt a more substantial policy. There are elements of this framework that Labor could support while retaining its clearer commitment to a 2050 target and more concrete policies in government. Labor could craft a compelling narrative for real action on climate change that incorporates a move away from fossil fuels and addresses the real concerns of workers in carbon-­intensive industries. If it can do that, a policy mechanism that delivers an economy-­wide price on emissions is more likely to be successful. In that case, a Liberal Opposition leader would be likely to provide enough bipartisan support for such policy to stick. Renewables will not deliver the full potential of their efficient level of emissions reduction without some form of policy driver, and barriers such as connection to the transmission grid remain. State and territory govern- ments have not yet developed policies to meet their own emissions-­reduction targets and their intentions to do so are unclear. A form of state government-­ supported national climate policy, such as the National Energy Guarantee for the electricity sector, seems to have been killed off by the federal government’s

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 146 11/12/20 1:36 pm Tony Wood: Accords and antagonisms 147

bilateral deals with individual jurisdictions. We are left with a mixture of renewable energy support mechanisms and coal closure ideas. This is messy and inefficient, but at least it does no other harm to the long-­term objective. And so, there will be progress. It will be lumpy – faster in some sectors than others – and it will cost more than it should. But there will be progress. Australia’s best hope for the near term is a combination of sector-­based, technology-­driven, third-­best policies that will deliver progress for a while. Yet this approach will become less efficient because emissions will not be reduced in the lowest cost areas of the economy. Furthermore, emissions from sectors that remain uncovered will progressively become barriers to the overall objective. Long-­term environmental and economic success will depend on returning to first-­best policies when we learn from the conse- quences of the alternatives. When the political need is for good policy, effective policy-­makers respond to deliver great outcomes. However, it is a truism that, most of the time, political opportunism trumps good policy, and there are few better examples than Australia’s climate war. Despite the current impasse, there is a real prospect of building pressure for a political response to climate change. The question is whether, this time, policy-­makers can respond to deliver a first- ­best policy solution in the interests of all Australians.

Tony Wood AM leads the Grattan Institute’s Energy Program, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Technology, Science and Engineering. He was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his service to conservation and the environment.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 147 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY A long half-­life Nuclear energy in Australia Ian Lowe

ON MY DESK there sits a well-­thumbed copy of the 1976 Fox Report, the first report of the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry. I grew up in New South Wales, where most electricity came from coal-­fired power stations, but miners were often killed or injured and the air pollution from burning coal was obvious. So as a young scientist I was attracted to the idea of replacing our dirty and dangerous coal-­fired electricity with nuclear power. That report changed my thinking. And the sight of it is a reminder that while Australia has a very long history of involvement in nuclear issues, it’s one of the few advanced countries that does not have nuclear power stations. It would now be very difficult to make a rational case for taking that step, but a small group of pro-­nuclear enthusiasts continues to urge greater Australian involve- ment in the so-­called nuclear fuel cycle. I want to summarise the history of this enthusiasm and use it to explore the continuing interest in that deeper involvement – because nuclear issues have always been intensely political. In practice, debates about nuclear energy are essentially arguments about what sort of future we want. Uranium ore was discovered at a remote site in the north-­east of South Australia in 1906. The prospector thought he had found a deposit that would yield tin or tungsten, but the young geologist Douglas Mawson showed the ore contained uranium and radium. He named the site Radium Hill, and its mine operated from 1906 to 1914, from 1923 to 1931, and again from 1954 to 1961. In the middle of this came the Manhattan Project, the secret research

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 148 11/12/20 1:36 pm Iwean Lo : A long half-­life 149

conducted during World War II to develop nuclear weapons, which changed the world forever. When the US declined to share its frightening new bomb with the UK, the British government urged Australia to provide uranium for its own separate clandestine weapons program. At the same time, as a public-relations exercise, the UK government decided to use the Calder Hall reactor in West Cumbria – designed to produce plutonium for the British bomb – to gener- ate a small amount of electricity: the newly installed Queen Elizabeth II formally turned it on. The US was also singing the praises of nuclear energy as a potential power source through its ‘Atoms for Peace’ program. This was a radical reframing of nuclear science, until then known only to the public as the basis for fearsome weapons, but now being portrayed as a possible source of unlimited clean energy. When Prime Minister Robert Menzies opened a uranium mine at Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory in 1953, he too invoked energy supply as he gave a misleading slant to the operation. This ore body, he said, ‘can and will within a measurable distance bring power and light and the amenities of life to the producers and consumers and the housewives of this continent’. That never happened; the ore simply enabled the UK government to design and build its nuclear weapons and then test them at three sites in remote parts of Australia.

THREE SCIENTISTS WHO were centrally involved in both closed-­ door discussions and public debates about nuclear issues in Australia had been central figures in the Manhattan Project. Mark Oliphant – a researcher in Ernest Rutherford’s famous Cambridge group that developed the basic physics later used to design and build the first bombs – returned to Australia after World War II to head the physics department at the newly established Australian National University (ANU). While an academic in England, he had supervised the research of Ernest Titterton, who triggered the Trinity test at Los Alamos in July 1945, the world’s first nuclear explosion. After helping to develop the British bomb, Titterton became the foundation professor of nuclear physics at ANU and was a member of Australia’s Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee, charged with assuring the government that the British tests were not a risk to Australian people. It later transpired that there had been serious impacts on local Indigenous people and, on one occasion, a wind change caused a cloud of radioactive debris to drift over a number

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 149 11/12/20 1:36 pm 150 GriffithReview71

of South Australian settlements. Titterton became a prominent advocate for Australia using nuclear power and developing nuclear weapons. This was also true of the third central figure in this field, Philip Baxter. He was a chemical engineer working for ICI when he was asked in 1940 to produce quantities of uranium hexafluoride ‘for research’. He worked at the Oak Ridge laboratory in Tennessee, helping with the bomb project, and after the war was instrumental in designing and building the plant to separate plutonium for the British bomb. Arriving in Australia in the early 1950s, he was appointed deputy chair of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) when it was established in November 1952. When the Menzies government approved the Commission’s proposal to build a small nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, then a remote bushland site well outside the suburban area of Sydney, it also expected the AAEC to develop the expertise that would allow Australia to build nuclear power stations. Baxter became chairman of the AAEC in 1956, by which time he was also director of a new tertiary institution, the New South Wales Institute of Technology. Under his direction its status was soon raised and it became the New South Wales University of Technology, specialising in applied sciences and engineering, before expanding in 1958 to become the University of New South Wales. The AAEC, under Baxter’s chairmanship, built the HIFAR reactor at Lucas Heights and explored two possible designs for power reactors: high- ­temperature gas-­cooled reactors or liquid-­metal-­fuelled reactors. As it turned out, neither became commercially successful. Baxter and Titterton, both knighted for their services to atomic science, were also both prominent advocates of nuclear power for Australia. In an extraordinary comment, Baxter described Australia in 1957 as ‘the last big continent which the white man has to develop and populate. It will be a difficult task, but the full use of atomic energy should make it both easier and more certain.’ At that time, there was a widespread acceptance that nuclear power would displace coal-­fired power stations to become the main source of electricity. In 1969, Baxter confidently estimated that Australia would have 44,000 megawatts of installed nuclear power by the year 2000. To put that figure in perspective, the 2020 maximum demand in the national electricity system was just over 35,000 megawatts. Electricity supply in Australia was then operated by state and local governments; Brisbane City Council, for example, ran two power stations

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 150 11/12/20 1:36 pm Iwean Lo : A long half-­life 151

to provide for the city’s needs. The South Australian premier, Thomas Playford, proposed building a nuclear power station near Port Augusta, while Queensland’s Joh Bjelke-­Petersen said he would be keen to use nuclear energy as long as the power station was not in his state. When no state proved willing to risk the large capital expense of a nuclear power station, Baxter persuaded the Gorton government to propose building a 500-­megawatt reactor on Commonwealth land at Jervis Bay, on the New South Wales south coast. While the plan was deferred when Gorton was displaced as prime minister by Bill McMahon, Baxter still believed ‘Australia would certainly begin building nuclear power stations within the next ten years.’ The Jervis Bay project was subsequently terminated by the Whitlam government, and there was no serious proposal to consider nuclear power for several decades after that. With plentiful cheap coal in the eastern states, there was little political interest in this more complex technology. The public debate about nuclear issues took a new turn in the 1970s. While relatively small mines at Rum Jungle and the Queensland site of Mary Kathleen had been quietly supplying uranium for British bomb production, the discovery of a large deposit of uranium ore in the Kakadu area of the Northern Territory prompted the Whitlam government to hold a public inquiry into the possible environmental impacts of the proposed new mine. This was the Ranger environmental inquiry, conducted by Justice Fox, Dr Kelleher and Professor Kerr. It almost inevitably broadened into a study of Australia’s role in the wider nuclear industry. As already mentioned, their first report is still on my desk.

MY FIRST ACADEMIC appointment was in the Faculty of Technology at the UK Open University, where some of my colleagues were raising important questions about the safety and economics of British nuclear power stations. Others were asking more fundamental questions about the long-­term problems of managing radioactive waste and avoiding nuclear war. The long arguments with my respected colleagues shifted my thinking from enthusi- astic support of nuclear energy to a more nuanced position, still cautiously in favour of replacing coal-­fired power stations but acutely aware of the need to manage the long-­term problems. When I returned to Australia for a six-­month appointment at Griffith University in 1977, the Fox Report had just been published, and I was drawn into the resulting discussion of its findings.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 151 11/12/20 1:36 pm 152 GriffithReview71

The report questioned the widely assumed objectivity of science, noting that ‘many wildly exaggerated statements’ had been made about the risks of nuclear energy, and adding: ‘What has surprised us more is a lack of objectiv- ity in not a few of those in favour of it, including distinguished scientists.’ It went on to say that those involved in nuclear energy had ‘painted excessively optimistic pictures’ of performance and safety: Titterton, for example, had described nuclear energy as ‘the cheapest, safest and cleanest means of power production yet devised’. The report also commented that some of those who supported nuclear energy had questioned the motives of critics. Baxter had dismissed opponents of nuclear energy as ‘a small, well-­funded, vocal minor- ity’ who used ‘a mixture of untruthful and hysterical statements, emotionally concocted to frighten the lay public’. He later went even further, claiming, ‘The Australian anti-­nuclear conspiracy is a political thing with links to international communism and the general motive of reducing the economic and military strength of the West.’ While some of the opposition to nuclear energy was political, there is no evidence that it was either well-­funded or linked to international communism. The Fox Report found that the proposed expansion of uranium exports raised two important issues: the potential for fissile material to be used to produce nuclear weapons and the need to manage the radioactive waste from reactors. ‘The nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to the risk of nuclear war,’ it said, recommending that uranium exports should be strictly controlled to prevent weapons proliferation. It also noted that the 1976 Flowers Report from the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution had argued that development of nuclear power should be limited until it had been demonstrated that radioactive waste could be ‘safely contained for the indefinite future’. The Fox Report sparked vigorous debate in Australia, with community groups sponsoring public discussions. I remember a panel one Friday night in the town hall at Nambour, a small town in the Sunshine Coast hinter- land, where a public meeting had been convened by their Apex Club. About 200 people turned up to witness a debate that became quite heated. I was vigor- ously attacked when I quoted from the UK nuclear industry house journal to show that the uranium mining representatives were lying to the meeting. There was also division within the ALP. In a precursor of the contem- porary differences about the Adani mine, those on the left of the party mostly opposed the mining and export of uranium, while those on the right

Lowe-71.indd 152 16/12/20 3:59 pm Iwean Lo : A long half-­life 153

supported the potential jobs that would be created. In 1977, the ALP national conference adopted a policy opposing expansion of uranium mining. But the Whitlam government, which began the inquiry, had been removed from office in 1975. Under Malcolm Fraser, the Coalition government was enthusiastic to see the Ranger mine go ahead and actively encouraged other possible export ventures. Fraser tried to elevate the program to a moral issue, claiming ‘an energy-­starved world’ needed our uranium. He also stated that the waste problem had been solved. That was a barefaced lie. Since it was not prudent for a young scientist to accuse the prime minister of lying, I point- edly described it instead as ‘a very modest announcement of a great scientific advance’. Of course, the problem had not been solved; over forty years later, it is still an issue. Huge volumes of nuclear waste are stockpiled at power stations around the world. Sweden and Finland have adopted a good process of community involvement and are well on the way to a potential solution involving storage in deep underground repositories – but the issue remains contentious everywhere else. The South Australian government was also under pressure to approve the development of a major copper mine at Roxby Downs that would also produce uranium. In one of his last acts as premier before illness forced him to resign in 1979, Don Dunstan said, ‘We simply cannot assure the people of SA that mining or treatment of uranium and the sale of uranium to a customer country is yet safe.’ That opposition remained ALP policy until 1983, when the newly elected Prime Minister Bob Hawke persuaded the party’s national conference that opposing the Roxby Downs mine would harm the party’s chances at the forthcoming South Australian state election. After an acrimo- nious debate, the ALP adopted its ‘three mines policy’, qualifying its overall opposition to uranium mining and export by allowing three large mines. Hawke laughed off journalists’ criticism of this obvious double standard.

IN SUBSEQUENT DECADES, Australia’s involvement in nuclear issues has been confined to exporting uranium and operating the Lucas Heights reactor. When HIFAR reached the end of its life, the government approved its replacement by the OPAL reactor, mainly used to produce radioactive isotopes for medical and industrial purposes. But there have been attempts to expand our nuclear role. Cabinet documents released in 2003 revealed that the Queensland government had secretly sought Commonwealth support to build a uranium

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 153 11/12/20 1:36 pm 154 GriffithReview71

enrichment plant near Rockhampton thirty years earlier. The process of enrichment is used to provide the uranium needed for most power reactors. Natural uranium consists of two isotopes: small amounts of Uranium-­235 with larger quantities of Uranium-­238. The lighter isotope is much more radioac- tive, so separation processes are used to ‘enrich’ the uranium, increasing the ratio of Uranium-­235 to Uranium-­238. The techniques developed as part of the Manhattan Project are still used in this work, and they require enormous amounts of energy. The proposal put forward secretly in 1972 would have been the biggest industrial plant ever built in Queensland and would have cost a billion dollars in 1970s money. The plan had been quietly shelved after the election of the Whitlam government, but surfaced in a different form a decade later. An angry rally filled Caboolture Town Hall during the 1983 federal election campaign, when a leaked report showed that the Fraser government would support a uranium enrichment plant in that area if re-­elected. There have also been several proposals over the decades for Australia to store radioactive waste from offshore nuclear power stations. Our political and geological stability is seen to make us ideal for permanent disposal of this waste. As prime minister, Bob Hawke supported a plan by a company called Pangea to store waste in outback Western Australia. Later, in 2015, the South Australian government initiated a Royal Commission into the possibility the state could store waste from other countries. Its report argued that it would be a great economic opportunity for South Australia, but the proposal foundered when a 350-­person citizens’ jury opposed it. The fundamental problem was trust. The members of the jury effectively said they were not confident such a project would be responsibly managed by either a government agency or a private corporation. The jury also questioned the projected financial claims for the project; since there is no operating market for the services being discussed, the figures were inevitably rubbery. This lack of trust is a fundamental problem for any project involving radiation. For over twenty years, the Commonwealth Government has tried to establish a repository to store low-­level radioactive waste: compara- tively benign items such as gloves and other protective gear used in nuclear medicine. Despite clear assurances from experts, several communities have defeated proposals for waste-storage facilities. Low-­level waste remains in a wide variety of locations around the nation, including hospitals and univer- sity laboratories, still awaiting agreement on a possible site for a permanent storage facility.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 154 11/12/20 1:36 pm Iwean Lo : A long half-­life 155

The question of nuclear power stations was not seriously raised for more than thirty years after the Jervis Bay project was cancelled. A few advocates kept writing to newspapers, but the economic reality was that nuclear energy could not compete with coal-­fired power, while the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown and the 1986 Chernobyl explosion discredited any claims of safety. A 1985 report by the Australian Science and Technology Council about nuclear science and technology said nothing about nuclear energy. It endorsed the proposal to rename the Atomic Energy Commission as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, recognising that its mission was no longer to provide the expertise for nuclear energy.

GLOBALLY, THE NUCLEAR power industry appeared dead in the water. After Chernobyl, political support in Europe evaporated. Planned reactors were deferred or cancelled, and the amount of nuclear power gradually declined. Then a small group in the UK came up with an idea to salvage the industry. After decades of violently opposing environmental groups, they decided to conveniently accept the science of global climate change and proposed nuclear reactors as the low-­carbon power source the world needed. Concerned by this argument, I addressed the National Press Club in 2005 to remind Australian journalists of the case against nuclear energy. I argued that promot- ing nuclear power as the solution to climate change was like advocating smoking as a cure for obesity; the nuclear option would make it more diffi- cult to move to the clean energy future that climate change demands. When asked why I was bothering, I said that I was worried that John Howard, then prime minister, might propose nuclear power as a distraction from his studied inaction on climate change. My fears were well founded. In 2006, when his failure to respond to climate change became a political issue, Howard hastily set up an inquiry into the possibility of using nuclear energy to reduce the carbon footprint of our electricity industry. The process of assembling a group that the late comedian John Clarke described as ‘people who want nuclear power by Tuesday’ was so rushed that the taskforce was incomplete when Howard announced its forma- tion to the media; it was several days before all the names could be revealed. Chaired by Dr Ziggy Switkowski, the group toured the world to find support for the idea of using nuclear energy. In a classic Freudian slip, the headline in The Australian acclaimed its 2007 final report as hailing ‘a glowing future’.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 155 11/12/20 1:36 pm 156 GriffithReview71

It put as good a case as it could, but the facts could not be fudged. This report accepted that both a carbon price and other forms of financial support would be required for a nuclear power station to be economically viable. It also conceded that it would take at least ten years and possibly fifteen to build one nuclear power station, given that Australia had neither the construction experience nor the regulatory structure that would be needed. Before the 2007 election, The Australia Institute mischievously released a map showing possible sites for a first nuclear power station, setting off a tsunami of panic among sitting MPs. That reaction showed there was little community support for nuclear energy. The election that year of Kevin Rudd – who had described climate change as the greatest moral challenge of our time and promised Australia would finally ratify the Kyoto Protocol – effectively ended the debate about nuclear power. The following period of unprecedented political turmoil saw Julia Gillard replace Rudd as prime minister (the subsequent hung election leading to her negotiating a package of measures responding to climate change, including a carbon price) and Tony Abbott displace Malcolm Turnbull as leader of Liberal Party (and demonise the carbon price as ‘a great big tax on everything’). Abbott then won an election and wound back the national response to climate change – before being displaced as prime minister by Malcolm Turnbull, who was in turn himself displaced, after a disappointing result in the 2016 election, by supporters of Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison. Perhaps to distract attention from its own inaction on climate change, the Morrison government started a parliamentary inquiry ‘into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ in August 2019. I gave evidence, arguing that nuclear power does not make economic or political sense in twenty-­first century Australia. The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering had previ- ously urged replacing coal-­fired power by nuclear energy; in this inquiry the academy argued that ‘development of a regulatory framework for nuclear fuel cycle activities without a clear business case would be a challenging exercise, and consume valuable policy and regulatory design resources that might otherwise be dedicated to more pressing challenges in energy policy’. The academy also contended that the legislative barriers that now exist should be removed ‘so that nuclear energy can be considered on its own merits’, while conceding that the cost-­effectiveness of the approach remains uncertain. In its

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 156 11/12/20 1:36 pm Iwean Lo : A long half-­life 157

final report, the parliamentary committee did not recommend adoption of nuclear power, but it did advocate repealing the current law that expressly forbids its use. That raises the question I posed at the start of this essay. If there has never been hard evidence that nuclear power would be cost-­effective in Australia, why does it keep coming back into the debate?

MY OWN PERSONAL journey speaks partly to the reasons nuclear energy was supported in the 1960s. As I studied electrical engineering and physics, I saw nuclear reactors as offering a cleaner and safer way of produc- ing electricity. So I accepted a scholarship funded by the UK Atomic Energy Authority when I went to England to pursue doctoral research, investigating the basic physics of a problem that limits the useful life of uranium oxide fuel elements in nuclear power stations. While I contributed to understanding this science, the problem has not been solved and these fuel elements still have a limited life. The funding came from the group operating the prototype fast breeder reactor at Dounreay in the north of Scotland. Their approach seemed a logical next step in the development of a nuclear electricity supply. The design was called a ‘breeder’ reactor because it did not consume its nuclear fuel; instead, it used this fuel to ‘breed’ nuclear materials for future power stations. This promised virtually unlimited clean power, potentially avoiding the long-­term problem of radioactive waste from conventional reactors by converting it into fuel for the next generation of reactors. When I joined the UK Open University, I found some colleagues critical of nuclear energy. I listened carefully to their arguments about the problem of managing radioactive waste and the risks to humanity from nuclear weapons. And they were constructively critical of the fast breeder program, suggesting its technical difficulties might never be overcome. They were right; despite expenditure of unbelievable amounts of money by the UK, the US and France, the dream of a commercial fast breeder reactor has never been realised. They also worried – correctly – that it might be very difficult to secure community support for waste storage in any specific locality. There remained the issue of economics: was nuclear power cheaper than coal- ­fired electricity? As I pored over reports prepared for the UK govern- ment, I was puzzled by an obvious discrepancy. Those promoting nuclear

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 157 11/12/20 1:36 pm 158 GriffithReview71

energy had published peer-­reviewed papers showing it was the cheaper approach, but those who opposed it had also published peer-­reviewed papers showing it was more expensive! How could that be? The explanation lies in the fact that there is no agreed basis for making an honest comparison over the lifetime of a power station. It costs more to build a nuclear power station than its coal-­fired equivalent because a nuclear reactor is a more complicated way of boiling water than burning coal. But the running costs are much higher for a coal-­fired power station, which requires the mining and transport of millions of tonnes of fossil fuel. Any compari- son required making estimates of future coal prices to determine whether they offset the higher capital costs of nuclear power – and different credible estimates of future prices lead to different estimates of overall costs. There is also a more fundamental problem involved in calculating overall lifetime costs. The comparison requires choosing what economists call the discount rate, recognising that future costs and revenues have a reduced value. The whole money-­lending industry reflects our preference for funds available now over funds available at some time in the future. There are different views about appropriate discount rates for future costs, and some analysts clearly had a vested interest: those who worked for the coal industry or in nuclear organ- isations understandably chose assumptions that gave their preferred overall results. It remains difficult to determine a legitimate basis for comparing the long- ­term costs of different energy supply technologies, because we cannot know what the operating costs will be in thirty years’ time. With the economics uncertain, there remained the underlying issue of what sort of future we wanted. In the 1970s, some nuclear scientists genuinely believed that nuclear power would be a cleaner approach. According to Titterton, writing in 1979: ‘It has been demonstrated to cause no more nuclear radiation issues, and far less environmental damage, than the coal-­fired electricity generating industry.’ In the short-­term, that is true. Coal contains small amounts of radioactive minerals, so a large coal-­fired power station actually releases more radiation into the environment than a normally operat- ing nuclear reactor. The argument is sound only when normal operation is considered; it overlooks the possibility of whole regions being contaminated by serious accidents such as occurred at Chernobyl and in the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and also ignores the need to contain long-­lived highly radioactive waste.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 158 11/12/20 1:36 pm Iwean Lo : A long half-­life 159

Some critics have argued that scientists and engineers who worked to develop nuclear weapons then sought to expiate their guilt by promoting the potential community benefits of nuclear energy, even accepting the 1950s American delusion that nuclear power would be so cheap its use would not even be metered. It is true that nuclear science was used to develop weapons of terrible power, but it has also provided relatively clean energy in many countries, and in Australia is critical to healthcare by enabling medical imaging and cancer treatment. The other side of that coin is that any country that has nuclear power stations can use that technology to develop nuclear weapons. The UN treaty preventing the spread of nuclear weapons has been subverted by countries such as India, Pakistan and Israel, all of which have used fissile material from power stations to produce bombs. Most observers think the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has followed suit, while there is tension in the Middle East about whether Iran’s nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful. We should not ignore the awkward reality that it has been suggested from time to time that Australia should consider developing nuclear weapons. Ernest Titterton stated that we should consider ‘a nuclear weapons stock- pile sufficient for us to be able to repel an attempted invasion’. Philip Baxter argued from the 1950s that we should base our defence on nuclear weapons. After the Vietnam War, he asserted that we could not rely on the US to defend us and called on the government to develop ‘a varied array of missile of short and medium range, some of which should carry nuclear warheads’. As recently as 2020, leading defence analyst Emeritus Professor Hugh White expressed concern about Australia’s implicit reliance on US nuclear weapons and argued that we should at least consider developing our own. And within the defence industry, there is a vigorous debate about whether the next generation of submarines should be nuclear powered.

LET ME RETURN to the issue of what sort of future we want. I was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering in 2005, a recognition of my decades of work in the field of sustainability, particularly concerned with energy supply and use. Many of the Academy’s Fellows support nuclear energy – including some who were until recently not convinced about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Engineers and scientists tend to be comfortable with high-­technology projects and believe

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 159 11/12/20 1:36 pm 160 GriffithReview71

they can be well managed for community benefit. They are reluctant to rely on the intermittent flows of sunlight and wind, but are usually comfort- able with large-­scale hydro-­electricity projects. Many support Snowy 2.0, the large-­scale energy project proposed by Malcom Turnbull that would massively expand water storage and hydro-­electric generating capacity in the Kosciuszko National Park – even though the scheme appears to be economi- cally unsound and environmentally irresponsible. I suspect some would welcome the technological challenge of building and operating nuclear power stations; some actively endorsed the South Australian Royal Commission’s proposal to establish a radioactive waste industry. An obvious conclusion flows from the Fox Report’s 1976 comment about a lack of objectivity. We are not objective observers of the world: we all see reality through the lenses of our values and our experience. We all have a tendency to see what we would like to see. I’m constantly struck by the optimism of football fans about their team’s prospects at the start of a new season, even if the players consist mostly of those who did poorly the season before. The probability that any person will be favourably disposed to the idea of nuclear power can be predicted from their values and from their view of the sort of future they would like to see. Fellows of the Academy of Technology and Engineering tend to favour a high-­tech future, while conservationists are much more likely to favour small-­scale local supply systems. This is a reminder that the future is not somewhere we are going, but something we are creating. From my perspective, nuclear power now looks like an intractable problem we were just lucky to avoid. Most developed nations have nuclear power stations with mountains of accumulated waste, for which there is no effective permanent solution. The urgent task of moving to clean energy supply, mostly from solar and wind, is made more difficult when resources have been sunk into the nuclear power industry. I believe we dodged a bullet.

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Ian Lowe AO is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University. His books include Why vs Why: Nuclear Power (Pantera Press, 2010), with Barry Brook, A Voice of Reason: Reflections on Australia (UQP, 2010), Bigger or Better?: Australia’s Population Debate (UQP, 2012) and The Lucky Country?: Reinventing Australia (UQP, 2016). He is a 2020 Griffith Review Queensland Writing Fellow, supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 160 11/12/20 1:36 pm PICTURE GALLERY The crimson line trent parke

Trent Parke’s latest series, The Crimson Line, continues his fascination with the transformative powers of light – particularly the ephemeral spaces around dawn and dusk. Parke’s curiosity about these colours led him to the cochineal, small female insects whose bodies are crushed and boiled to generate commercial dyes for shades from scarlet and magenta to crimson and orange.

In The Crimson Line, Parke stalks these shades and hues across a range of landscapes, from the industrial assemblages of factory lines, processing plants, roadsides, high-tension powerlines and shipping-crate skyscrapers to vast vistas of skies, clouds and birds. The following selection forms part of a larger visual narrative that encompasses global warming, beauty and consumerism, a stunning hybrid of strange truths and imagination.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 161 11/12/20 1:36 pm 162 GriffithReview71 TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 163

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 162 11/12/20 1:36 pm TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 163

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 163 11/12/20 1:36 pm 164 GriffithReview71 TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 165

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 164 11/12/20 1:36 pm TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 165

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 165 11/12/20 1:36 pm 166 GriffithReview71 TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 167

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 166 11/12/20 1:36 pm TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 167

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 167 11/12/20 1:36 pm 168 GriffithReview71 TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 169

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 168 11/12/20 1:36 pm TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 169

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 169 11/12/20 1:36 pm 170 GriffithReview71 TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 171

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 170 11/12/20 1:36 pm TRENT PARKE: The crimson line 171

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 171 11/12/20 1:36 pm 172 GriffithReview71

Trent Parke, the first Australian to become a full member of the renowned Magnum Photo Agency, is considered one of the most innovative and challenging photographers of his generation. Parke has received numerous awards and accolades and is held in major institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia. The Crimson Line (Stanley Barker, 2020) is his seventh published book.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 172 11/12/20 1:36 pm REPORTAGE Hail hydrogen Powering the debate on future fuel Nicole Hasham

I’M SITTING IN the passenger seat of a Hyundai Nexo on a tree-­studded Canberra street. It’s stopped to reverse into a parking spot, but no one is driving – an ultra-­luxury ghost car. Scott Nargar, Hyundai’s ‘senior manager of future mobility’, stands in the middle of the road holding a remote control. He presses a button; the steering wheel spins on its own and the car rolls backwards until parallel to the kerb. From a nearby apartment window, a black cat gazes unblinkingly at this fusion of the supernatural and the mundane. And I wonder: is this what the future feels like? Nargar opens the door and hops back into the driver’s seat. ‘So basically after that, the car turns itself off, puts itself in park, locks itself and I can walk away,’ he says, matter-­of-­factly. We drive on, and he runs me through the Nexo’s high-­tech cockpit: blind spot cameras and pedestrian-­seeking auto brakes; ventilated seats and a heated steering wheel. It all sounds deluxe, but I’m mostly interested in what’s in the Nexo’s tank: pure hydrogen. Hydrogen-­powered cars in Australia are rare; this is one of twenty on lease to the ACT Government. The car is powered by electricity, produced when hydrogen reacts with oxygen in a fuel cell. The only thing it emits is a curl of steam. The car also filters the air as it drives. We pull onto an avenue leading to Parliament House and zip past cars belching fumes into the afternoon sky. Nargar points to a huge touchscreen display in the centre of the console

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 173 11/12/20 1:36 pm 174 GriffithReview71

showing he’s driven 208 kilometres that day. ‘I’ve purified 153.1 kilolitres of air – which equates to enough air for five adults to breathe for a day. And I’ve displaced nearly thirty kilos of carbon dioxide,’ he says. In May of 2020, carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere reached a record 417 parts per million, which means for every one million molecules of gas in the atmosphere, 417 were carbon dioxide. These concen- trations are growing steadily; in Australia, even COVID-­19 lockdowns could not stop the rise. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says without radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a planetary disaster awaits. We must find new, cleaner fuel sources, else perish together. Renewable energy can get us part of the way, but it won’t be enough. That’s where hydrogen comes in. You’d be hard-­pressed to find anyone in energy circles who disputes that, in theory, hydrogen could eliminate carbon from much of the global economy. How to do it right, and in time to avert climate catastrophe, is the conundrum now before us.

HYDROGEN IS THE most abundant element in the universe, but you can’t see, smell or taste it. It was made in the Big Bang and went on to form stars and galaxies. On Earth, hydrogen is not conveniently available in its pure form but is bound up with other substances. To produce hydrogen without carbon emissions, it must be extracted in one of two ways: from fossil fuels (using a technology that captures and stores carbon), or from water (in a process powered by renewable energy). Dr Fiona Beck, a researcher at the Australian National University’s Research School of Engineering, is interested in the latter. Beck and her colleagues are working on a cutting-­edge alchemy, and have developed a technology that, in essence, converts water into hydrogen using nothing but sunlight. The power of the sun has been used to create hydrogen in the past. Converted to electricity, solar energy can power an electrolyser that splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. But Beck’s new technology cuts out the middle man: the solar panels have been re-­engineered to create the hydrogen themselves. ‘The problem at the moment is that the economics of buying an electroly- ser and plugging it into renewable energy is not quite there compared to the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 174 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nicole Hasham: Hail hydrogen 175

fossil fuel methods,’ Beck says. ‘What we’re looking at here is: how do you make it even cheaper, and actually do it all in one?’ Beck’s doctoral student Astha Sharma emerges from a lab. ‘She is the brains who does most of the actual work,’ Beck says, beckoning us both back into the lab. Inside, bundles of power cords dangle from hooks, and electrical equipment crowds every surface. On one desk sits what looks like a long black paparazzi lens. This, Beck explains, is the light source. ‘There’s a big arc lamp in there,’ she says. ‘It’s like controlled lightning. In a very small area, it’s actually a very large fraction of the temperature of the sun.’ Wearing disposable gloves, Sharma takes a tiny silicon solar cell, about one centimetre wide. Fused to that is another type of solar cell made of a material known as perovskite. She dips the cells into a clear container filled with an alkaline solution, then removes the cap from the lens. A sharp beam of light illuminates the liquid. Soon, tiny gas bubbles fizz from the cells. ‘Is that hydrogen?’ I ask. ‘Yep,’ says Beck, and laughs. ‘It’s actually not very dramatic.’ The project has set a new efficiency record for solar-­to-­hydrogen cells: of all the sun’s energy the cells receive, 17.6 per cent is converted to hydro- gen – rivalling the most efficient rooftop solar panels, which convert about 20 per cent of sunlight into electricity. So depending on how the technology develops, the end result may be dramatic indeed.

TODAY, FOSSIL FUELS account for about 80 per cent of the energy the world uses – not exactly what hydrogen advocates of the past had in mind. In 1923, British scientist JBS Haldane predicted a future where ‘rows of metallic windmills’ powered ‘electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen’. General Motors built the world’s first hydrogen vehicle, the Electrovan, in 1966. A few years later, American chemistry professor John Bockris coined the term the ‘hydrogen economy’ to describe a future where hydrogen replaced fossil fuels to power all manner of human activity. Other waves of hype have followed in the fifty years since, but progress has not. Now, once again, the world is enthralled by the promise of hydrogen thanks to the falling cost of renewable energy and the climate change guillotine hovering over our necks. Around the world, governments and investors are laying increasingly big bets on new hydrogen projects.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 175 11/12/20 1:36 pm 176 GriffithReview71

In Australia, Alan Finkel, whose term as Chief Scientist ended in December 2020, is head cheerleader for a tiny hydrogen industry. He talks up Australia’s potential to ‘ship sunshine to the world’ – a merry descrip- tion of exporting hydrogen produced with solar energy. And Finkel proudly claims to be first on the waiting list when Hyundai starts leasing the Nexo to the public. Finkel spearheaded the National Hydrogen Strategy, published in late 2019. It aims to make Australia a world leader in hydrogen within a decade: under the most optimistic scenario, it predicts that our hydrogen indus- try could be worth $26 billion to the economy in 2050. I ask Finkel if the economic calamity brought on by COVID-­19 has changed his mind about these prospects. ‘I’m actually feeling more optimistic, because there’s so much happening globally,’ he says. ‘We are seeing extraordinary monetary commitments.’ He rattles off a couple made just before our conversation in the late spring of 2020: €7 billion from France and €9 billion from Germany to expand the hydrogen industry in Europe and abroad. Investment by Australia is far more tentative. Of two dozen or so hydrogen projects announced to date, Finkel says there are only about six ‘where money is actually flowing and ground has been turned’. At the time of writing, the Morrison government had committed about $370 million to support the hydrogen strategy; state governments have promised further funding, though smaller amounts.

VIRTUALLY ALL HYDROGEN used today is derived from fossil fuels: about 6 per cent of the world’s natural gas, and 2 per cent of its coal, goes towards hydrogen production. Hydrogen is produced from gas in a process whereby methane reacts with very hot steam, and it can be extracted from coal through ‘gasification’, when coal reacts with oxygen and steam and becomes a gaseous mix containing hydrogen. A small amount of hydrogen is also generated from oil. Each year, the emissions produced to generate hydro- gen by these methods equal that of the UK and Indonesia combined. A cleaner form is ‘blue’ hydrogen. This is made from coal or gas, but some carbon emissions are trapped and transported to be stored deep underground. Cleaner still, however, is ‘green’ hydrogen, made using zero-­ emissions renewable energy.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 176 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nicole Hasham: Hail hydrogen 177

Hydrogen from renewables is currently more expensive than that derived from fossil fuels, even when the resulting carbon is captured. But green hydro- gen is becoming more competitive: costs of the clean energy required for its manufacture are rapidly falling, along with the cost of electrolysers. Analysis by the Australian National University in August 2020 found green hydrogen could easily be produced in Australia for $3 a kilo or less in the near term. Other analysts argue that if electrolysers keep getting cheaper, a kilo of green hydrogen could be produced for as little as seventy US cents before 2050. That makes it competitive both with hydrogen derived from gas and coal, and with current natural gas prices in some parts of the world. On clean hydrogen’s production costs, Finkel says he’s ‘optimistic’. Then he sobers. ‘But I’m pessimistic, miserable and bummed by the fact that there’s not enough immediate demand.’ Today, the world’s biggest hydrogen buyers are industry: oil refiners and manufacturers of ammonia, steel and methanol. (In a niche application, it’s also used in peanut butter production – hydrogenated oils are what make it spread smoothly onto your toast.) Creating a mass market for hydrogen won’t happen overnight. ‘Let’s say you’re building demand for hydrogen through transport,’ Finkel says. ‘You don’t suddenly develop hydrogen trucks and cars and develop the refuelling capability and people’s confidence in the regulations and the other stuff that makes an industry. It’s going to take years and years. So demand is the limit- ing factor here.’ Energy experts broadly acknowledge that zero-­emissions electricity cannot solve the climate crisis alone – it simply can’t be used everywhere. Finkel cites long-h­ aul transport, saying planes, trucks, trains and ships are unlikely to ever choof around with tonnes of batteries on board. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get on a big battery-­powered plane at Sydney Airport and fly non-­stop to San Francisco with 350 passengers,’ he says. Hydrogen will also be needed to replace coal in the polluting steel-­ making industry. Globally, steel manufacture creates about 7 per cent of carbon emissions; a switch to green hydrogen there would be a boon for both the climate and the Australian steel towns of Port Kembla and Whyalla. Australia is up against nations such as the US, China, Brunei and Saudi Arabia in the hydrogen export race. But we have one distinct advantage:

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 177 11/12/20 1:36 pm 178 GriffithReview71

proximity to Asia and, in particular, Japan and South Korea, which have both wagered heavily on hydrogen. By 2030, the Japanese government wants 800,000 fuel cell vehicles on the road, and 900 stations to refuel them. And at the Tokyo Olympics, delayed until July 2021, the flame will burn with hydrogen for the first time. In December 2019, Japan launched the world’s first ship designed to transport liquefied hydrogen at the port of Kobe. Finkel was there as the 8,000-tonne­ Hydrogen Frontier slipped into the water for the first time. ‘It hit me that this was the first ship ever made that will allow human beings to transport renewable energy from one continent to another,’ he says. ‘It’s a new era.’ The global hydrogen economy suddenly appeared to be alive and thrum- ming in Osaka Bay. But the shape of the new world energy order is a huge unknown – not least because the Hydrogen Frontier will ship more than just sunshine. The launch marks the start of a controversial trial project in which hydrogen derived from Australia’s brown coal will be shipped to Japan. Some potential importers of Australia’s hydrogen, such as Germany, won’t consider hydrogen sourced from fossil fuels in the long term, even if some of the carbon that is produced is captured. But, Finkel says, ‘certainly Japan will, South Korea will, Norway will. It really depends on whether you’re focused on a technology and you hate it, or you’re focused on what counts – atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide.’ Critics of using coal-­derived hydrogen should ‘just get over it’, Finkel says. ‘If you could do coal with 100 per cent carbon capture and storage, and it was cheaper and dispatchable 24 hours a day, why wouldn’t you? But there’s a huge number of people out there who would say no, just because it’s coal.’

‘DON’T BE AFRAID! Don’t be scared! It won’t hurt you.’ It’s February 2017, and Australia’s then Treasurer Scott Morrison is clutching a lacquered lump of coal in parliament, and teasing Labor over its ‘coal-­a-­phobia’. Morrison hands off the lump to the then leader of the Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, and goes on: ‘It is that malady that is affecting the jobs in the towns and the industries and, indeed, in this country because of [their] pathological, ideological opposition to coal being an important part of our sustainable and more certain energy future.’ As The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy would later write, ‘No one was afraid, or scared. People were just confused. What was this fresh idiocy?’

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 178 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nicole Hasham: Hail hydrogen 179

Indeed, after years of absurd politicking in Australia’s parliament over climate and energy policy, Morrison’s stunt still stood out as idiotic – though in hindsight, perhaps there was method to the derangement. Two years later, with Morrison at the Coalition helm, the government snatched an unexpected federal election win. The contest was largely won in regional Queensland, where the Coalition pulverised Labor in mining seats. Blue-­collar voters sent Opposition leader Bill Shorten packing, and with it his party’s equivocation on the Adani coal mine and its half-­decent plans for climate action. Fires ripped through Australia’s south-­east the following summer. Bush desiccated by the nation’s hottest and driest year on record literally exploded, the fires burning so fiercely they created their own thunderstorms. Morrison flew to Hawaii in December as the crisis mounted. He returned contrite about the holiday, but hostile to those who ‘conflated’ the fires with Australia’s weak climate action targets. In January, conservative MPs doubled down in the face of a shell-­shocked nation. The fires, they claimed, were not the work of global warming but of arsonists and Greens. Then came COVID-­19. Academics, economists and investors urged the government to invest stimulus money in renewable energy. But in the early weeks of the pandemic, federal Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor was already talking up a gas-­led economic recovery. Soon after, he announced the $300 million Advancing Hydrogen Fund; it would invest in hydrogen production from both renewables and fossil fuels. In September he released a ‘technology roadmap’ – again, hydrogen from fossil fuels was on the table. The government already had skin in the game – a project known as the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC). This will produce liquefied hydrogen from brown coal in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, then ship it to Japan via the Hydrogen Frontier. In April 2018, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had launched the $496 million project at the Loy Yang coal mine in the middle of an autumn heatwave: the valley was as dry as chalk dust and rainfall that month was the lowest for at least twenty years. The federal and Victorian governments had kicked in $50 million each for the project, with an international consortium to fund the rest. Turnbull told the crowd the project would ensure ‘more jobs for Latrobe Valley workers not just today, but in years and decades to come’. He clutched

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 179 11/12/20 1:36 pm 180 GriffithReview71

the black lectern. ‘It’s amazing,’ he said, ‘to think that brown coal from Victoria is going to be keeping the lights on in Japan.’ Australia, of course, knows how to dig up coal – it’s an endeavour at which we excel. But in the long term, as climate change worsens, no nation will want to buy carbon-­heavy hydrogen. The success of the Latrobe venture rests on effective carbon capture and storage (CCS) – piping carbon dioxide produced by the project to Bass Strait, injecting it into sandstone under the seabed and making sure it stays there. Efforts to sequester the carbon are being led by CarbonNet, a joint project of the Victorian and federal governments. CarbonNet project director Ian Filby explains to me how, in the summer of 2019, a rig began test drilling at a site off Victoria’s Ninety Mile Beach. It was collecting rock samples to confirm the site, dubbed ‘Pelican’, could store up to 125 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – not just from hydrogen production, but from other indus- tries in the region wanting to rid themselves of carbon. Most people I spoke to for this article were, at best, sceptical of the HESC project. Some were outright disparaging – of its substantial carbon emissions and its overall prospects of success. Alan Finkel is somewhat warmer. To him, while CCS is not 100 per cent effective at trapping carbon, meaning the project is ‘not perfect’, it is ‘a very big step forward’. No carbon dioxide will be stored during the pilot phase of the HESC project. But to go commercial, a viable carbon storage option will be needed. Filby said works so far suggested Pelican was ‘an excellent site’. ‘We’ve had our work reviewed by an interna- tional panel of experts, who have also confirmed that,’ he tells me. ‘Really, now it’s about progressing the project towards a more commercial decision, to see which parties from industry are interested in abating their emissions, and getting the storage site ready for them.’ CCS has a knack of making its critics spitting mad: Greenpeace has called it a ‘mad scientist fantasy’ and the Greens deride it as a ‘useless pipedream’. Between 2003 and 2017, Australian governments spent an estimated $1.3 billion developing the technology, yet a commercially viable plant has not materialised. Chevron’s Gorgon gas project in Western Australia has not helped carbon-­capture’s public image. From 2016, 80 per cent of emissions from the venture’s offshore gas field were meant to be trapped and buried underground. But technical issues delayed the injection by three years, allowing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to vent into

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 180 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nicole Hasham: Hail hydrogen 181

the atmosphere. At the time of writing, the project still wasn’t capturing carbon at the rate promised. Capturing carbon from hydrogen projects is an even dicier proposi- tion. A few weeks after Finkel’s hydrogen strategy was released, Australian National University climate economics professor Frank Jotzo wrote in The Conversation that no project in the world had achieved the 90–95 per cent carbon dioxide capture rate assumed in the strategy’s best-­case scenario. In fact, only two hydrogen plants in the world were using the technology at the time: one in Canada that captured about 80 per cent of emissions, and one in the US, capturing less than that. CarbonNet’s Filby, an engineer by trade, says CCS has been ‘painted as the enemy by activist groups and some parts of the media’. He is at pains to emphasise the scientific and engineering rigour that informed the choice of injection site. ‘The reservoirs, or sandstone layers of rock, are shown to be very good at storing all kinds of fluids,’ he says. ‘We’ve got oil and gas out in that basin that’s been stored for millions of years. So that’s a really strong indicator. It’s more than an indicator, it’s a scientifically demonstrable way that you can store things in the ground over geological time.’ Filby seems unperturbed by the project’s sizeable technical challenges; the question, he says, is whether it can be done for a reasonable cost. ‘The economics need to make sense,’ he says. ‘So it comes down to [this]: what are the policies of the government to abate the carbon? We certainly need different price signals and policies that are about incentivising the best solutions.’ Energy analysts say government policy will be critical to scaling up green hydrogen production and getting the infrastructure built. That includes billions of dollars of industry subsidies and a carbon price – the latter consid- ered political poison in Australia. If he were a betting man, I ask Filby, would he put his money on carbon-­ capture hydrogen? ‘I believe governments will move towards decarbonisation and, globally, CCS will have a role to play,’ he says. ‘But the question is when.’

HORSLEY PARK, ACCORDING to The Sydney Morning Herald real estate pages, is best known for three things: God, guns and horses. The suburb in Sydney’s south-­west is one of Australia’s most devout – about 80 per cent of residents identify as Christian – and it’s home to the equestrian centre built

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 181 11/12/20 1:36 pm 182 GriffithReview71

for the Sydney Olympics. It also has a prominent gun shop on the main street. Soon, however, Horsley Park will add another feather to its cap: as a green hydrogen pioneer. In August 2020, the New South Wales Government approved the $18 million Western Sydney Green Gas Project, to be operated by energy infrastructure giant Jemena. Touted as Australia’s largest hydrogen demon- stration, it will generate green hydrogen, mix it into the existing natural gas network and deliver it to about 250 homes around Horsley Park. Alistair Wardrope, Jemena’s senior engineer, has experience in the ­hydrogen business that dates back to 2006 when he worked for a UK electrolyser manufacturer. I ask if Horsley Park residents would notice any difference if, say, they’re boiling an egg on a gas cooktop, and there’s hydrogen in the mix. Wardrope pauses, then eventually answers: ‘No. If, hypothetically, we add 10 per cent hydrogen, we do marginally decrease the calorific value of the gas. But we’re talking about a very, very small difference. So no. If you’re talking about boiling an egg it might take a second or two longer.’ In terms of a broader transition, blending hydrogen into the mains gas network is considered one of the easiest ways to build demand in Australia. Unlike a hydrogen-­fuelled transport network – which would need new vehicles, refuelling stations and a new tranche of regulation and laws – mixing hydrogen into the gas network requires little more than an electrolyser and a valve. About 10 per cent hydrogen can generally be blended into the extant gas network without needing to upgrade household appliances. Jemena is trialling a 2 per cent mix and will deploy strict controls to make sure the limit is not exceeded. It’s a cautious approach, for good reason. In 2018, researchers at the University of Queensland examined public attitudes to hydrogen use and found safety was the top concern. Of course, all fuels are flammable, and hydrogen is already being produced and used without incident. But hydrogen ignites easily, and the public will need convincing it’s low risk. Hyundai says it fired bullets at the hydrogen tanks of the Hyundai Nexo to make sure they could withstand a prang; I ask Wardrope if Horsley Park residents are worried hydrogen in their pipes might explode. ‘The first thing to point out is the amount of gas [involved in the project] in energy terms is a very, very small fraction of what Jemena moves on a daily basis,’ Wardrope says. ‘And Jemena is very well versed in safely transporting and handling flammable gases – which is what hydrogen is.’

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 182 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nicole Hasham: Hail hydrogen 183

The NSW Government wants 10 per cent hydrogen running through the state’s gas networks within a decade as part of its plan to reach net-­zero emissions by 2050. If repeated across the country, that would be a fair bit of hydrogen. I ask Wardrope if projects such as Jemena’s might help move the dial – generating enough demand to create a mass market. ‘It’s the chicken-­and-­egg scenario,’ Wardrope replies. ‘You don’t have the users because you don’t have the infrastructure, and you don’t have the infrastructure because you don’t have the users. Where we can leverage off existing infrastructure to help break that cycle, it definitely helps.’ But even with public backing, and with the economics and engineering sorted out, the hydrogen shift seems incomprehensibly vast. It touches almost every facet of modern life. It needs to happen over months and years, not decades and centuries. It will take unprecedented political will – and vested fossil fuel interests will not easily roll over. It will require permanent changes to not only our fuel source, but the homes we live in, the cars we drive and the foundations of the global economy. I ask Wardrope if he can see a road to a fully fledged hydrogen society? ‘I think, if we look at what’s happening around the world, the level of investment is increasing substantially in favour of hydrogen,’ he says. ‘So do I think there will be a transition? Me personally, yes. [But] the jury is still out, it’s fair to say, which is why it’s important to do these trials. In terms of whether it will be a 100 per cent conversion? There is no precedent. But over the years, the network and energy users have gone through multiple energy transitions.’ Indeed, the tale of human energy use is filled with plot twists. We mastered fire and burnt plants to release energy derived from the sun. Agriculture turned the sun’s energy into food, and we harnessed wind to propel boats and grind grain. Since the industrial revolution we’ve liberated energy from fossil fuels – energy trapped millions of years ago in the fibres of ancient plants. Now we’re on the cusp of a new chapter – without carbon dioxide. But hydrogen’s role in this future is far from assured. Storage and distribution of hydrogen is difficult and may slow the transition: exports, for example, require hydrogen to be compressed, piped, liquified, sent out on ships and kept ultra-­cold – at minus 253 degrees Celsius – in cryogenic tanks. Producing green hydrogen also will require a huge amount of energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. According to one estimate

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 183 11/12/20 1:36 pm 184 GriffithReview71

by Deloitte, installed electricity generation capacity in Australia may have to increase more than fivefold by 2050 under the most ambitious hydrogen production scenarios. In road transport, hydrogen fuel cells may be getting smaller and cheaper, but some say they’re no competition for electric vehicles. Tesla founder Elon Musk put it bluntly, deriding hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles as inefficient and ‘mind-bogglingly­ stupid’. And an extra degree of difficulty exists in Australia, the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Most energy production consumes water; it takes nine litres to make one kilogram of hydrogen via electrolysis. Coastal areas are the most likely sites of hydrogen production; there, desalinated seawater or wastewater will probably be used. Wardrope acknowledges the headwinds. ‘But when we look at history, in every energy transition there’s been a benefit, a positive outcome for the broader community and the environment,’ he says. ‘So looking at history I think that would suggest we are on the right path. We’re looking at the right technologies, but it’s still early days. Which is why we have to start small, but think big.’

BACK IN THE hydrogen- ­powered Nexo, it’s time for my afternoon drive to end. But in navigating back to where we began, I’ve led the driver, Scott Nargar, off course. I squint at the road ahead, looking for a road sign and cursing Canberra’s lookalike streets. Nargar, a gracious host, hasn’t tired of showing off the Nexo’s luxury features and barely seems to notice that we’re lost. As I get my bearings, he plays a sample of the car’s in-­built ambient sounds. ‘There’s the sound of the sea, or rainy days,’ he says, before flicking to a track titled ‘Open-­air café’. ‘It’s all about enjoying the experience of driving an eco-­car.’ He skips to a track filled with the chirrup of birds and insects. As we whizz past a supermarket, he asks, somewhat dryly, ‘don’t you feel like you’re in a rainforest now?’ Later, driving home in my diesel-­chewing hatchback, I wonder about this next junction humanity has reached. Time has handed us the bewilder- ing socio-­techno riddle of remaking the world’s energy system. So in labs and universities and factories and boardrooms, people tinker and toil to keep humanity going as is, just without the carbon dioxide.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 184 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nicole Hasham: Hail hydrogen 185

But what if this moment is about more than that? What if now is a good time to ask whether, as we took whatever fuel we wanted from the Earth, we used it well? We built cities and we met myriad desires, but did we look after one another, and every living thing? We became mobile and free, a human mass set in perpetual motion. But how often did we stop to listen to – and hear – the exhale of a real, breathing rainforest? Talk of the prospective energy transition seems largely to rest on a vision of humanity unfettered: no excess curbed, no wants foregone. But, as I ask Alan Finkel, is it maybe not just our fuel sources that need to change? Maybe it’s us, too? Finkel smiles wryly. ‘If we want to preserve the planet as it has been, we need to reduce the human impact,’ he says. ‘People talk about how we need to change our culture and our behaviour...but for all the talk, it doesn’t happen.’ Why not, I ask? Finkel hesitates. ‘I think politicians have just recognised that you don’t get voted in by telling people they have to give up their air-­conditioning.’ At the Australian National University, I put this same idea to Fiona Beck. If hydrogen and renewable energy save us, should humanity just continue as normal after that? Beck nods, as if to acknowledge that these questions are never far from her mind. ‘I’m reading Doughnut Economics, which is about how we can’t just keep going with endless growth,’ she says, referencing the 2017 book by Oxford economist Kate Raworth which argues, in Beck’s words, that humanity should live so ‘we’re not destroying the planet, but not deprived either’. ‘We need to electrify, we need to go to renewables, but we just can’t produce renewable energy fast enough. We also need ridiculous amounts of energy efficiency, and [we need] to change the way we use energy,’ Beck says. ‘We can’t solve all the problems with technology. It’s going to necessitate a change in mindset – away from “as much as you can, as fast as you can”, to considering the limits of the world we live in – just thinking about the whole thing.’

For references, see griffithreview.com

Nicole Hasham is environment and energy editor at The Conversation. She was formerly the environment and energy correspondent and federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is a Walkley Award winner.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 185 11/12/20 1:36 pm FICTION

BLUE CRANE

INGA SIMPSON

THOSE FIRST WEEKS Sally walked the beach, it went unread. She saw only a scallop of yellow sand edged with dark rock. Although her eyes were directed downwards, ahead of her feet and, occasion- ally, out to the horizon, her gaze was still inwards, picking over the detritus of her old life. The shift south had not brought her the happi- ness she had imagined. Anonymity, a fresh start, was a relief – but also rather lonely. The other residents waved or said good morning as they passed. But Sally, with her Queensland number plates and sun- ­ravaged skin, was not one of them. She saw the locals stopping to chat to one another, laughing and smiling and visiting each other’s houses in the evenings, carrying wine or cloth-­covered boards. It was a world she remained outside. It was the crab tracks she noticed first. The dotted patterns curving over the sand. So many, and in so many directions. Crabs scuttling in and out of holes that she had been tromping over without seeing. Whole lives going on during the night. The next morning, the beach had been washed smooth by the retreating tide, revealing a volume of prints. The webbed triangles left behind by seagulls and the larger human marks: five toes and a heel, boots, sneakers and thongs. Feet turning inwards and outwards, the drag of a heel. The longer gait of a runner, up on his toes. Accompanied by dogs in various sizes. Sally started leaving her sturdy walking shoes at home, so as to make her own mark. The feel of the cool sand between her toes and the water splashing up her ankles brought a smile to her face, a giggle bubbling up in her throat.

186

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 186 11/12/20 1:36 pm Inga Simpson

IT WAS TOO cold for swimming, or so she found it at first. But day by day, the details sketched themselves in. The spotted gums crowding up to the cliffs, as if to peer over the edge. The sea caves, natural arches and blowholes recalled childhood adventures. Memories still vivid in the pastel landscape of her mind. When the house she had shared with her husband for forty years was finally sold, the bay was the only place she wanted to go. The agent had told her that she was ‘very lucky’ to buy into the settlement. Properties were passed down through families or sold privately to like-­ minded souls. What their souls were like Sally had no idea, but their houses were modest, on large, tree-­covered blocks, and they guarded the nature reserves with a fierce passion. The paths, she knew, were hand- ­clipped by a group of residents every long weekend. The bay and headlands were now a marine sanctuary. Any council plans, for toilets or picnic tables, were thwarted with well-­directed letters from the ready panel of retired professors, scientists and lawyers. The acres of forest between the settlement and the old highway, the agent told her, would never be developed. Sally remembered the families who bought up those blocks, or their previous generations. She had stayed in the Stevens’ rambling shack up at the point during summer holidays. Lisa Stevens had been her best friend all through high school. And they were tight with the Thawleys, Rogersons and Gordons. Sally had been in and out of most of the original houses, stolen beers from the eskies and bathtubs of many a party. But that had all been during the previous century. No one knew her now. Mid- ­marriage, she had brought Leon to the bay for a fortnight away, hoping to relive those carefree days and show off her local knowledge – the tracks through shady forest to hidden rocky coves. They had travelled all over the world – wherever his uniform took them – and she had worried he found the place too low key, quaint at best. But he had, for years later, said that it was ‘the best holiday we ever had’. Sometimes Sally still found herself thinking and saying ‘we’. But that life was long gone.

187

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 187 11/12/20 1:36 pm Blue crane

One morning she noticed the matching red beaks and feet of a pair of sooty oystercatchers against the rocks. They moved away as she approached, with comical furtive steps, and then flew off – calling pleep pleep. They were back the next day, patrolling the waterline. Their trident prints were larger than those of the gulls, more pronounced, like their personalities. Sally started walking earlier, before humans and dogs muddied the trail. She liked to see all the other stories playing out, other lives. The day she first saw the heron, the sky was without cloud, the ocean without swell or even a ruffle of breeze, as if setting the stage for his entrance. Her eye caught the movement, her body turned to see his white face on a slender grey body. He waded the rockpools with his long yellow legs, dipping his beak down to fish.

THE HOUSE SHE bought had been empty for a decade, its owners confined to a nursing home but still hanging on to the hope that they might someday return. Their children had cleaned it up and repainted the interior for the auction, but still it carried the sadness of long inoccupation. Sally preferred being outside, clearing the terraced garden of weeds, cutting back the overgrown shrubs. From the timber outdoor table she’d had delivered she could look over the beach while she ate lunch. Leon had never appreciated the beauty of birds, only their scaly feet and sharp beaks. He had denied fear or phobia, but Sally wasn’t so sure. He had refused to go to the farmers’ market on Saturdays after the resident black swan followed him – pursued, Leon said – to the car park. From then on, Sally had to lug their produce back to the car alone. One morning Sally startled the heron on the beach. She hadn’t noticed him against the white and grey wash until she was almost on top of him. Her head and shoulders jerking back was enough to send him across the sand and into the air, dark flight feathers exposed – calling oooooark. She followed the heron’s footprints across the sand, larger than the oystercatcher’s and more spread, spaced further apart as he lengthened his stride. Sally stopped next to the deep scratches in the sand, the exact point where he had pushed off, left the earth and

188

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 188 11/12/20 1:36 pm Inga Simpson

taken flight. The sand beyond them was smooth, unmarked. Her skin tingled, her fine grey hair lifted from her scalp. For the first time, she understood what it would be to f ly.

SALLY DRAGGED THE box of her mother’s things out of the garage and dusted off her old guidebooks and binoculars. She spent the morning with them, and a pot of tea, at the table. Her mother had crisscrossed the country to tick off species. Her original pocket bird book was a mess of ticks, dates and places, occasional comments and exclamations. The early trips had been family holidays, but many of the placenames were foreign to Sally, finally explaining her mother’s frequent absences. Her mother had always called white-­faced herons ‘blue cranes’, which Sally had visualised as a mythical bird, dropping newborn children down chimneys on the other side of the world. Her mother had seen white-­faced herons up and down the coast it seemed, and inland over half the country. The book deemed white-­faced herons as common, but her heron was the only one in the bay. And once she managed to focus her mother’s old binoculars, she could watch him from anywhere in the house. The days she did not see the heron always fell a little flat. She began walking in the evening as well as mornings, to double her chances. Her body grew thinner with the exercise, as if to mirror his. She found she could do without the mid-­morning muffin she had been accustomed to in the city and, with no organic butcher around the corner, she gave up eating meat. Chicken, which she had never been passionate about, went first. Then the fortnightly fillet steak the doctor had recommended for her iron levels. The community bus took her to the weekly market, offering pretty displays of local vegetables, fruit, bread, dairy, eggs and seafood – and not a swan in sight. The family- ­owned seafood stall, just a blue awning strung off a refrigerated truck, was so bountiful, the staff so friendly, she tried every fish on offer – gurnard, kingfish, black snapper, bluefin tuna – and their other products: oysters, mussels, pipis and marinated octopus.

189

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 189 11/12/20 1:36 pm Blue crane

Over the weeks and months, she gained the heron’s trust, able to walk a little closer before he moved into deeper water or farther out on the jagged rock shelf. At first the sharp rocks cut her tender skin, but she found that if she relaxed her feet, and her mind, there was no pain. And over time her soles toughened into those of a beachcomber. In those moments of close proximity with the heron, something was exchanged. A charge arising from the solidity of the land and the salty water moving around them. A flash of silvery fish and slow-­rising bubbles soothing Sally’s creaking body.

AS THE WEATHER warmed and the days grew longer, she found herself rising earlier and earlier. She threw open the windows of the house to rid it of the musty smell it carried, replacing it with briny sea air. Each week she chose a room to vacuum and scrub from top to bottom, clean the windows and oil the timbers, opening up a little more space inside herself. She filled an old planter box with herbs, the front beds with flowers, and dragged a great metal dish out of the bush to fill with water for the birds. She had to rest a few days after that, admiring her work from the window seat and taking short walks about the garden. Then she started on the three overgrown terraces, removing weeds and kikuyu from the ’70s crazy paving and exposing stone steps leading down to the beach. She filled her green bin to overflowing every fortnight. Other houses seemed to have two green bins, but how they had obtained them remained a mystery. She had called council to enquire but was left waiting on hold for so long she had wandered out onto the deck to watch a passing sea eagle, and put the phone down. She hadn’t got around to trying again. Her children had argued that the place was too much for her, having an assisted-­living arrangement nearer to them in mind. But why should she be so reduced, at the tail end of her life? Surely she had earned the right, after decades of pleasing others, to live as she liked. She enjoyed being tired at the end of each day again, the way a body was supposed to be. And there was satisfaction in revealing the old bones of the place, giving it some love.

190

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 190 11/12/20 1:36 pm Inga Simpson

From the deck or the garden, she sometimes saw the heron fly by, neck retracted, his legs extending behind his tail, breastbone tiling the air. His rhythmic dipping wingbeats hypnotising her, such that she forgot her purpose. During the school holidays, there were more people on the beach, even early in the morning. Sally was walking almost alongside the heron, with him as he waded and waited. She had begun to appreciate the stillness as a kind of enlightenment. An enlightenment she wanted. She was closer than she had ever been before, hands trembling, when a small naked child ran down to the water, screaming. The heron took flight, high into the air and around to the next beach, taking Sally’s good mood with him. She glared at the child and its parents, and stormed home, filled with unaccountable rage. The dry skin of her back began to itch, in the spot she could no longer reach, between her shoulder blades.

AFTER LUNCH SHE read and then napped on the day bed. She was working her way through a stack of new novels she had bought from the city, things she thought she should read or for the book club she no longer went to. But they seemed less and less relevant and, with a few exceptions, less satisfying than the classics Sally had read in younger life. She began the project of re-­reading books from her shelves, and any paperback with a black or orange spine that turned up in the painted timber cupboard by the beach car park that was their community book exchange. Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles was transformed when Sally found that Tess and Angel’s summer of love was set against a background of herons. Sally took to walking even earlier during the holidays, seeing the pinks of dawn, different shades and patterns every day. She developed a way of walking, through the shallows, that she liked to think was bird- ­like, taking one or two steps at a time, one leg raised high and coming down with no sound or splash, before she raised the other. She and the heron were alone on the beach, her eyes searching out his, when the first of the dog walkers arrived. The woman let her spaniel

191

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 191 11/12/20 1:36 pm Blue crane

off the leash and Sally could only watch as it sprinted across the sand towards the heron, chasing him out to sea. Sally climbed the steps to her garden, shoulders slumped. She spent the rest of the day hacking into the yellow Easter-­flowering cassia they had been advised to remove from their gardens in the latest newsletter. Leon had been better at the practical aspects of gardening. Sometimes she remembered, with a start, that her husband was not yet dead, merely left behind with the other things she no longer needed.

THE MORNING THE heron floated in, to land outside her bedroom window, Sally could only blink. She had been awake since dawn, but the division between wakefulness and dreams was becoming less distinct, no matter the time of day. He stalked the edge of her newly defined garden and stopped to preen, his long legs anchored in shadows. Only when Sally sat up and reached for her glasses did he take flight. When she tired of reading fiction, she poured over her mother’s bird books, and the new edition, inches thick, the local bookshop had ordered in. It was the heron’s elongated sixth cervical vertebra that gave his neck its S-­shape, allowing him to stretch and retract and lunge far and fast at moving prey. At last she understood the spark in her mother that had never been for them. From the kitchen sink, Sally could spot the heron on the rocks, pick terns from gulls, gannets from cormorants. And yet it was becoming more difficult to read, especially at night. Probably she just needed a stronger prescription, but she never had found a new optometrist. She liked to watch nature documentaries after dinner, but there was something wrong with the sound on the television, harder and harder to distinguish from the ocean. When Sally’s toenails grew long, she did not, for the first time in her adult life, book an appointment with the podiatrist or even cut and file them, but rather marvelled at their yellow strength. They proved useful for picking washing and books from the floor, saving her hips and knees from bending down. And when the two outer toes on her

192

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 192 11/12/20 1:36 pm Inga Simpson

left foot stuck together in a kind of cramp, she did not attempt to unprise them or make an appointment at the medical centre. It was several weeks before she noticed that the toes on her right foot had followed suit. The rest of her feet had spread, as if to compensate – or to walk more easily over the sand and the rocky shelf she now combed at dawn and dusk.

ONCE A WEEK – on the day she struggled up the driveway with the bins – she cleared the mailbox, mostly coloured pamphlets. She threw them, and anything with a clear front panel, straight into the recycling. The rest sat, unopened, on a growing pile on the bench, next to the laptop her daughter had sent, still in its box. She had decided that her new life would require less administration – and so it did. She recognised her husband’s handwriting from time to time, and noted the ‘card only’ envelopes when she entered yet another decade. Somehow she never mustered the enthusiasm to open them, finding that she could anticipate what they would say. The light blinked more and more often on the answering machine her son had bought, but she had forgotten how to retrieve the messages, and had used the instruc- tion booklet to light the fire back in winter. A lingering sea mist signalled the arrival of the warm currents, those mysteries moving beneath the surface. When the mist cleared, two days later, the heron had been transformed. His eyes were darker and now focused on her rather than sliding away. His legs had turned a ruddy red. And his plumage! The delicate, floaty feathers on his mantle and scapulars, his neck flushed pink. Sally could only stare. His call, from only a few feet away, was a throaty graaw. It entered her body through her ears and mouth, swelling her lungs and chest. It was the most pure note Sally had ever heard. The final morning of summer dawned clear and bright. The sea was calm, the tide just pulling out. The sun heaved above the horizon, spilling light onto the golden cliffs and craggy islands. Sally left the house open and picked her way down the steps. She strode along the beach, careful to avoid the bluebottles carried in by the north-­easterly earlier in the week. The sand was cool and firm, barely any give. When

193

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 193 11/12/20 1:36 pm Blue crane

she looked back, her feet left a shallower imprint than they had, but with a broader spread. More defined, and very much her own. The heron turned to look at her over his shoulder. He stepped, spread his wings and lifted himself into the blue, his legs trailing behind him. He flew low, over her head, over the beach and then out to sea. Sally walked more swiftly, building to a jog. She found that she did not tire or feel any discomfort. Her ankles, knees and hips were loose and limber. She was filled with energy, her body part of the sea, the sand, the salt air, the forest and rocks – the vibrations of the universe itself. She ran faster and faster, up on her toes, her vision expanding to include the swell and tide, the north-­easterly breeze, the prickly lobsters backing into the prickly green weed, the school of tasty garfish coursing beneath the surface of the sea. Until, at last, her feet left the sand.

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Inga Simpson is the author of Understory: A life with trees (2017), Where the Trees Were (2016), Nest (2014) and Mr Wigg (2013), all published by Hachette.

194

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 194 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Trash fish, sand, sea snails Why little things matter Elspeth Probyn

WHY ARE SOME resources sexy and others not? The monumental equip- ment that accompanies certain forms of major resource extraction helps in the sexiness stakes. In Pilbara mines, trucks weighing nearly 400 tonnes stand more than seven-­metres tall, dwarfing the remaining humans that drive them. Automation is taking over in part because of the horrific accidents that happen when these mammoth beasts go wrong. There have been many vivid cultural representations of resource extrac- tion, perhaps none more so than Émile Zola’s Germinal. Published in 1885, soon after the miners’ strike in France that Zola witnessed, the novel features miners who work in a pit called Le Voreux, which ‘lay lower and squatter, deep in its den, crouching like a vicious beast of prey, snorting louder and longer, as if choking on its painful digestion of human flesh’. Zola juggles different registers: ‘voreux’ is close to ‘vorace’, or voracious, and the mine is both animalised and personified – it eats human and it is a synecdoche of the human appetite. There’s no doubt about it – some mines are awesome. Oceanic extraction, on the other hand, is – to some people – less so. Fishing, for instance, often falls under ‘hunting’ or ‘harvesting’, with images of the fierce hunter in the last wild commons, or the benign harvester who plucks fish out of the sea with the care of a grape picker. One of my favourite maritime museums is in Aberdeen, on the north-­east coast of Scotland. Located in the old Shiprow down by the harbour, it divides perfectly in half. A 1:33 scale model of the Murchison oil platform – the first

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 195 11/12/20 1:36 pm 196 GriffithReview71

rig to be built in the North Sea – stands eight metres high in the middle of the museum. On the left-h­ and side are three floors devoted to the history of fishing in Scotland, complete with photographs of stoic, unsmiling men and women next to flimsy boats. The women had to carry the men to their boats because there were few harbours. The women were being realistic rather than submissive. They didn’t want their men getting their heavy leather boots wet. Had the boats capsized, those boots would have meant a quick death at sea. On the right-h­ and side of the building is the story of oil extraction. The museum and its website make clear which side is more interesting. The rig model is pretty amazing; the real metal structure would have descended some 500 feet below sea level to the seabed. Before it was finally pulled down in 2014, the four corner legs would have been fixed to the seabed by thirty-­two piles, each weighing over 250 tonnes. The North Sea is wild and frigid, and the rig was designed to withstand 100-­feet waves and 150-­mph winds. When I was a girl in the 1970s, as the North Sea oil exploration began, we envied boys from school who went to work on the rigs, making their fortunes. Our excitement was the result of bored minds, as the work would have been frightening and monotonous. The museum website is upbeat:

It is perhaps little wonder that man’s achievement in obtaining oil from these often-h­ ostile waters has been compared in scale to NASA’s Apollo program of moon landings.

On the top floor, there is a statue of an oil rig worker from the Piper Alpha rig, which exploded with massive fires on 6 July 1988, killing 167 men. The fires burned for three weeks. It remains the worst accident in the North Sea oil industry. The Piper Alpha statue is suitably heroic in the genre of Stalinist monumentalism, fitting given that the Piper Alpha was the one of the costliest man-­made catastrophes ever.

BUT WHAT OF the less charismatic resources? What of those small and seemingly insignificant natural ones – players such as trash fish, sand and sea snails? Writing about krill, Elizabeth Leane and Steve Nicol at the University of Tasmania note that ‘size does matter’ when it comes to academic and public appreciation of natural resources. As for sand, in his book The World in a

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 196 11/12/20 1:36 pm Elspeth Probyn: Trash fish, sand, sea snails 197

Grain, Vince Beiser notes that ‘sand is the most taken-­for-­granted natural resource in the world’. And yet, as it is the core ingredient in concrete, in Beiser’s rather over-­the-­top framing, ‘the army of sand has fanned out to conquer the entire world’. In an article entitled ‘Drugs from Slugs’ in the very serious journal Chemico-­Biological Interactions, Bingham et al. introduce my third player, the Conus snail, as ‘humble’. John Platt sighs: ‘Ah, snails. They’re small, they’re slimy. They lack the charisma of a polar bear or a gorilla. And yet…they’re disappearing.’ There are intricacies to celebrate among these unsung entities, but first I need to set the scene of the drama in which they star. They all feature predominantly, though differently, in what is called trophic cascade. ‘Trophic’ refers to the position an entity holds in the system of who eats whom or what. As we may remember from school, the food web consists of the smallest entity on the bottom through to the predators on the top. In marine food webs, this might be visualised as a pyramid with a large base of phytoplankton and algae – often called the primary producers – followed by zooplankton and other herbivorous consumers, the low-­level carnivorous consumers such as shellfish, then larger fish, until at the top are the predators such as killer whales. While picturing this as a pyramid makes the base look very solid, as marine scientist Daniel Pauly and his team have found, we are increasingly ‘fishing down the food web’. It is well known that when you take out the top carnivores in a marine ecosystem, the entire system gets shaken up. In places such as the west of Scotland or the Maritime provinces in Canada, when the cod were fished out there was a huge increase in lower level – but highly valuable – organisms such as lobster and langoustines. This makes some fishers happy, at least for the time being. However, in a less spectacular way, entities at the bottom or low levels of the food web are now being targeted for what is called the ‘reduction’ industry. Fish are literally reduced to meal, and their status as important living entities is reduced to nil. Krill, anchovies and sardines are sadly categorised as ‘trash fish’. They are pulped to feed salmon and the most valuable fish in the world, bluefin tuna, now ‘ranched’ in ocean feedlots. Marine ecosystems are being squeezed from the top and the bottom. As Lynam and colleagues put it, ‘The question of whether food webs are resource (bottom-­up) or predation (top-­down) controlled is one of the most

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 197 11/12/20 1:36 pm 198 GriffithReview71

fundamental research questions in ecology.’ It is also, arguably, one of the most pressing questions facing us all. When the bottom of the food web is taken away, the marine ecosystem topples. When you remove top predators, populations of their prey expand and eat and eat. This is what is happen- ing to kelp forests, as sea urchins are no longer deterred by carnivorous fish that would have eaten their larvae. They are loving kelp to death. As Craig Johnston, Head of the Ecology and Biodiversity Centre at the University of Tasmania, finds in his research: ‘Patch by patch, long-­spined urchins are razing the kelp forests, reducing them to desolate “urchin barrens” on the sea floor.’ One of the reasons sea urchins arrived in Tasmania is because of our warming ocean – the waters along the south-­east coast of Australia are some of the fastest warming in the world. As the East Australian Current brings warmer water further down, many marine species flee southward. Climate change is the undeniable player in the drama of trophic cascade. It is somewhat offstage in my tale, but its presence should be felt throughout. Lynam and colleagues warn that the changes associated with warming can constitute ‘a regime shift’. This is trophic cascade on a major scale, across several species and ecosystems.

IT’S TIME TO turn to the players. I’ll start with fish, as they are what I know best. Some people find it strange that I write about fish; others don’t know that I’ve ever written about anything else. Writing Eating the Ocean, I became obsessed with little fish. As I wrote there, I set out

to explore the small marine things with which we need to cultivate a closer relationship. These are the little fish and other marine organ- isms that disturb the classifications of what is edible, and for whom or what. In telling their stories I want to disturb what we think counts as food. These are fish that are fed to fish, that become food for animals, and that are ‘reduced’ to become health supplements for the wealthy. These little marine life forms include sardines, menha- den, anchovies, sea cucumbers, algae and other entities low on the food chain, and some like phytoplankton too small to be seen by human eyes.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 198 11/12/20 1:36 pm Elspeth Probyn: Trash fish, sand, sea snails 199

I am drawn to one particularly multifaceted ‘non-­charismatic mini-­ fauna’. Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), the one that interests us here, is by far the largest of the krill fisheries in the world, with size estimates fluctuat- ing according to the scientific capacities to count them. People can get very excited about krill, its Latin name meaning ‘true shining light’. Some say that the word is Norwegian for ‘young fish’, but Steve Nicol, ‘Dr Krill’, suggests otherwise: in Norwegian, it is an ‘onomatopoeia, a word formed to duplicate the sound of millions of krill patterning on the water as they jump clear of the surface’. Krill plays an essential role as a keystone species in the ecosystems of Antarctica as food for whales, seals, squid, ice fish, penguins, albatrosses and many other species of birds. They are ‘the only stepping stone in the food chain between one of the tiniest organisms on earth – single-­celled diatoms – and the largest creatures of earth – whales’. Krill provide the essential link between phytoplankton and marine mammals. As we’ve seen, phytoplank- ton is the base of marine ecosystems, responsible for the productivity of the oceans, as they also supply most of the world’s oxygen. Steve Nicol refers to this as a ‘wasp-­waisted ecosystem’, whereby krill channel energy and nutrients from the bottom of the food chain and become edible matter for species all the way up to the massive blue whales that exist only on krill. The first commercial krill fishery started in the early 1970s when the Soviet Union started fishing them. It was an inefficient operation, with a large bycatch of 5.2 kilos per one kilo of krill, and the trawling techniques did immense damage to the ecosystem. The Soviets weren’t quite sure what to do with them. Aware of their high protein content – by weight the same as beef – they added them to sausage, cheese and beer. Apparently, even hungry Soviet citizens weren’t impressed. Killing krill presents a quandary: they begin to deteriorate very quickly on board, turning black. And they have a very high fluoride content, about the same as the toothpaste on your brush. On the other hand, they are perfect when turned into fish meal for farmed fish, as they naturally possess the red pigment, astaxanthin, that has to be otherwise added artificially so that our farmed salmon and prawns are a luscious reddish colour. Farmed fish on a purely soy, vegetable-­based diet would not really count as marine animals – beige entities with none of the omega-­3 that has made them so sought after by health-­conscious humans.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 199 11/12/20 1:36 pm 200 GriffithReview71

As the demand and price for krill meal and krill oil have rocketed, so too has the desire to catch and process them. Scientists are divided about the present and future of krill and the Southern Ocean ecosystem that depends on them. Because the fishing grounds are so very far from sight and mind, and because the catch is lucrative, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is relatively easy. With so many ships now flying flags of convenience, it is hard to know which countries are condoning illegal practices. It is mainly up to NGOs such as WWF and Greenpeace, as well as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), to police practices. With the entrance of the Norwegian company Aker BioMarine, harvesting krill has taken on another dimension. The purpose-­built Antarctic Endurance (named after Shackleton’s ship) is an amazing vessel. With its patented Eco-­Harvesting technology, the trawling system is continuously submerged and a hose gently brings the krill on board, greatly reducing the risk of bycatch of other species. A 2019–20 survey of the krill fishery conducted by Norwegians revealed that there is some 72 million-­tonne stock, against which the overall quota set by CCAMLR is only 620,000 tonnes. Krill encapsulate many of the most crucial problems when it comes to the tiny organisms at the bottom – geographically and existentially – of our world. Steve Nicol understands the science behind why they are so important, as well as their beauty as a species, not just as fodder for humans and other animals. Yes, if ships like the Antarctic Endurance were to multiply massively, then the suction of krill into processing pits might have an impact on their numbers. However, the stock size and the quota are closely monitored by international scientists and CCAMLR. For Nicol, it comes down to whether it would be economically feasible for many more ships to hunt for krill. It is all a bit knife-­edge. Will demand soar? In the meantime, warming oceans and melting ice mass may wreak the most damage on krill and the ecosystem they support.

I HAVE SPENT a lot of time at the Sydney Fish Market (SFM) over the years. I eat lots of fish, but I also go to admire the beautiful colours and shapes of the marine organisms on sale. In the last several years, as my research has turned to fish and oceans, I have noted more intently the flow and the buzz of the market, talked to the people who work there and the fishers whose fish

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 200 11/12/20 1:36 pm Elspeth Probyn: Trash fish, sand, sea snails 201

end up on the slabs. In the last decade and prior to the pandemic, SFM had become one of Sydney’s top tourist attractions, and the car park would be packed with mainland Chinese tour buses disgorging passengers young and old. They would proceed to the different fish stalls to marvel at the plate-­sized abalone clinging to tanks. I’d watch their joy as they handled the large spiny lobsters, posing with them before the aged crustaceans would be cooked in black bean, garlic, ginger and chilli. Relatively recently, I noticed that the market is bookended by large concrete factories. Owned by the multinational company Hanson, they’ve stood there for over forty years, supplying almost 35 per cent of Sydney CBD’s concrete needs. They are now being moved for the $250 million SFM relocation and revamp. I was so used to these factories in the background of my mind that it was a shock when I realised that the one on Bridge Road was gone. The other will soon follow to be rebuilt on Glebe Island, much to the concern of local inhabitants – human and other. The demolishment of the second factory will make room for the mooted forty-­seven-­storey apartment buildings that will crowd onto SFM’s small footprint, peering onto the expressway. The new buildings will, of course, be made of concrete. Which is to say that they will be made of sand, as are most of the world’s buildings and roads. One ton of cement requires six to seven tons of sand and gravel. Even during the pandemic, those big, churning concrete trucks kept moving more concrete into the building of apartments. Most of us associate sand with beaches. In Australia, we have an embar- rassment of choice. Scrunching into the squeaky sand of Jervis Bay for an afternoon kip is unbeatable – ‘the whitest sand in the world’, they boast, though the sand in Esperance, Western Australia seems on par. It is beach sand that concrete factories want. As one author puts it, ‘exporters in Australia are literally selling sand to Arabs’ to build the tallest buildings and the most elaborate artificial islands in the world in the United Arab Emirates. Desert sand is no good for concrete; it’s too smooth, rounded by wind. Sand mining is a huge endeavour. It is also largely illegal. India, for instance, is home to ‘sand mafias’, and much of Singapore’s reclaimed land is built on and with illegal sand by badly cared for migrant workers. Sand is, by and large, a common pool resource, which is to say it is readily available and hard to regulate. Many now wonder whether we are in the midst of a

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 201 11/12/20 1:36 pm 202 GriffithReview71

‘looming tragedy of the sand commons’. The effects of sand mining are seen in devastated landscapes, and in the way whole islands disappear seemingly overnight. The removal of sand jolts the ecosystem in a number of ways: dredging mangroves removes essential habitat for fish and other marine organisms, disrupts the balance of sweet and saline water to harm crops and drinking supplies, and creates fetid pools that become breeding grounds for malaria- ­carrying mosquitos and emerging bacterial diseases. If we could picture the planet from afar in terms of sand, we would see whole beaches taken from the Global South to ‘rehabilitate’ those in places such as Florida, where beaches are disappearing due to extreme storms and rising sea levels; the levelling of sand dunes in the increasingly frantic search for high-­grade mineral sands containing zirconium necessary for the produc- tion of glass, electronics and machinery; and the minute figures of men, women and children manually digging and carrying loads of sand while basic dredgers throw it into the air. We’d see the growth of desertification taking over millions of square kilometres in China and elsewhere. Sand is naturally renewable, but through our actions it simply doesn’t have the time to renew itself, making it a newly scarce resource. The clichés are evident. But even a glimpse into our sandy and sandless world makes me feel that we are standing on shifting ground.

I DON’T KNOW that much about cone snails. But what I do know is that Conus are fascinating. There are about 800 or 1,000 different kinds of cone snails in the world, and more than one hundred in Eastern Polynesia – they are hard to count precisely. I am part of a multinational, multidisciplinary team, ‘Polycone’, investigating them. The social science side of the project isn’t moving very fast, as it involves ethnographic fieldwork in French Polynesia. As old fellas are said to say: ‘You can’t get there from here.’ Cone snails are very beautiful and for centuries have been gathered by shell collectors – and for much longer by Indigenous communities in the South Pacific. One of my colleagues on the project has gathered a compen- dium of snail images, ‘Cones des marquises’. It is a fitting title for these beautiful specimens, even if it is just the French for the Marquesas Islands – reportedly the most isolated islands in the world. Conus gauguini is named for the artist, with its vibrant reds. Conus imperialis has luscious tawny-­brown spots, and Conus magnificus has a stately looking burnished shell. Conus geogra- phus has wonderful whorls that seem to conjure up a whole new geography.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 202 11/12/20 1:36 pm Elspeth Probyn: Trash fish, sand, sea snails 203

They are predators, divided into groups that eat either worms or fish, and sometimes each other. Because they are slow-­moving, over millions of years of evolution they have perfected a killing technique. They have a proboscis, with a harpoon-­like tooth, that snares their prey. The mechanism is amazing. That tooth acts like a hypodermic needle, plunging poison into its victim, which the snail then draws into its extended mouth. They can eat fish bigger than themselves, digesting them and spitting out the bones. Conus geographus is the most lethal, and can kill humans in hours. It’s not a nice death: your brain swells, you fall into a coma, and respiratory arrest and heart failure finish you off. There is no antivenom. It is, however, this amazing ability to kill that is driving research on the conus. Its venom is made of conotoxins, which researchers are describ- ing as a ‘tool box’, ‘a pharmacopeia of biologically active peptides’. These peptides interact with the nervous systems of mammals, including humans, and disrupt the transmission of pain signals. They represent ‘a whole new class of potent analgesics’, writes David Holmes in The Lancet Neurology. They promise to be ‘10,000 times more potent than morphine without morphine’s addictive properties and side-­effects’, according to National Geographic. In addition to pain treatment, they may also help treat Parkinson’s disease, and even attention-­deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. There is a ‘but’. No one has really bothered to discover how these creatures are doing. A recent – and the first – comprehensive overview of the threats to their livelihood points to several factors, including pollution, changes in human habitat and coastal development, and ocean warming. Bioprospecting could have a huge impact on their numbers, and is potentially very big business. Think of the tragic stories about opiate use. Or the stomach-­turning news reports about the Sackler family, who made US$13 billion from their Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin. This synthetic prescription pain reliever is at the heart of the current opiate crisis that is killing hundreds of thousands who overdose. Think of the gazillions to be made by pharmaceutical companies with a more powerful painkiller that has no addictive side effects. Our research project obviously doesn’t seek to create more harm. The focus is on developing best access and benefit sharing, and overall the team wants to implement the sustainable extraction of conotoxins. As I write, there are aquariums on their way by ship from France, and the scientists are

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 203 11/12/20 1:36 pm 204 GriffithReview71

consulting about the right choice for collection. This, they hope, will result in a venom bank, with the snails carefully milked for their precious poison. Sometime when we can travel, my social scientist colleagues and I will make our way to the stunning home of these little snails, and do our best to ensure that neither they nor their traditional users will be further harmed. Combined with the marine and biological scientists, perhaps this research could be a smallest drop of change in a massive ocean of hurt.

I’M INTERESTED IN the issues that bloom from a consideration of little entities. They are not so uncharismatic as their portrayal in academic research or in the public mind might suggest. And their numbers are key to trophic cascade. Krill, beautiful creatures that swim in the depths of the oceans at the bottom of the world, are big players in our neighbouring ecosystem in the Southern Ocean. Sure, they won’t attract tourists to Antarctica, a doubtful enterprise at the best of times, but they deserve recognition, and thanks, for keeping alive an ecosystem that supports the flashier species. Their huge cache of protein could be used to feed poorer populations, not just fish for the rich. Grains of sand, so many our human minds can’t fathom, have provided the essential ingredient for our admittedly dumb desire to build over, to build higher, to have easy access to the electronics that grease our way through life. In some ways, they are the saddest of my players – totally overlooked, taken for granted just like our pre-­pandemic trips to the beach. And of those gorgeous and, in fact, rather sexy cone snails that beguile with their beauty and fascinate with their wonderful system of killing. Maybe they will deliver relief to those who suffer without turning them into opiate-­crazed zombies. The strands are many, and they mix hope and despair. But these unsung entities matter, big time. Let’s just hope this isn’t a swan song for them.

For references, see griffithreview.com

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Elspeth Probyn FAHA, FASSA is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her books include Sexing the Self (Routledge, 1993), Outside Belongings (Routledge, 1996), Carnal Appetites (Routledge, 2000), Blush: Faces of Shame (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), and Eating the Ocean (Duke University Press, 2016). She is the co-­editor of a new collection, Sustaining Seas: Oceanic Space and the Politics of Care (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 204 11/12/20 1:36 pm IN CONVERSATION Animal perspective Breaking the language barrier Erin Hortle, Laura Jean McKay and Chris Flynn

ERIN HORTLE: IN Tasmania, there is a place where female octopuses emerge from the water and make their way across an isthmus, with a highway running across it, in search of habitat to extrude their eggs. Luckily, on the other side of this isthmus, there is such habitat – vast systems of sea caves – and here, they tend to their eggs, not eating or sleeping until the eggs hatch, and the female octopuses die, spent. I wanted to tell these octopuses’ story, but it wasn’t until I had an idea for a human angle that I began writing in earnest. But it bugged me that the octopuses only emerged as characters when their paths directly intersected with those of the human characters; it meant their plot line was both moder- ated and diminished. So, I decided to write a piece from the perspective of the octopus. Initially, I was hesitant. Despite the fact my motive was to more fully explore the octopus’s story, it would be me imagining and writing – I was profoundly aware that I couldn’t know what an octopus thinks and, perhaps more than this, I couldn’t know how an octopus thinks. This quandary brought to mind Franz Kafka’s ‘A Report to the Academy’, when the languaged chimpanzee narrator, Red Peter, outlines the impossibility of describing to humans his life as a pre-­languaged chimp: ‘What I felt then as an ape I can represent now only in human terms, and therefore I misrepresent it,’ he explains. The implication is that if one thinks, or writes, in human

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 205 11/12/20 1:36 pm 206 GriffithReview71

language, one thinks, or writes, as a human; thus, one inevitably misrepre- sents the non-­human animal consciousness one is attempting to represent. This is the problem of anthropomorphism. Eventually, I came to a realisation: it seemed to me that while a piece of writing will be anthropomorphic on this very fundamental level, this does not mean that it must be anthropocentric. This shifted my focus, and qualms, entirely.

LAURA JEAN MCKAY: I love that we’ve started with the octopus crossing. It taps into the travelling aspect that our books share. The charac- ters – in Erin’s The Octopus and I; in Chris’ Mammoth; and in my book, The Animals in That Country – all travel, traversing roads and plateaus, as well as crossing from land to air to sea. The stories also go to places of interspecies communication that are hard to get to, even in fiction. I wrote a whole early draft of Animals and showed it to my partner, who said, ‘This novel about talking animals is great…except that there aren’t any talking animals.’ In my horror of anthropomorphism, I’d written a novel that avoided the whole point: ‘What if we knew what other animals were saying?’ Like you, Erin, I quickly shifted to the thinking that anthropomorphism isn’t so bad; it’s just the basic human way of relating to other creatures with more extraordinary abilities. It’s anthropocentrism – the placing of humans at the centre of all things – that’s the problem. As Chris explores so beautifully in Mammoth, humans are pretty limited, stupid and dangerous – how else would the world get so messed up? So, from that place, I started to rewrite. I knew that Jean and the other human characters infected with ‘zooflu’, a strange new virus, couldn’t read animal minds. Instead they were decoding the smells, movements and subtle noises of other animal bodies and able to translate them into words. This was one of the symptoms of the flu. I focused on animal ‘superpowers’: if humans prioritise sight, what is it like to be a dingo and process smells up to a hundred times better than humans? Or to perceive the world through sonar? To be an insect fatally attracted to human sweat? The insects were my way in. When I wrote them, they SHOUTED their LIVES in CAPS. It’s a tense part of the novel but I also wanted there to be a great joy in the insect speech. A creature that small undoing a great big human: there is a beautiful decentring in that.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 206 11/12/20 1:36 pm HORTLE, McKAY and FLYNN: Animal perspective 207

Once I allowed myself to write like a bug, other animal characters opened up to me. The birds in the novel emphasise every other word. Sue the dingo navigates her difficult wild and captive life through direct speech and asides (in parentheses). I wrote the animal dialogues, turned them into (bad) songs, fed them through the internet as translated and scrambled texts and popped them back in the novel. I wanted to get the dialogue as far from my human way of perceiving as possible, while still keeping the wonder and heart of the characters. What came out is often described as poetry. That’s not the way I see it, but I think it’s the closest form: poetry is supposed to offer a window into a moment, something that surprises us, an insight into a given, an angle that we’ve never noticed before. And who is more overlooked, misunderstood, unseen than the other animals we share the world with? It was really important to me that the non-h­ uman animal characters weren’t offering prophesies, answering unanswerable questions or solving human problems. They needed to exist as strong characters, agents of their own narrative journey. This makes me think about voicelessness and giving voice. Was this something that you were both attempting to do? What responsibilities do we carry, as human writers writing other animal speech?

CHRIS FLYNN: THE idea of animals not having a voice is in many ways the essential flaw at the heart of anthropocentrism. The Australian charity Voiceless chose their name ‘because animals cannot raise their voice in protest or advocate for themselves in a court of law’. Voiceless says: ‘We have a moral, ethical duty to speak up for them. But animals are not voiceless. They speak in languages we humans have failed to understand or have simply chosen not to hear.’ Anthropomorphism gets a bad rap. Someone decided somewhere that talking animals equates to terrible fiction, or at the very least childishness. I guess we blame Disney and Pixar. In the first half-­dozen interviews I did about Mammoth, I was asked if I watched the Ice Age movies as research because: animal banter. It didn’t even occur to me. I’m not seven. Instead, I spent years working with animals. Real ones, who didn’t burst into song every five minutes. I worked at the RSPCA shelter in Burwood, Melbourne. It’s the largest RSPCA facility in Australia. There are so many dogs there at any given time, you have to wear ear defenders. And kittens

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 207 11/12/20 1:36 pm 208 GriffithReview71

rapidly lose their charm during breeding season; walking into their rooms first thing in the morning is akin to entering the Bog of Eternal Stench. It is easy to be overwhelmed by these animals’ attempts at communication. Anthropocentrism unravels in the face of such a mass, raw outpouring of speech. Just like they reveal in your books, Laura and Erin, these creatures want to fight, fuck, eat, and shit and say hello, man, why don’t you come over here for a minute because I can smell what you’re thinking; I can hear the blood rushing through your veins; I am so very aware of you. Every staff member reported the same sensation: feeling your ego dissipate; going through entire days where you didn’t think about yourself. The arrogant, narcissistic and – let’s face it, violent – human impulse to see ourselves as lords over the animal kingdom is undermined when we realise that we can understand animals, if only we stop to listen. It doesn’t suit our purposes to think of animals as sentient beings who experience a range of emotions, who love and who remember. Those thousands of creatures I worked with (correction: worked for) reminded me every day in stark terms that I was one of them. Without them, I couldn’t have written Mammoth. If I don’t have your ‘zooflu’, Laura, I have something in the ballpark. I also definitely have toxoplasmosis: cats control my brain and can make me do their bidding. I know you both spend, and have spent, an awful lot of time in nature – in the water, out in the bush. Did interactions with animals change your perspective on anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism and your own place in the natural world?

EH: I spend a lot of time in and on the water, and time spent observing and interacting with animals has shaped my thinking in innumerable ways. Laura, you asked about voice and voicelessness, and the responsibili- ties human writers carry. My attitude to this changed as I wrote different animals’ perspectives. My approach to writing octopuses was academic. In order to represent an octopus’s consciousness, I sought to understand it as well as I could by immersing myself in octopus research. The challenge became translating this scientific knowledge into creative writing, but not in a way that merely sought to render science speak more accessible. The philosopher Elizabeth Grosz writes, ‘Art unleashes and intensifies, through the principles of composition, what science contains and slows down through the plane of

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 208 11/12/20 1:36 pm HORTLE, McKAY and FLYNN: Animal perspective 209

reference.’ This was what I wanted to do: I wanted to take that which science had slowed and charted (in this instance, octopus physiology) and compose it into a narrative that would hopefully drag human readers out of their own anthropomorphism in order to (hopefully) prompt them to contemplate anthropocentrism in a new light. My approach to seals was different. It was driven by my observations of the ways they interact with one another in the water and the ways they inter- act with humans. They are smart and strategic. They read the sounds of boat engines to know when you’re trolling, when you’re bottom bashing – and if you’re bottom bashing, they float, face down and flippers up, and keep an eye on your line so they can steal your fish right before you land it. They’re also very social, in particular ways, and this – along with the associated interior lives that might accompany this – fascinated me. Fur seals segregate on the basis of sex. When a young male gets to a certain age, he has to relocate to a haul- ­out and live with the other males. To extrapolate via human analogy: male seals go through some kind of a rite of passage. To (potentially) anthro- pomorphise: how does he feel about this? Pups play together. Does he miss his young female friends? Does he find it hard being at the bottom of a masculine hierarchy? I pondered these questions while sitting in the boat, observing the interplay between seals at a haul-out.­ A culture in which anthropomorphism is taboo, or cringeworthy, limits our capacity to imagine (relegating it to something childish, as you say, Chris) and, through imagination, to empathise. We’re happy enough to reduce animals’ behaviour to a drive for survival, but we won’t allow that their lives are more than those base instincts. This is less an inadequacy of non-­human animals, and more an inadequacy on our part. If I had not speculated about a young seal’s inner life, it would have said more about my lack of inner life than the seal’s. On the one hand, the seal doesn’t care if I speculate or not, so whatever; maybe it’s all narcissism or something on my part. But wilful ignorance and narrow-­mindedness are tools of anthropocentrism, and ideological anthropocentrism has led to us fucking the planet, and this will affect the seal. The thing I loved about your novels was the way non-h­ uman animal voices invited me, as a reader, to step outside myself, to imagine new complexities and potentials in the non-­human. I want to return to that Grosz quote because it helped me think about the role art can play in

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 209 11/12/20 1:36 pm 210 GriffithReview71

progressing human understanding of the more-­than-­human world. Why did you decide to explore these ideas through art in the form of creative writing? What do you hope your stories, and these animals, will do now out in the world?

LJM: I’m glad you brought up the seals, Erin. After reading those chapters it was hard to comprehend that I was a bipedal land mammal, so much did I feel part of the colony and that young pup’s life! But as well as writing about what might happen if the language barrier between people and other animals was taken away, I wanted to look at power and representation and who speaks for who. A magpie helped with this, and my memory of her also goes some way to responding to your question, Chris, on how interactions with animals might change our perspective. In 2015, this magpie’s territory included a house I was renting. The verandah was absolutely hers and it was absolutely mine and we met in an if-­not-­shared-­then-­ acknowledged space. I worked there on nice days and, in the spring, she started dropping off the magpie chicks while she and her gentle giant of a partner (whose toe she ripped off in a fight) hunted for lizards and worms. The babies were adorable, uncoordinated and totally distracting: it was flattering to share a space with them. But the more I wrote alongside them, the more I thought about the power imbalance. I was never at risk. The worst that happened to me was bird shit. One day, the magpie mother walked into the house and, being an upward- ­thinking animal, couldn’t get out. She flung herself at the windows until she was exhausted. I wrapped a towel around her and realised she’d given up. She was expecting to die. She had put everything at risk in my company. Turning to Erin’s question of what our stories might do in the world, one of the things I like about conversations with writers making eco- ­and climate fiction is that we’ve all said: of course we should have good characters and story, but there are also urgent themes that need direct address! Also: what if a tree or a pig isn’t a metaphor? What if it’s a tree or a pig? What if that’s the subject that needs discussing? We are increasingly raising very specific questions in our work. So I hope that readers will take a moment to step back, be quiet (hard for us humans!) and really look at other animals. Maybe that animal is a companion. Maybe it’s wild. Or what we call a pest. Or not alive anymore – maybe we’re wearing it. What happens if we stop and really consider our relationships with them?

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 210 11/12/20 1:36 pm HORTLE, McKAY and FLYNN: Animal perspective 211

Do you both have more to write in terms of other animals? Or do you feel as though your thinking around this is somewhat complete?

CF: I’m often surprised when I read criticism of contemporary fiction, especially Australian fiction, and it is assumed all authors are smartypants who think very deeply about hidden meaning, politics, the use of metaphor. When my first book, A Tiger in Eden, came out, some of the reviews went way over my head. I’m fairly literal: the penguin in Mammoth isn’t a metaphor, a representation of mankind’s folly in contributing to melting ice shelves in the Antarctic. He’s a penguin fossil. He doesn’t represent anything except himself. It’s a very anthropocentric reaction to view animals as representations of human foibles, and probably goes some way to explaining why anthropo- morphism generates so many eye-­rolls. Our animals have voices (granted, assigned by us, through processes that are both complex, reasoned and narra- tively convenient) and personalities. They want to talk about the natural world and our skewed relationship with the animal kingdom of which we are an integral, vital component. That probably just irritates human-­centric literary theorists, whose likely response would be: can you not? Maybe this relates to your question, Erin, on our decisions to write about animals creatively, rather than penning serious, detached non-­fiction books about octopuses, dingoes and mastodons. For a start, we’re probably all hopelessly unqualified to write such books and secondly, where’s the fun in that? We’re artists, damn it. We’re supposed to be the crazy ones with radical notions that make people think differently about the world. Do we want to be known as the ‘animal authors’? It’s easy to be pigeon- holed in this business. I’m obliquely sticking with the topic in that I’m working on a book investigating the origin of mythological creatures and how they might be related to misidentified dinosaur and megafauna fossils.

EH: Look, I don’t mind metaphors and symbolism as modes of creating meaning around politics, etc., and I do think novels are open to interpretation, and that those interpretations are acts of meaning-­making. So I kind of don’t mind – and am quite intrigued by – interpretations of The Octopus and I. But I am surprised at people wanting me to explain, or make sense, of my human protagonist’s relationship with the octopuses in comprehensible or reductive ways. I’ve been told a number of times, ‘I found your book frustrating because

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 211 11/12/20 1:36 pm 212 GriffithReview71

I know the animals are meant to be symbolic of something about each of the humans, but I couldn’t always make it fit.’ Sometimes I wonder if a compul- sion to read symbolism is less about the poetry of language and layers of meaning within texts and more a way of reducing language and ideas into something manageable – something compartmental. To do this to animals is another way of stripping them of their complexity, because it assumes their complexity is only something to be understood in reference to us. I see this as more an anthropocentrism than an anthropomorphism. Our stories are very different, but I think that at the heart of each book is a desire for some kind of realism when it comes to writing these animals’ perspectives, and that realism stems from our character-­driven approaches, as opposed to notions of animals as symbols. I was trying to understand characters (of all four species), and figure out how to do justice to that under- standing, in writing that was sometimes formally experimental and other times less so. Reading your novels, and talking here, it seems to me that both of you have sought to think through the complexities of the animals and tell their stories in a manner that would do their lives some sort of justice – or, to put it in a cringeworthy way, to tell their truth. I’m calling that realism; maybe it’s something else. It’s interesting, too, this idea of justice and truth being linked – it makes me think about the relationship between bearing witness and ethics. Do you see a connection between these ideas in your writing? Also, my next novel features a gannet…

LJM: I had a bit of a debate recently about a story draft I read in the first-­ person voice of a rabbit. I loved this story and was bristling with joy as I went to a meeting to talk about it. The other readers said that it was hard to take seriously this childish work and what a pity because the author seemed like a really good writer. I had taken the story completely literally – this was a realistic, subtle and elegant exploration of how it might be to see the world as a rabbit! Writing so intensely and literally about animals is skewing my judgment for other readings and making me a bit difficult in book and writing groups. But this literality surely isn’t all bad – a bit of compensation for centuries of anthropocentric reading, at least! Finding my way into your questions, Chris, about discussions after the book’s release, and yours, Erin, about the idea of justice and truth being

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 212 11/12/20 1:36 pm HORTLE, McKAY and FLYNN: Animal perspective 213

linked, brings to mind Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘The Animals in That Country’. It opens with the line ‘In that country the animals / have the faces of people.’ Later they have ‘the faces of / animals’ and then ‘the faces of / no one’. The poem is a beautiful ode to (what becomes) roadkill. As well as loving and using the poem’s title, I love the way the animals change according to human determination. They are ‘the animals’, but in ‘this country’ they mean many things. I often say that my character Sue just arrived on the page and, once she did, Jean had a reason for being there too. But I also purposely chose a dingo because of their uneasy status in Australia. Protected, wild, domestic, feral, pest. Dangerous, misunderstood, doesn’t belong, been here for so long. I wanted to spend a few hundred pages with a character who, by her very bodily presence, scrambles a national taxonomy. Is the way forward, now, to look backwards? Is that how you came to the extraordinary place of Mammoth, Chris?

CF: You have a gannet character in your next book, Erin. And you have a rabbit, Laura. You’re not fooling anyone; that was clearly your rabbit story that was dissed by the unsophisticated anthropocentric members of your lame book group. Childish, huh? Try cleaning the hutch of a huge bunny called Rabbit de Niro as he bites you. Reader, I almost died. In retrospect, he might’ve had myxomatosis. I really didn’t want to catch that. For the record – and this is an early reveal – there is a bear in my next book. It will mostly be about humans this time, with a guest ursa. Since every- one seems to hate anthropomorphism so much, I’m taking a pseudo-­scientific sidestep in order to (hopefully) dive under the crashing wave of eye-rolls.­ Notions of justice, truth and bearing witness tie in nicely to your question when it comes to Mammoth, Laura: is the way forward to look backwards? In the case of Mammut, the idea of forwards and backwards, of future and past, have become uniquely intertwined because he died a long time ago and yet he’s making a comeback. His entire species fell victim to the dawn of anthropocentrism and now we’re beginning to realise we made a terrible mistake. The mammoth’s purpose was to stomp around and keep the ground cold. When they died, tens of millions of them sank into the mire and were forgotten. Fast forward 10,000 years and we’ve heated the planet so much they’re thawing out again. Almost every week, there’s a news story

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 213 11/12/20 1:36 pm 214 GriffithReview71

about the discovery of a mammoth carcass. Normally, this would serve as a poignant reminder of our past folly but weirdly, mammoths are popping up just in the nick of time. In some cases, their flesh and skin are still intact. My God, some of them bleed! Which is awful, but also handy if you like to collect DNA samples and you work in a synthetic biology facility in Shenzen. It may have taken ten thousand years, but it looks like justice will finally be served for the mammoth. Pretty soon, they’ll be here again, lumbering around, doing their job of stomping, inspiring awe and looking cool. We will see baby mammoths on the news sometime in the next five years, maybe less. The concept is that a herd will help restore the permafrost and buy us some time. In all the research and media surrounding the possibility of resur- recting these behemoths, the talk is about climate change – and rightly so. But I wonder if the re-­emergence of extinct megafauna isn’t a marker of something more profound, something era-­defining? Bringing animals back from the dead could be the ultimate anthropocentric act in that it defines the limits of our power. We become God. We correct our past mistakes and, in doing so, we hand the reins back to creatures that were here long before us. Their imprint on the world becomes more important than ours. As soon as that first herd of mammoth is set free, the Anthropocene is over, and we’ll be living in a new age. I hope we’re around to see it.

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Chris Flynn is the author of Mammoth (UQP, 2020), The Glass Kingdom (Text, 2014) and A Tiger in Eden (Text, 2012), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize. His fiction and non-­fiction have appeared in The Age, The Australian, The Guardian, Meanjin, Australian Book Review, The Saturday Paper, The Big Issue, McSweeney’s and many others.

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe, 2020), shortlisted for the Readings Prize 2020. Her short story collection Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc., 2013) was shortlisted for the New South Wales and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and the Asher Award.

Erin Hortle’s essays and short fiction have been published in Kill Your Darlings, Island and Australian Humanities Review, and in 2017 she won an emerging writer’s prize as a part of the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes. Her debut novel, The Octopus and I, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2020.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 214 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 215

John Kinsella

Qualifying ode to experience

‘The world is all that is the case.’ Wittgenstein

but not a newsfeed, not really...

A person isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

When the termites swarm over dry tracts after sudden wet, after deluge, after the rise of moisture mocks the dryness and threatens caltrop as the only viable greenery, they – winged termites – reconfigure locality, at least for the shake of their wings, such casual attachments to limbs, quick to shed as the pheromones are dished out – flight is not as wonderful in itself, these crappy flappers who will chance upon the best outcome, from ground from nest to lovely rotten wood surface ripe for mastication and digestion and a new colony. It’s not wonderful being inside the bad joke, but the act of experiencing and telling is – in the circumstances – a display of the joke being on one’s self.

A termite isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 215 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 216

What’s left after the swarmers have expended their moment, when heat has set in to sap the dry, is the event of black house ants removing wings and the deceased from window frames. It would be carnage but it’s really a ‘clean-­up’, and we overinvest our role, having a householder’s say. Irony is the radar showing a storm where there is none and failing to warn when one comes down like endgame. A poor workman blames the tools? This technology of experience, of setting out to set roots anew, a conflict of tenses.

But wow, seriously, things are burgeoning – where out of the months of dry, out of ashen air, has all this life come? Praying mantises, dwarf skinks, gerygones, all ecstatic and meticulous in the frenzy of flying termites: the coming out that is cataclysm and wonder, and I’ve nothing meaningful to add other than, Hey, we too are overwhelmed by water – drinking, washing, soul-­soothing water. Even erosion can be a terraforming in the novelty, and old scripts recycled to make new sense.

A bird isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

A heavy rustling outside – I expect a monitor but it is a heavily pregnant bobtail swaying side to side as it sweeps past, that deft and heavy-­slow quickness, that extra-­ curricular knowledge and fine-tuned awareness to other observers – immersion, frequency, everyday familiarity. Knowledge systems at variance, at synch when necessary

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 216 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 217

for those on the ground? Semantics can mess up the description but not the allegiances, the vast memory of experience: ticks under scales, in ears, clustered, and yet the moisture is stirring the shaping of organs, fast. Consciousness is the vast release of energy consuming galaxies.

A person isn’t a noun or an abstract noun and nor is an animal or plant, or the earth, so that leaves objects made to be admired, and we are none of these. It’s an echo of the crux of a praying mantis’s front legs, the mimicry of its capturing. Such blanks in ontology are links in the conveyer belt, the rare earths of storage that lies about time, about species.

What motifs grab the crags of speech, settle in the softest places of the mouth, flicked by the tongue? Turn the sound down on one of the three television stations you can still receive – there is no intention to update technology – and in the lip-­synch dropout, in the delay between shout and sound, the grark! then sound off and picture staggering along, to listen to the grark graark...rrrrrrrrr....rrrrr...grark...grark... of the owlet nightjar, super-­audible despite the terrifyingly high easterlies that mock all the labour and exploitation and hype that went into making that movie...nightjar perusing same locale as usual – by the great tank now recharged up to the algal-­leak eye, the visionary crack that brings spiritual clarity in its pragmatic outcomes: daybirds often gather to drink in the eminence of heat of concrete walls, the friable air, but do nightjars

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 217 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 218

venture there in the way we hear them make contact with windows and flyscreens, picking off swarmers and solitary insects drawn to the artificial light? Recurrence is not motif, but maybe I compensate for the lake of channels, the flawed vision, the disrupted soundtracks? No, it’s always been like this: it’s my birdbrain reaching out to voice other perspectives, but them being little to do with flight or feeding.

An owlet nightjar isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

To whom and why in the spread so many deny, the address to a fallen tree they felled indirectly, to the house settling where the swamp was excavated? Each degree, each distraction – the sun overwhelms and holds our senses as source and aim of our apostrophes, arrangement of song we are swept away by. It’s glib in the recording studio if the noise of commerce can’t be accounted for, cancelled out. These textures of visible song, mostly felt through the skin, but also as idea of bird and word, the having been there, experienced. All lucked out, something like ‘atrabilious’ and the egg-­kick of the cuckoo can add up into a compulsion to augment our murmurs.

A person isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

Please don’t think this any less hallowed or holy for the secular nest, for the lack of role-­players in costumes leant by restraints – here there are doses of belief that don’t fit and run against sap, making claims that ruffle the feathers of birds losing their mates, or corella flocks brought down from the skies, scattered bloody over paddocks.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 218 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 219

A corella isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

I can’t give you anything and I can’t take anything from you, objective corellative: cloudy, it burns harder and deeper and the search for a cure gains pace: out of love of one another, and for profit. The rub, just as thunder and lightning is made, tilts entire agglomerations of people towards a solitary figure in a field, on a mountain, staring into a chasm. Volcanoes ring the edges, fiery even in extinction. From a land of conflagration.

You don’t get to write about termite galleries once and move on, unless you’ve saturated the world in toxins so deadly they measure presence in decades centuries maybe in a sense forever. So I get outside and clear along the front of the house between path and slab – raking away the leaf litter, letting mimetic grasshoppers and praying mantises move away at their own pace – quick hop, then hop back...scissor leg anglepoise lamp posture to take me on, and I retreat from the mantis, whose eyes consume me. Motifs, refrains and that strong bloody wind agitating dust and sand as I scrape away to keep the slab above ground clear from a heavy swell, from tubes for termite surfers to house consciousness, to plan their galleries, to climb higher into walls and the wood of books, the grotesque intrusion of the written word, the picture plates, the facsimiles of languages from the Mediterranean, ruins from ancient Ireland, Sanskrit, Persian from Persepolis, poems in exquisite calligraphy from the T’ang Dynasty – all in this house perched on the side of a valley where the eroded has been eroded further down to consequence, to words of bodies and rocks, where termites build across the divides making truth,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 219 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 220

recycling, translating, transcribing, undoing, restating. And also say, over, mimetic gumleaf grasshopper, mimetic gumleaf grasshopper mimetic gumleaf.

A praying mantis isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

And then the sound of preta-­conflagration the sound of deathgrind the rain of sparks the reign of terror the grinder on a summer’s afternoon the wind to carry the embers of oblivion.

A person isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

In the breath of the world is the breath-­destroyer that should never have been – locked away in tissue, prodded in labs, the level 4s that dot the planet as distillations of hubris. There are many manifestations of stockpiles and isolation, but trade and travel won’t let anyone go: humans traversing in machines is mass death for animals. Birds chewed up in the sky. The chokehold of smoke, of pollutants, the failure of respiration as well treats the sky-­lungs as membranes we can pass through and through and though. Impunity. The unpleasant interruption to an idyll.

An animal isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

Wings everywhere – wings looking for their matching partner, to pair, to make possibility for renewal, redemption. To be taken on to lift again, brown filaments, curved ends of a fan, animal tissue leaves that flitter around if a page is turned, a creature passes, stirring. Wings everywhere, after the fact, gradually carted away by ants of all sizes, taken back under-­

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 220 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 221

ground in different circumstances, different kinds of tunnels, different chambers – but still, that earthy smell, that air so close and absent, that spiracle to trachea that bloodless journey of oxygen molecules under, under, and wings of ants will form for nuptial days as well – different wings, their wings, falling everywhere from their bodies, their bodies made in part at least from termite corpses collected from the swarmers, the wing drop. Wings everywhere.

Heard a pied butcher bird at the limit of its range – pushing its voice and its geography, pushing mimicry to undo the patterns embedded in your memory. How many times have we heard the pied butcherbird around here? Not that many, not really. It covered the rufous whistler, grey shrike-­thrush, magpie, and, approximated in a deeper voice, a gerygone! The position of the sun in the sky – sun path – tilt – arc – is the tuning fork which I notice is becoming a characteristic of jam trees here – curved forks enlichened, more than sharp isosceles, skinny triangles. The curve that lures the pied butcherbird to test its range.

A pied butcher bird isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

Something scrabbling in the south-west­ corner downpipe – a reptile unable to climb back up to the gutter, the roof. Scrabbling. The only way out given the shiny interior’s resistance to clawing, is through the trap – the ground-­level outpipe for debris. I open it to air, and even in heat, sludge of the storms spills out. I hope the reptile will find release, escape. Otherwise it’s death and rot and into the Great Tank to disperse amongst the house water. House we occupy. I am fairly sure it’s an ornate dragon, as we see them rarely

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 221 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 222

here and another is on shadecloth near the wall, just down from the roof. Offspring...partner? Ornate dragons colour and blend, favouring granite.

An ornate dragon isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

And out there for a full viewing for first time since days of storms after drought and then high hot winds from the east, I am dismayed to the point of agony to find five old York gums brought down – two to the base, another falling and uprooting another, all the small hollows characteristic of termite-­eaten old York gums torn apart, and owlet nightjars lost. It is the collapse of a city, the changing of time signature here – yet again, yet again in profound way but never as profound as the slicing up into lots, the making of ‘Coondle’, the fencing and ‘opening’ for livestock. There is no post-­trauma, it is ongoing, and this felling by distressed nature seems more than a caveat. Much more. I cannot rewrite what has been rewritten, I am the vacancy of a signature, an unofficial signing-­off on the report.

A fallen York gum isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

Even out here it’s hard to believe people speak of those ‘already ill or old’ as the bulk of the dead – the hideous relegation of life to a table of stats, to bracket creep of age. All roads lead to and from a reassurance that consoles the numinous body, the survivors, the Logan’s Run futurism, the jolt of social media and dislikes dislikes!

A person isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

How can any ode remain immune to what is going on around it – the spread and the fear. And to thwart anxiety the bluffers deploy ‘panic’

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 222 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 223

as a weapon, as a tool of ostracism, rather than working with empathy – take the Easter lilies risen after the storms, and the first opening of this ‘invader’ fallen fast, neck broken by weighty bird or roo hopping past, but still searching for the sun through the shade. You could never set a clock by their appearance, and now less than ever, but their appearance shows the contraindications of a chronology imposed on the land as if it’s immunity to challenge, as if it was always going to be this way – as if the Serenity Prayer is the complete answer, whatever the context. Don’t worry, it stays with me, but it’s never infallible.

But I did notice in the warp of post-­dawn, amid grim stats of infection and bodycount across the globe, a curve in the valley I’d never really noticed before, and it was uplifting. That an ongoing colonialism has bent ground to its wants is not in question, but it’s not recent, though a firebreak has been carved through the depression and its rise, but I feel the upraised palm gesture laid bare by clearing is something deeper and of greater duration in its making, and says something beyond survey-­husbandry and is a guide more expressive and less prescriptive than ‘old-­world new-world’ spatiality. I pause and rest my gaze in the upturned palm, the contour so close I had ignored without volition.

A person isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

An echidna has moved through and unearthed, torn open, broken into the broken trees and dislodged termite galleries, has supped deep into dying trunks.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 223 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 224

Earth is jumbled moist to dry and crumble and reset. An echidna has moved through the wing-­fallout, traced and broken open, extracted, reset, terraformed.

An echidna isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

No reflex in the making of this ark poem, not moss quivering before the gnashing cut, not now, but far back, or further back...but pop- ­up forest in paddock already in agony is different...different from (not ‘to’) old growth persistence, distant, not seen out this window and probably fewer and fewer naturally occurring holes – tunnel vision that blooms beyond cells of the human brain, outside neural pathways, in the sap; the resistance of moss on the ash trunk in a growing realm of fire on fire on fire. This intervention in composition, this drain on power, this call for words fuelled as if they answer and give more when they can’t. And I weep looking out – here at point of composition – at the breakage of old trees, the swathe angling down valley, reconfiguring Jam Tree Gully which is more than a concept, it is an obligation and thornbills are the present continuous, the ongoing.

A forest isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

Out of the abuse and trauma and theft and massacring you can’t take on voices of the dead the injured the hurt the affected: it is not yours to document but to offer restitution in material ways, maybe spiritual, but not to write something you will benefit

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 224 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 225

from even if it’s a Good on you for uttering a truth. Other voices have a right and a need and you can listen, and act, but not tell. Corrective stories still bristle with story-­ telling as if it’s a way through: audience says it can’t be when that audience sits back to read, sips on a drink, takes in a sunset after placing a bookmark.

A people isn’t a noun or an abstract noun.

Still the thornbills, still the seed gatherers gathering when the seed is thin on the ground and some has sprouted after rains to die off in the new dry, barely beyond a low grass. And now the mutations, the L-­types and S-­types that are geographically inclined, demographically requisite, their own little bigotry in sun and rain. Here it has dried so quickly again, but thornbills work together to gather, though at the end of every moment of feeding action, it’s their own beak and their own beak alone that plucks a particular seed from a cluster. This is no analogy, no ontology, however much observation pulls us that way especially when alone, isolated or semi-­isolated, holding what we have to hold.

And near the little finger of my left hand as it acts to make letters – gentle strike of key to type to shape words I see written in thought ahead of sight ahead of speech to erode a narrative into an imaginary page...it is not real, not really, is it?...near my little finger is the partial silk- ­enwrapped shell of a ‘swarmer’, the vomited- on and broken-­into corpse of a swarmer that kept its wings, a small spider – hard to identify – upside down above it, digesting, symptom of its symptom, refrain in the pulse

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 225 11/12/20 1:36 pm POEM 226

of my our-­world, our collating of senses and recall and loss – when the termites swarmed over dry tracts after sudden wet, after deluge, days and days ago now, days back when this ode began and experience could only fall away, unbalance, seed-­twist away from its cause, take root to pull up short. And yet, the qualifiers are to be heard and seen and sensed brushing the skin if waited for – sometimes, should, possible.

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, John Kinsella is professor of literature and environment at Curtin University, and a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. His latest book of poetry is The Weave (with Thurston Moore, UWAP, 2020), and his most recent works of fiction are the experimental novel Lucida Intervalla (UWAP, 2018) and the work of speculative fiction Hollow Earth (Transit Lounge, 2019). His memoir, Displaced: A Rural Life (Transit Lounge), appeared in 2020.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 226 11/12/20 1:36 pm MEMOIR The professor and the word On value in culture and economics Julian Meyrick

Every thinker thinks one thought. The researcher needs constantly new discoveries and inspirations, else science will bog down and fall into error. The thinker needs one thought only. Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?

I REMEMBER READING it by torchlight, or perhaps candlelight, which can’t be true. The decade of power cuts was over, and electricity bills were not yet the heavy draw on household spending they later became. The book was old. It had a cheap, black cover and thick, yellowing pages. The early chapters bored me. The later chapters I never looked at. But the middle chapters... I followed each twist and revision of thought, every subtle change in defini- tion and formula. From Smith to Ricardo. From Ricardo to Marx. From Marx to the Valley of Death, marginalist economics with its subcutaneous, barely detectable, but oh-­so-­real political agenda. Then I forgot all about it. What use was Eric Roll’s A History of Economic Thought in the world for which I intended myself – the theatre? It wasn’t even peripheral knowledge, useful as background reading for rehearsing a play of same (‘How do economists sound, do you think?’). The rate of profit in an age of capital substitution and its impact on price and competition theory. Top stuff. Not relevant to the problems of dramatic character, counter cross blocking and the correct use of the Fresnel lamp. A hundred years later, perhaps a little less, when the theatre was done with me, or all but, I surfaced in another landscape – the academy – and found what I had abandoned waiting for me, as if it knew I would return. The exact same Word. In the Roman Catholic Mass, in the Second Vatican liturgy that Pope John Paul II liked so much but his successor did not, supplicants offer a prayer

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 227 11/12/20 1:36 pm 228 GriffithReview71

before taking Communion. Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed. From an early age, I thought ‘What word? What word can heal?’ I very much wanted to know as I shuffled up for my redemptive wafer. But perhaps I know it after all. Or one of them. It is the Word that came to me when I was a stage-­struck politics and economics student in 1981, and was there again when I entered academic life as a professor – no monk, more mendicant – in 2012. The Word was value, and for the last eight years I have carried it with me in honour, horror, curiosity, anguish and atonement. When it became clear that the word was infesting me, taking over my mind like an intellectual parasite, revealing things I would rather not see, I wanted to forswear it all over again. But I am of an age where there is no giving back, just as there is no going back. We are joined, the professor and the Word, until such time as I go to my grave and it floats free again, looking for another human host to inhabit in all its great, grave, other-­worldly nobility.

WHEN I DROVE FROM Melbourne to Adelaide to take up my job at Flinders University it was in an elderly Toyota Starlet that had never made a journey of more than 100 kilometres in its life. We faced interstate relocation together, both under-­equipped. The first weeks were a succession of induc- tions of wilting intensity. My mind would spiral off thinking of the theatre I had just left, mainly, of gigs, shows, slots, workshops, opening nights – the full liturgy. I’d just won a Helpmann Award. Why would I want to become an academic? The phrase had a ferrous ring to it, like a set of manacles. My office was large, with bookshelves the length of airport runways. Outside, the wind blew through the frangipani trees. I developed a love-h­ ate relationship with a sulphur- ­crested cockatoo who would sit in the branches, pin me with a fixed look and squawk mournfully whenever I reached for the phone. Like a man who falls off a cliff then finds himself on an unseen ledge three feet below, I had landed safely but was not sufficiently aware of the fact. Best to say that I’d arrived in Adelaide like the Starlet: slightly used but serviceable. Theatre had not ‘fulfilled me’ – code for I hadn’t done that much in it. I was dicking around, looking for a life. So the Word found me: a likely rube, intelligent but not sufficiently so. In The Value of Everything, the innovation economist Mariana Mazzucato describes the implications of the appearance of marginalist economics:

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 228 11/12/20 1:36 pm Julian Meyrick: The professor and the word 229

The marginal revolutionaries...used marginal utility and scarcity to determine prices and the size of the market. In their view, the supply and demand of scarce resources regulates value expressed in money... Competition ensures that the ‘marginal utility’ of the last item sold determines the price of that commodity. The size of the market in a particular commodity – the number of items that need to be sold before marginal utility no longer covers the costs of production – is explained by scarcity, and hence price, of the inputs into production. Price is a direct measure of value.

That’s mainstream economics in a nutshell, now as then. Like a cartoon character caught in a loop of eternal return, economics does not progress. It does not discover new things. It restates its predicates in ever-­greater detail, in a barren exchange of validity for precision. Knowing more and more about less and less, it compensates for these minatory reductions by inflating its disciplinary ego. Yet ‘no economist has a privileged insight into questions of right and wrong’, writes Nobel Prize-­winning economist Paul Romer, ‘none deserves a special say in fundamental decisions about how society should operate’. The economic historians Philip Mirowski and Eddie Nik-­Khah are blunter: ‘Why anyone would mistake this virtual system of billiard balls careening across the baize as capturing the white-­hot conviction of human rationality in human life is a question worthy of a few years hard work by competent intellectual historians; but that does not seem to be what we have been bequeathed.’ There were a thousand ways I could have lost out in those early days. Heaven- ­blessed, I avoided them all. What a new professor needs is a ‘research agenda’. This is the same as old-­fashioned research, only you make money out of it. The sums can be large or, in my case, small, but I soon learnt that every action, relationship and encounter in the modern academy bends towards money like a compass needle twitches to north. The phrase ‘value for money’, which previously I had applied to washing detergents and low-­end restaurants, now floated free on a numinous sea of universal application, the magnetic pole of a new worldview. In my middle ear I heard a bass, existential thrum, as of many things turning, all at once. It was money, scooting round the economy at a velocity that reflected the rate at which it changed hands – why hadn’t I noticed this sound before? Like the whine of an old-­fashioned TV set, once you did there was no unhearing it.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 229 11/12/20 1:36 pm 230 GriffithReview71

I was invited to join a team of researchers who were, quote, looking at the problem of value in arts and culture. Thus was born the project Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture. There were five of us. In our intellectual pocket we had a novel mathematical device through which we were keen to extrude some culture; an algorithm, out of which we would produce, in true thaumaturgical rabbit-from-­ ­hat style, its value. My research fellow was digital humanities scholar Tully Barnett, and for the next few years I saw more of her than my family. She would explain the Laboratory Adelaide project to people thus: ‘Culture as in art, value as in worth,’ after I had waffled on for unfruitful minutes. Together we assayed the desert plains of the cultural value research literature. I’d vaguely heard of this. Wasn’t I a culture person? And a researcher? We printed up the yards of articles from the internet, loaded the boatloads of books from the library. So many words! What did they all mean? And the grey literature. So aptly named! So colourless and dull! ‘Cultural Vitality: Interpretation and indicators.’ ‘Cultural Indicators: Measuring impact on culture.’ ‘Interplay Wellbeing Framework: A collaborative methodology.’ The systems, the methods, the measures, the indicators, the models, the paradigms, the heuristics, the frameworks. No sixteenth-­century Paracelsian, distilling their spagyric from the primal elements, was more nuanced in procedure, more dedicated to complexity for its own sake, than these report-­spawners. This universe of intellectual effort gun-­sighted on the problem of value had only one drawback. It was totally fucking mad. In June 2013, Laboratory Adelaide gave a presentation at the Adelaide Festival Centre titled The Real Worth of the Arts in Adelaide. (Who wouldn’t want to know that?) Showing that we had nothing hidden up our sleeves, we revealed our research had ‘proven’ using a ‘scientifically rigorous method- ology’ that the value of the Adelaide Festival was $84,924,664 (ta-­da!). As we delivered our ‘findings’, the winter sun poured in through the Festival Centre’s chambered windows. I have some blurry photos of this day, dated, for some reason, May 2010, as if we were living some years behind the time we were supposed to be in. Backlight throws the room into gloom, so we look like shades from the Grecian underworld. Wearing a Hugo Boss suit my mother had purchased for me (her son, the professor), I have adopted a faux-thoughtful­ expression, having no idea of the grim struggles faced by the Adelaide Festival board; of the grim struggles anyone faced, anywhere. Value

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 230 11/12/20 1:36 pm Julian Meyrick: The professor and the word 231

to me was still just a word. Yet somewhere in my theatre-­addled conscious- ness I felt a shudder of dis-­ease, as of someone who realises, after years of apparently connubial bliss, that they might have married the wrong person. A number of formal problems occur in mainstream economics that pertain, directly or indirectly, to the problem of value. These include ‘the prisoner’s dilemma’, which is used in Nashian game theory to model asymmetric distributions of information in situations of competitive market exchange; ‘the non-­identity problem’, which is used to consider the long-­ term impact of investment decisions when those paying the cost of a good or service are different people from those who will experience its benefit; and ‘the diamond-­water paradox’, which is the problem that marginalist econom- ics believed it had solved. Why do people pay so much more for diamonds, which are not a basic human need, than for water, without which they cannot live? For marginalists, the answer is that the value of a good is established by the price point of the last unit of its consumption (the ‘marginal’ one). Because there is so much water and so few diamonds, the utility – and thus value – of the former falls as it is satisfied by abundance, while the latter, always scarce, does not. The fly in the ointment is what non-­economists call ‘the real world’, the one in which our consumption needs are neither stable nor substitutable. For the marginalist solution to the diamond-­water paradox relies on this essential truth: that you do not ask people which they prefer when they are thirsty.

BY 2015, TULLY and I were the public face of Laboratory Adelaide, our first grants coming in. I was still directing theatre, and had a show with the state company. I was living in the Adelaide foothills, and in the evening, after rehearsals, I would catch a local train home, one that looked like it had been nicked from a Thomas the Tank Engine railway set. There was always a delay, and I would sit on one of the station’s hard, beautiful wooden benches and gaze at the photographs of railway workers who had given their lives in ‘the war to end all wars’. Then I would do a little people watching. ‘What do I see from this window,’ asks René Descartes, ‘but hats and coats, clothing ghosts or machines moved by springs? I judge these are real people not with my eyes, but by the power of my judging mind.’ The man with the bad hair and the trousers that look like they were made in 1976; the woman with the outsize phone juggling too many bags; school

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 231 11/12/20 1:36 pm 232 GriffithReview71

children in uniforms of heraldic sable, running around like greyhounds. Comings and goings and onboardings and leave-­takings. Adelaide is a small city in a remote region in a far-­away country. For a moment I think that it has somehow slipped the sullen perdition of the modern world. That these people are happy, and that they deserve to be; that their lives, in and of themselves, regardless of looks, talent, skill, intelligence, disposition or net worth, are of value. That this requires neither demonstration nor explanation. That it simply ‘is’, a spiritual fact of infinite extension that sweeps away all the differences we concoct to reward one person over another, one nation over another, one time over another. And at that moment the Word comes to me, much closer now, and I am slack-­jawed thinking of the consequences. From 2016 to 2019, Tully and I were out and about ‘researching value’, the Laboratory Adelaide team furiously debating the chokehold of economics over its definition. Right on cue, the Australian cultural sector fell apart, displaying its messy, non-­methodic reality for all to see. In May 2015, George Brandis, the federal arts minister, unceremoniously grabbed 16 per cent of the annual budget of the Australia Council for the Arts to establish his own funding agency. The following year, the council abruptly shed 20 per cent of the arts organisations it was supporting. The year after that, the South Australian Coalition government ‘disestablished’ its own state arts agency, cutting staff by 80 per cent. In October 2019, the federal Department of Communications and the Arts was submerged into a confected Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. In the world beyond Australia, data analysis was confounded by the vote for Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump as President of the US. For none of these sad, bad or irredeemably stupid actions was there much, or indeed any, sign of ‘evidence-­based decision-­making’. No exhaustively detailed cost-­benefit analyses or spreadsheets the size of North Africa laying out carefully computed, if largely spurious, ‘returns on investment’. The arguments determining the choices made, if they existed at all, had little connection with the logiques manqué handed to Laboratory Adelaide. In July 2017, Flinders University began an eviscerating restructure that led to the forced redundancy of 15 per cent of its staff, the liquidation of its schools and departments, and a retooling of its research agenda along business-­ friendly lines. In all this, there was no pretense the goal was more than an improved ranking in a higher-­education index. As the university exploded in

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 232 11/12/20 1:36 pm Julian Meyrick: The professor and the word 233

vitriol and grief, the metrics were the only meaning to be had. Now we saw what we were up against, the team and I, and it was salutary. The challenge of valuing arts and culture we had blithely taken up in 2012 was a tiny redoubt in a vast trenchwork of ruined thinking that scarred the world at large, traducing the idea of value, treating it with cruelty and disrespect, so that the Word was a pitted façade of its former self. During this time, I slept badly and moved slowly, like an animal driven out of cover and exposed on an open plain. A new feeling gripped my body, growing more intense as it pulsed out of me in raw, unstoppable waves. It was 24/7 rage, I came to realise, and at one point I thought it would do for me. In the past, I had looked for fame, acclaim, success – the usual blah artists are supposed to crave. Now I wanted to hide away where no one could find me, not even my own self. In the bone-­moon of an Adelaide winter dusk, the air cutting like ice, I wondered what my next move could be, having run out of moves, having no moves in me left to make.

‘THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA’ is a thought experiment in which two prisoners, separately incarcerated, face disincentives to make a decision that is best for them both – denying a joint crime and walking free – because they do not have access to what the other is thinking. The more prisoners there are, the harder it is to justify acting for the common good. Mirowski and Nik-­Khah’s book The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information follows the development of game theory in economics, for which the prisoner’s dilemma is a key heuristic, from the socialist-­calculation controversy of the 1940s to its post-­2000 ‘market design’ manifestations. If the marginalist ‘solution’ to the diamond-­water paradox strips the problem of value of its context, game theory diminishes its substance. Economic information is a ‘thin’ idea of knowledge (and of value), unable to cope with either contradiction (what if it is in my self-­interest to act un-­self-­interestedly even when it is against my self- ­interest?), or, more vitally, with the notion that there may be more than one type of rationality at play in any given situation. Game theory demonstrates the skanky beliefs by which ‘the market’ in mainstream economics is presumed to achieve optimal outcomes. The primary goal is ‘efficiency’ – but what if efficiency isn’t our only goal? What if distributional equity or resource sustainability are important? Or the need to behave honestly for its own sake? Some goals cannot be ordinally ranked.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 233 11/12/20 1:36 pm 234 GriffithReview71

It isn’t ethical to lie and walk free then tell the truth. ‘Efficient’ markets that produce inequality, or cause environmental damage, are hard to redress if there is no notion of the common good in the first place. We know only a tiny part of what is in everyone’s interest based on knowing our self-­interest alone. Mirowski and Nik-­Khah ask, ‘How have we arrived at this impasse, with artificial ignorance ingrained at every turn? How can economists pride themselves as wizards of information, and yet be so woodenly obtuse?’ Reducing knowledge to information reduces wisdom to computation and detaches value as found in economics from its rich appearance in other disciplines. From philosophy (Kant’s Critique of Judgment; Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy; Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue). From anthropology (Clifford Geertz’s Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight; Georgina Born’s ethno- graphic studies of the BBC and the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique). From sociology (Max Weber, one of the great archi- tects of modern social science; TH Marshall, who coined the term ‘social citizenship’; and second-­gen Chicago Schoolers like Erving Goffman and Howard Becker). These bodies of work contain ideas of value that are profound, powerful and accessible on a human level. They are beautiful, shimmering, bejewelled streams of scholarly responsiveness. Yet we have turned away from them to pseudo- ­mathematical euchologies whose lack of sense is matched only by their lack of shame.

AS MY DESCENT into the Parmenidean underworld continued, I discov- ered that value had an evil twin: a sense of worthlessness. For every ‘A’ that exists on the ontological plane there is a ‘not-­A’ that can be contemplated as a purgatory of self-­torment. A state of pure nothingness is not one that eternal beings (that’s us) can logically attain. Nevertheless, the sensation of failure, of being rejected, ejected, hated, humiliated, disregarded, dismissed, despised, thrown over or thrown away, as if, indeed, one does not exist, comes close to reducing the somebody we know ourselves to be to the nobody we fear we really are. In the middle of the night or in the early morning, I would take account of all I had done in my life only to find it marked down in a spiritual ledger as debt owed, an endless blood-­red river of accounts payable. Friends I had lost, let down or betrayed. Projects I had botched, aborted or never pursued. Love

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 234 11/12/20 1:36 pm Julian Meyrick: The professor and the word 235

abandoned, unjustly unfelt or, again, betrayed. Things badly done, wrongly done or not done at all. People I had slighted, slandered, misrepresented or ignored. So many ways to fail: with biblical finality I saw I had achieved them all. A ghastly sweat would come over me then, my body weeping itself away in its quest to de-­phenomenalise, to reach formlessness once more. Yet these radical dis-­valuations, these maximal write-­downs of the asset-­ self, were quite common, I found, talking to others. They weren’t unusual or bespoke. A sense of worthlessness lies within us all, an entropic darkness, goading us into a struggle for comparative advantage that is as banal as it barbarous, as purposeless as it is poisonous. What Hannah Forsyth calls ‘the moral economic market’ is the psychic competition that underpins the competition of goods and services. In this market, we give away that part of ourselves that is most inviolable, receiving instead the munted coin of material success, an unstable currency, prone to collapse. When it tanks, we tank with it, reduced to the emotional equivalent of junk status.

IN THE WAKE of the Flinders restructure, my reckonings of the soul increased. After I left the university in 2019, they became an object of atten- tion in their own right. I came to see that the Word was not infesting me but testing me through a question that found its way to my innermost being as an archer’s arrow found King Harold’s eye. ‘What is value?’ became in time ‘What is of value?’ and eventually ‘What is my value?’ Believe me, and be warned by me, once you have asked this question you can never take it back. When I was an oiky politics and economics undergraduate, we discussed the price of life. In 1982 it was £300,000. For insurance purposes. ‘Many would say that human life is priceless, that we should pay any amount of money to save a life,’ says Jonathan Gruber in his mega-­influential textbook, Public Finance and Public Policy. ‘This argument does not recognise that there are many possible uses for the limited government budget... By this logic, we would have to finance any government program that could save lives.’ Imagine that. (Pause here, please.) The claim that economics can price, and thus value, human life isn’t completely true, however. It is economists who do this, and that’s a different story. One of the methods Gruber proposes is ‘contingent valuation’ – the same one that Laboratory Adelaide used to ‘prove’ the value of arts and

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 235 11/12/20 1:36 pm 236 GriffithReview71

culture. ‘The way to do this is to ask individuals what their lives are worth. This is obviously a difficult question to answer.’ Er, well, yes… ‘A common approach is to ask about the valuation of things that change the probability of dying... Contingent valuation studies have provided a very wide range of results for life values, ranging from $1 million to $28.8 million per life saved.’ Of course, Gruber doesn’t mean his life. The value of his life is in a different category to putting a cash price on everybody else’s. As Heidegger says, the death of another person is a loss from the world. Our own death is loss of the world itself. Gruber: ‘What at first seems to be a simple account- ing exercise becomes complicated when resources cannot be valued in competitive markets.’ Thus, I came to the position I now hold. That we do not understand value at all. That value is just a word – not the Word – and we consciously evade its meaning, like a cry of pain in the dark that we choose not to hear, sometimes our own. We talk and talk and talk, but our arguments go nowhere because the problem of value is displaced from its groove of sense, the sacred relationship with the planet we inhabit and those who, animal and human, we share it with. ‘Why should I care?’ is a question I heard many times during the course of the Laboratory Adelaide project. It deserves an answer. But I don’t have one. We don’t care about things because they are of value. Things are of value because we care about them. Evaluation is the act of caring, collectively avowed. As we have moved from what political economist Wolfgang Streeck calls a ‘needs-­supplying’ to a ‘wants-­supplying’ economy, the acts of care that should underpin our avowed evaluations have fallen into disuse or been corrupted. ‘What keeps a disorderly, stalemated post-­capitalist interregnum society going,’ asks Streeck in Teutonic exasperation, ‘in the absence of collec- tive regulation of economic crises, limiting inequality, securing confidence in currency and credit, protecting labour, land and money from overuse, and procuring legitimacy for free markets and private property through democratic control of greed and prevention of oligarchic conversion of economic into political power?’ The answer? Coping, hoping, doping and shopping. In the pandemic-­y, catastrophe-­strewn world in which I now live, value has become not a problem to be understood, but a thing to buy. Our sense

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 236 11/12/20 1:36 pm Julian Meyrick: The professor and the word 237

of value, our third eye, is degraded and made pander to endless, pointless, purchasing choices, diversity without true dialogue, multiplicity without real meaning. No doubt mainstream economics is the enabler of this desue- tude, carving away great hunks of our shared soul and repackaging them as individual market exchanges. But it is symptom, not cause. If we valued value differently, economics would be different also. The question is not (only) how to change economics. The question is how to change ourselves.

THE ‘NON-­IDENTITY PROBLEM’ hails from population ethics and finds its way into the problem of value along its most mysterious and crucial axis: the abscissa of time. At its simplest, it’s about how we value people who aren’t there – people who don’t exist yet, and may never exist. But by our actions we determine a) that certain people will exist and b) the kind of life they can have. By the same token, looking back in time, we did not exist for people who once did, so how on earth did they value us? ‘Did we know each other when we were both kids?’ my son, then five years old, asked his mother one day. His child’s mind took the phenomenon of time and bent it round on itself, like an Escher staircase, walking up it to a moment in history that isn’t there. But if being is absolute and eternal, as Parmenides argued, then nothing can be thought of that isn’t already in existence, if only as a thought. Like a metaphysical bootlace, the non-­identity problem links all points on the matrix of creation: the actual to the actual; the possible to the actual; the possible to the possible. Thinking thus brings a heightened experience of time, as we look forward not only to those people who will be, but to those who can be – the sum of our possibilities to whom we owe if not allegiance, then at least consideration. Similarly, for the human beings who were, we are a thought that became an act that became us. By this measure, time is no longer defined from a single, privileged point of perception (the present) but is coterminous with the deep sea of creative possibility itself. For economists, by contrast, time is empty, linear and progressive, divided by clear marks of apprehension presumed to correspond to objec- tive qualities, like an old-­fashioned school ruler. There is ‘the past’, which is gone, and thus irrecoverable; ‘the future’, which is either a confidence interval on a probability curve (and therefore a risk) or indeterminate (and therefore unknowable); and ‘the now’, which is a narcissistic bloat of ungovernable

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 237 11/12/20 1:36 pm 238 GriffithReview71

material desires held in check by the free market and its sub-­Darwinian struggle for [insert individualistic and destructive KPI here]. In mainstream economics, there are two major conceptions of time: ‘discounted utility’ (DU) and the ‘social discount rate’ (SDR). DU privileges ‘the now’ as the main focus of evaluation, and works by ‘discounting’ flows of value the further into the future they go, as an increasing cost to the present. SDR is more balanced, and includes the benefits from these future flows as a reduction in the cost to the present (thus discounting the discount). In both cases, quantification and monetisation – the loveless, laugh-­less duo of contemporary evaluation methodologies – are the means by which time is brought to heel and made to serve immediate needs. In its lack of imagination, mainstream economics does the opposite to time that my son did. It cuts it up like a dead body on a mortuary slab, so that it will never regain the life it once had. The problem that the problem of value faces today is escaping from economics, while economics faces the problem of escaping from itself. Or returning to itself, for it is a remarkable fact about this hobbled disci- pline that the further back into its history you go, the more sense it makes. I remember the passionate love I had for it. The nobility of classical and Keynesian theory, before economics lost touch with the ethical intelligence that alone can provide it with the capacity to tackle problems of scale. Surely needed now, in our polarised, confusion-­rich moment. Why did Laboratory Adelaide’s contingency-­value method fail to convince government economists of the value of arts and culture? Not because it wasn’t true, but because it wasn’t real. The problems facing those techno-­authoritarian dimwits, living in an over-­credentialised fug of Milton Friedman bunkum – what Robert Skidelsky calls ‘the Treasury view’ – lay in an entirely different direction. In lack of economic growth, which they brought on by destroying South Australia’s manufacturing sector. In stagnant wages, which they brought on by weakening its labour unions. In rising inequality, which they brought on by undermining progressive taxation. In ballooning private debt, which they brought on by cutting public services. In non-­investing corporations and sociopathic CEOs, which they brought on by exchanging the sovereign rights of democratic government for international trade agreements whose sole intention is to weaken those rights. Compared to this, ‘the problem of value in arts and culture’ is a flea’s flea, worth a minute’s thought, maybe less.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 238 11/12/20 1:36 pm Julian Meyrick: The professor and the word 239

Just fund some culture and be done with it, you stupid fucks! Stop avoiding the problems that economics has really got.

HOW DO WE value the future, then, which we cannot know, or the past, which we do not remember? How do we value people who aren’t there? Funnily enough, I know the answer to this question. In a way, I have spent my life answering it. For it is exactly the problem that confronts the theatre. In the theatre we begin thus. Imagine someone – anyone, any gender, any age, place or time. They may exist or have once existed. Or they may not exist. Yet. The only stipulation is that you can imagine them. Heidegger says we must ‘notice the way we walk’. In the theatre, we say this too, but not in the way he meant it. We literally notice the way people walk. How does your person walk? How do they sound? How do they raise their hand when making a discrete gesture of recognition? How do they stare when they are wounded but trying not to show it? How do they laugh? How do they pick up their knife and fork when they sit down to eat? Ask questions like this, one after the other. Keep finding answers. If the answers aren’t there, make them up. Sooner than you think, you will have in front of you a whole human being. Then: copy these actions, shaping them with your own body. Practise and practise, until you have captured them perfectly. Who are they, this person? Listen to me carefully: it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are of value. How will you know this? Because as you learn about them, they will learn about you, in a swift and astonishing transmigra- tion of souls. As you copy them, they copy you. Your thoughts become their thoughts. Your past becomes their past. Eventually, they know you better than anyone, and understand you entirely. To change you, they see, would be to reduce you. So, they accept you for who you are, and want only good things for you. And you must do the same for them. Care about them, and for the same reason. In the theatre, this imaginative practice is a job of work, a daily emotional labour. To penetrate the life of another person, whether ‘real’ or ‘fictitious’ – on stage, there is no difference – is to find them in oneself. In this task, the fatal error is to confuse preference with value. Maybe your person is hard to like. That’s your problem. You won’t feel them caring for you unless you care for them, and you must strive with every faculty you possess to achieve this.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 239 11/12/20 1:36 pm 240 GriffithReview71

When you do – that feeling – that’s value, the beginning of it, the sliver of human empathy from which evaluation can meaningfully proceed. Now that you see it is possible to care for anyone, you see it is possible to care for people who aren’t there. For the people in the past who, though they did not know us, cared enough to bring us into the world. For the people in the future, whose fate we hold in our hands by the actions we avow today. The problem of value is not one of calculation, but of imagination.

WHEN I WAS AT school, I studied Latin, and I was fascinated by its declensions, the case system. Especially the vocative case, which does not exist in English and is used to call out to someone, to hail them to our voice:

O, Australia. O, ancient southern land. What have we done to you? What have we done?

I had a dream. The earth was on fire. Walls of flame as far as the eye could see, everything burning. I was with a friend who I hadn’t seen for many years. In his hand, he held a book, and I could just see its single-­word title. For a moment, I thought it might be value. But it was not. It was justice, and it glowed brightly in the miasmic blaze we casually walked through. These words, these Platonic forms. They arise from the remote reaches of a ghostly land that is always with us, yet we never see. The co-­present marmoreal realm of pure ideas. Truth. Beauty. Justice. Love. Value. They call out to us, these words, to find them in our fallen world, the rubble of appearances, to approach yet never attain the crystalline understanding they offer. But their call is not a harsh one, not one we can fail. It is like the soft murmur of a lover in the still of a long night, whereby we feel the full reality of another person by our side, hear them talk, fall quiet and, eventually, sleep. Knowing they are unique and irreplaceable, and that the solution to ‘the problem of value’ is near us, always, if we will but reach out to touch this miracle so.

For references, see griffithreview.com

A previous contributor to Griffith Review, Julian Meyrick is professor of creative arts at Griffith University. He is chief investigator for Laboratory Adelaide, an ARC Linkage project studying the problem of culture’s value. His book What Matters?: Talking Value in Australian Culture, co- ­authored with Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, was published by Monash University Publishing in 2018.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 240 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY State actions and libertarian lawsuits Lessons from Covid for the climate emergency Anne Orford

IN SEPTEMBER 2020, for the first time in its seventy-­five-­year history, the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly was held virtually. In Le Corbusier’s vast General Assembly Hall, UN officials and a single masked representative of each member state sat in a socially distanced formation, leaving most of the 1,800 seats vacant. World leaders made their presenta- tions in fifteen-­minute pre-­recorded statements. Their appearances by video on two giant screens that dwarfed the room’s human inhabitants intensified the dystopian quality of the proceedings. Addressing that largely empty auditorium, UN Secretary-­General António Guterres commented on this strange sight in ‘a world turned upside down’. However, he added, while COVID-­19 had changed the annual meeting beyond recognition, it had also made it more important than ever. The pandemic is ‘the kind of crisis that we will see in different forms again and again. COVID-­19 is not only a wake-­up call, it is a dress rehearsal for the world of challenges to come.’ Over the course of this long pandemic year, many of us have similarly linked the COVID-­19 pandemic with climate change, warning that the emergence of a deadly novel virus prefigured the types of challenges to which a warming planet would give rise and comparing the unprecedented mobilisa- tion to slow the virus with the kinds of dramatic action that would be needed to avert the worsening effects of significant climate change. Yet if 2020 is a

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 241 11/12/20 1:36 pm 242 GriffithReview71

dress-rehearsal for the global response to the climate emergency, we need to hope that there is some wisdom in the old theatrical adage that a bad dress rehearsal means a great opening night.

ACT ONE. IN the early – and, in retrospect, relatively innocent – months of the pandemic, it seemed as if we were witnessing a significant shift in the way that individuals, institutions and governments approached the responsibility of states to protect their citizens. After decades of being told by governments across the Western world that there was simply no alternative to prioritising economic growth, competition, budget surpluses and the happiness of the ‘market’ over all other values, it was startling to see how quickly the limits of the politically possible could shift. Around the world, states that had seemed committed to a tired set of neoliberal policy prescriptions began to transform. They reinvested in public health systems, engaged in logistical planning exercises on a scale rarely seen outside wartime, rediscovered a public role for scientific experts and offered sick leave to casual and precarious workers. They nationalised private health facilities, countenanced significant budget deficits and closed borders to inessential travel. They found housing for the homeless, suspended evictions, and built stockpiles of essential supplies and protective equipment rather than relying on volatile global supply chains. They required those who could to work from home, and paid those who couldn’t to stay at home while businesses were closed. These extraordinary measures were implemented in order to slow down the rate at which the virus spread and buy time for front- line medical workers to prepare for the coming disaster. Business as usual was suspended. These regulatory responses not only marked a break with the dominant politics of deregulation, privatisation and austerity, but were also commu- nicated in a language that had seemed lost to the public sphere, at least in powerful Western democracies. For decades, elites trained in business, economics and law had been immersed in the bleak scenarios imagined by rational choice, game theory, and law and economics, in which strategic ratio- nal actors of all shapes and sizes – from genes to individuals to states – would always and only act to pursue their self-­interest and take advantage of others without restraint or limit. Here, suddenly, were politicians willing to speak about protecting the vulnerable, supporting essential workers involved in

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 242 11/12/20 1:36 pm Anne Orford: State actions and libertarian lawsuits 243

keeping hospitals and vital systems running, and the need to put the common good above the demands of the market. Those early months of the pandemic also saw some guarded optimism about the effect that the disruption of the global industrial economy was having on carbon emissions, air quality and water pollution. By April and May, reports of environmental scientists, activists and journalists began to document that the effects of the COVID-­19 pandemic on global carbon emissions were measurable after only a few months. Actions taken in February by China to contain the virus caused an estimated drop of 25 per cent in its carbon emissions. During April, with most countries shut down at the height of the first wave, global fossil-fuel emissions declined by almost 17 per cent. Subsequent international studies have shown that the reduction in energy consumption during the first half of 2020 led to the largest decline in carbon emissions in world history, significantly greater than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of 1979, World War II or the Great Depression. Individual and government responses to the COVID-­19 pandemic interrupted the cycle of increasing energy-­intensive manufacturing, trans- port, consumption and the discarding of products designed to be disposable. What if that experience had a long-­lasting effect on unsustainable habits, routines and behaviour, and revealed that a form of life conditioned upon the exhaustion of the planet’s fossil fuels, metals, minerals and water was, after all, negotiable? The mood at the end of that first act was captured well in a much- ­cited essay by Arundhati Roy, published in the Financial Times in April. For Roy, pandemics throughout history had forced humans to ‘imagine their world anew’. She argued that COVID-­19 was no different. The pandemic was ‘a portal, a gateway between one world and the next’.

AND THEN, ACT Two. Initially, the speed with which the coronavirus spread and governments responded meant that vested interests had little time to develop campaigns aimed at resisting economic shutdowns and new regula- tions. Yet once the crisis really began to hit the UK and the US in particular, it became clear that the defenders of a more extreme version of libertarian- ism would only go down fighting. In that sense, this time of pandemic has also proved to be a dress-rehearsal for those seeking to resist any measures to protect life and health that might interfere with property rights or disrupt the current economic system.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 243 11/12/20 1:36 pm 244 GriffithReview71

As responses to the pandemic began to play a role in US election-­ year politics, it did not take long for techniques drawn from the corporate playbook of crisis management to take centre stage. Debates over the role of governments in responding to such crises began to take on a more polarised tone. By mid-­2020, the full might of neoliberal resistance to state action and constraints on economic freedom had swung into operation, accompanied by a remarkably frank appeal to eugenics in the form of ideas about ‘herd immunity’ and the need to sacrifice the weak to allow the strong to prosper. The backlash in the US began to resonate globally. The idea that govern- ments needed to make hard choices between damaging the economy and seeking to preserve ‘almost every life at almost any cost’, in the words of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, became a staple of right-­wing think pieces and talk shows. The kind of denialism and anti-­science scepticism that had been a staple of climate change debates gained a new hold, spread by traditional and social media networks. Sweden became the unlikely poster child for right-­wing libertarians, who ignored the high degree of conformity, trust in government and stress on individual responsibility that allowed the Swedish government simply to ‘recommend’ that people socially distance, wear masks and work from home – and achieve significant behavioural shifts as a result. For anyone following US politics, scenes of libertarians and militias vocally protesting government measures to control the pandemic became very familiar. But a less spectacular form of resistance to government pandemic responses was being played out in the American courts. Across the country, a flood of lawsuits was brought by private businesses, churches, activist groups, property owners – and even by (Republican) state legislatures against (Democrat) state governors. These cases challenged the authority of local, state or federal officials to issue emergency decrees, impose stay-­at-­home orders, mandate the wearing of face masks, close non-­essential businesses or require citizens to engage in social distancing, arguing that such measures violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government or infringed constitutional rights and freedoms. From a domestic US perspective, the cases widely believed to have the least chance of success were the numerous lawsuits claiming that the tempo- rary closure of businesses or ban on owners travelling to their vacation homes constituted regulatory ‘takings’ of private property for public use that would

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 244 11/12/20 1:36 pm Anne Orford: State actions and libertarian lawsuits 245

require the payment of just compensation under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. Constitutional scholars have suggested that these cases are likely to fail because the courts have not to date adopted a broad inter- pretation of the takings clause that would require governments that act to forestall serious threats to the lives, safety or property of others to compensate property owners for losses suffered as a result. Nonetheless, Richard Epstein, the NYU law professor who had largely invented and popularised the libertarian reading of the takings clause on which such claims were based, proved highly influential in establishment debates over the need to limit government responses to the COVID-­19 pandemic. Already by mid-­March, conservatives and Trump administration officials had begun circulating an article by Epstein arguing that the world was overreacting to the coronavirus, public officials had gone overboard, and ‘[p]rogressives think they can run everyone’s lives through central planning, but the state of the economy suggests otherwise’. As Epstein made clear in an interview published in The New Yorker, his recommendations that govern- ments should leave the virus to run its course were based on ‘evolutionary theory’ and ‘the principle of natural selection’. While the libertarian approach to protecting private property against regulatory actions undertaken by governments in cases of emergency is still unlikely to find support in US courts, the situation is different in international law. International arbitration firms are gearing up to use international trade and investment agreements as a basis to challenge state regulatory responses to COVID-­19 that have had an effect on free trade or investor profits. This is taken out of the playbook that investors have used to push back against government regulations in relation to climate change. Investors are able to rely on a network of trade and investment agreements and a raft of asymmetrical dispute- ­settlement mechanisms consolidated during the 1990s. This system of ‘investor-­state dispute settlement’ or ISDS allows investors to bring claims against states for ‘expropriation’ by regulation – grounded on precisely the libertarian theory of property rights that not even US courts will recognise. Broad interpretations of vague treaty provisions have served to protect inves- tors against the effects on profits of routine government regulation aimed at protecting public health, the environment or consumer safety. Already in March, as morgues overflowed and governments scrambled to access protective gear and ventilators, international law firms and arbitrators

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 245 11/12/20 1:36 pm 246 GriffithReview71

were touting for business. In briefing papers, blogs and – that pandemic year special – webinars, international law firms have encouraged multinational clients to consider the possibility that pandemic emergency measures could allow claims for compensation to be brought by foreign investors against governments. Law firms have pointed to a wide range of government actions or omissions that they consider to be challengeable under investment treaties. These include government measures that prevent private water suppliers from cutting supply to householders that cannot pay their bills in order to ensure access to clean water for handwashing, temporarily requisition private hospitals and hotels for use by the public health sector, compel companies to produce medical supplies, or fail to prevent protests or social unrest that result in harm to the property of foreign investors. Arbitrators have good reason to consider that such investor-­state lawsuits may be successful. Many of the thousand-­plus ISDS lawsuits brought to date have involved disputes concerning government measures taken in situations of crisis, as well as numerous claims for compensation due to losses caused by environmental regulations. Such claims are often supported by third-­party funders, seeking and anticipating high returns – and for good reason: in ISDS proceedings already decided against the state and in favour of the investor, the average amount claimed is $1.3 billion and the average amount awarded $504 million. Activists have challenged both the resulting constraints and costs placed on states seeking to implement environmental, fiscal or public health measures and the empowerment of corporate actors in their role as foreign investors to challenge government decision-­making. The net effect of the system is to create a chilling effect on state regulation in the interests of local communities and the environment, and to transfer public assets from states to private actors as the price of regulating. In this respect, the second act of the global dress rehearsal for climate change has a sobering message. It might seem self-­evident that global institu- tions and international law should have a role to play in shaping the response to climate change and related crises such as the COVID-­19 pandemic. The battle between China and the US over the priorities of the World Health Organization has been seen by many to represent a dangerous politicisa- tion of a UN agency. Creating international treaties to govern issues such as global public health or the environment is widely seen as a potential solution

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 246 11/12/20 1:36 pm Anne Orford: State actions and libertarian lawsuits 247

to collective problems. Yet it is important to remember that international lawyers and institutions are already engaged in intervening in the climate emergency. By far the most effective role played by international lawyers to date has been in creating barriers to a green transition. Industry lobby- ists have privileged access to shape the positions taken by powerful states in the negotiation of international agreements, while NGOs and the general public are provided with late access, if any. Decisions taken by governments in response to complex challenges such as the COVID-­19 pandemic and global warming will affect life on earth, but they will also affect entrenched property interests. This phase of the dress rehearsal gives a sense of how hard those battles will be fought by those empowered through their property rights to shape the choices made by governments.

AS ACT THREE opens, the audience is becoming tired and restless. Over the course of 2020, something seems to have happened to time itself. Those of us who grew up in a world made by capitalism, trained to act as the entrepre- neurs of our own brand, are suddenly being called upon to live in a way that is almost unthinkable. We had learnt to imagine time as something constantly flowing from past to future – an empty medium in which the economy could grow, technology could progress, we would improve ourselves, the next big thing would arrive. Now we have been asked to play a new part. Stay. Wait. Stop moving. Be still. For those around the world living under extended – or reintroduced – lockdowns, there is no escape from the place in which we find ourselves. If this is a dress rehearsal, it is for one of those epic theatrical events that changes the experience of time for all involved. How, if at all, immersion in the world of such a play might change our lives once the lights go up and we wander out into the night is an open question. Of course, the entitlement and ability to travel around the globe was already distributed extremely unevenly. One of the clearest markers of privi- lege in our global community is the freedom to move around the world – or even just around a city in which police mark out those they target on the basis of skin colour. The question of who is entitled to move and who is required to stay still will become even more important as the climate crisis progresses. For wealthy inhabitants of prosperous countries, the crisis will present itself as a geopolitical and strategic challenge. For those in countries rendered uninhab- itable by climate change, it will present as a question of personal survival.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 247 11/12/20 1:36 pm 248 GriffithReview71

How we think about the freedom to move and the need to stay still will be one of the most pressing questions of the coming era. And yet for those privileged humans who are used to having the freedom to move, being forced to change routines and give up habits has been hard. Staying in one place, staying still, staying apart, feels unnatural. From that perspective, the implications of the impact of COVID-­19 restrictions on carbon emissions are sobering. In this year of lockdowns, the historically low levels of fossil fuel emissions produced by humans have nonetheless only had a miniscule effect on the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. That gives a sense of the scale of disruption, particularly to the lifestyles of wealthier high emitters, that will be needed to address global warming. Perhaps this experi- ence of stepping outside the forms of life that we have taken for granted is the rehearsal for living in a world remade by climate change. What is required of us may be more demanding than we’ve really understood until now. It may be that this is what we have to practise, like an actor learning a new role – this staying in place, this waiting, this standing our ground. As the visionary feminist scholar Donna Haraway has described it, the task ahead of us will be to learn ‘to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth’. And even if the restrictions on production, consumption and movement we experienced in 2020 were maintained indefinitely, that alone would not be enough to avert catastrophic climate change. Personal ‘carbon footprints’ – a term popularised by BP in a 2005 ad campaign to direct attention about responsibility for climate change away from the oil and gas industry and onto individuals – are responsible for a tiny fraction of emissions. While the COVID-­19 pandemic has caused more disruption in the demand and consumption of energy than any other event in history, far more radical trans- formations in energy and resource use are yet necessary in order to avert the looming social and ecological challenges posed by significant global warming. Whether we see a more profound change in our energy and economic systems will depend on the decisions that are made by government leaders, corporate executives, financial institutions, investors, unions, party officials, consumers, activists, workers and voters now and in the years to come. As the dress rehearsal plays out, the context in which such decisions will be made seems to have altered. While political leaders around the world take and defend radically different approaches to managing the pandemic,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 248 11/12/20 1:36 pm Anne Orford: State actions and libertarian lawsuits 249

grim league tables have emerged setting out the numbers of cases and deaths in each country. Social media is a melange of medical commentary, stories from the frontline, forensic analysis of epidemiological successes or missteps, and conspiracy theories, along with expressions of despair, hope, bitterness, humour, patience, impatience, grit, courage, suspicion and absurdity. We have watched public health officers become celebrities; powerful men make increasingly desperate demands that governments stop prioritising saving lives over budget surpluses; people living in public housing blocks, migrant-­ worker barracks and university dorms detained due to outbreaks; health workers cheered by their neighbours while being left vulnerable due to a lack of protective equipment; children and young people trying to continue their education from home (and online for those fortunate enough to have access to good internet and a device); lobbyists ensure that dirty industries profit from stimulus packages meant to avert a post-­pandemic recession – while intensive care wards fill up and empty out with the waves of the virus and the changes in the seasons. The result is something that seems new, strange and on its best days even hopeful – a collective project of mutual learning on a global scale, in which the interactions of human and non-­human actors have created new worlds. While in the early months it seemed enough to say ‘we’re all in this together’, the politicians and health experts who have managed to keep the support of the people have abandoned any top-­down educational role and admitted that they too are learning every day. Much of the subtlety involved in manag- ing the interaction between humans and this novel virus in countries that have succeeded in emerging from successive coronavirus waves has been lost because of the amount of bandwidth that the US and Europe continue to take up in Western media. There is still less serious attention given to the possibility that the models offered by places such as China, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and (finally!) Melbourne – all outside North America and Europe – may be central to understanding the future. Politicians, public health officials and epidemiologists in those places focused on the readiness of public health systems and equipment, but also grasped that combating this virus would require taking care to protect the vulnerable, support essential workers, establish sophisticated testing and tracing systems, communicate public health messages in multiple languages, and create the trust that is needed to persuade people to make sacrifices in

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 249 11/12/20 1:36 pm 250 GriffithReview71

order to realise a collective good rather than insist on exercising individual freedoms. It is the combined effect of mundane, everyday trial and error, and the counterintuitive experience of showing our solidarity through enduring and waiting, that has seen the virus contained. COVID- ­19, like climate change, is presented to us as a global problem mediated through data collection and virtual technology. In the words of philosopher Timothy Morton, big data creates ‘hyperobjects’ for which there is as yet no equivalent ‘hyper’ political subject. No political institutions are adequate for the planetary scale of this problem, nor can any provide a basis for the kind of global regulation or governance that would be capable of addressing a problem conceived in planetary terms. Yet it may just be that as this pandemic plays out, we are witnessing the emergence of a process of collective thinking on a global scale, mediated by new forms of social media. Scientists and public officials are learning from each other and from the virus. Governments are being measured and compared by the people. The relationships between special interests and politicians are being spotlighted to unflattering effect. In that context, the world has gained a new sense of the US as an outlier among prosperous countries. It seems clear, as it has seemed clear to those resisting the excesses of industrial capitalism for centuries, that a planet full of people exercising the kinds of liberty that the wealthiest Americans insist upon for themselves is not sustainable. While propertied elites in the US might win the battle over lockdowns and government support for those suffering during the resulting economic downturn, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they might lose the war. The more that a small minority prosper during the crisis while the rest of the US suffers, the less legitimacy that system will retain for the rest of us. What that means domestically for US citizens will depend on the capacity of the winners to exclude the losers from fully participating in the political system. What it means for the rest of the world depends on the lessons we are able to learn as we watch this continuing dress-rehearsal unfold. 30 November 2020

Anne Orford is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Michael D Kirby Chair of International Law at Melbourne Law School. Her latest book is International Law and the Politics of History (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 250 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Touching the future Stories of systems, serendipity and grace Genevieve Bell

THE FUTURE IS not a destination. We build it every day in the present. This is, perhaps, a wild paraphrasing of the acclaimed author and futurist William Gibson who, when asked what a distant future might hold, replied that the future was already here, it was just unevenly distributed. I often ponder this Gibson provocation, wondering where around me the future might be lurking. Catching glimpses of the future in the present would be helpful. But then, I think, rather than hoping to see a glimpse of the future, we could instead actively build one. Or at the very least tell stories about what it might be. Stories that unfold a world or worlds in which we might want to live – neither dystopian nor utopian, but ours. I know we can still shape those worlds and make them into somewhere that reflects our humanity, our different cultures and our cares. Of course, it is not enough to tell stories about some distant or unevenly distributed future; we need to find ways of disrupting the present too. It might be less important to have a compelling and coherent vision of the future than an active and considered approach to building possible futures. It is as much about critical doing as critical thinking. One approach to the future might be to focus less on the instruments of technologies per se and more on the broader systems that will be necessary to bring those futures into existence.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 251 11/12/20 1:36 pm 252 GriffithReview71

Today, there are many conversations about the future, and artificial intel- ligence (AI) figures centrally in many of them. Most of these centre on AI’s technical affordances. But AI is always, and already, a lot more than just a constellation of technologies. It exists as a set of conversations in which we are all implicated: we discuss AI, worry out loud about its ethical frameworks, watch movies in which it figures centrally, and read news stories about its impact here in Australia and abroad. AI is part of our cultural fabric. It is also part of a set of increasingly complicated systems – it is not one AI so much as many – and these systems encompass everything from the electrical grid and railway lines to mine sites, lift shafts and food-­supply chains. These systems do not just live in our cultural imaginations; they live in the built world, where they consume energy and effort. How could we think differently about systems – of technology, of people, of culture and country, and of this place? It might involve asking questions for which there are not ready and easy answers. It might also involve touchstones from the past to help inform our present and perhaps our future. History, after all, may not provide the answers, but it should allow us to ask better questions.

WHEN I THINK about AI, one image lingers in my imagination. It is from 1956, a black-­and-­white photo taken by a woman named Gloria Minsky; she had accompanied her husband to a summer conference at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The photo shows seven earnest-­faced, comparatively young white men relaxing on the lawn in front of an unremarkable build- ing – among them Nathaniel Rochester, John McCarthy, Claude Shannon and Gloria’s husband, Marvin. These four men were the key organisers of the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. This is the moment that AI came into being. These men, all from elite American organisations, had diverse backgrounds and interests. Claude Shannon, at Bell Telephone Laboratories, was regarded as the founder of information theory; Nathaniel Rochester had designed IBM’s first commercial scientific computer, the 701. Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy were both recently minted PhDs: Minsky was on a fellowship at Harvard and had built a very early neural network, while McCarthy was working on the theory of Turing machines and had strong ties to John von Neumann – the creator of the ENIAC, the most important of the world’s first stored-­memory computers.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 252 11/12/20 1:36 pm Genevieve Bell: Touching the future 253

Together, they had gained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation for a summer workshop exploring what they called ‘artificial intelligence’. The list of proposed attendants was, by the standards of the 1950s, an interdisci- plinary group, with backgrounds in philosophy and mathematics, psychology and the emerging field of computer science. And the conference had impor- tant backers too, both in government (including the military) and industry. AI was not simply an academic preoccupation; it was all about business from its very beginnings. The funding request laid out the first framework for AI:

…every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.

This was an ambitious agenda, but then the expectations were that computing technology would continue its remarkable growth beyond the ENIAC and IBM 701, which created the impression of an endless evolution of power and potential. As a result, these early founders believed much of their initial research agenda could be achieved within a decade. This was not to be – and perhaps that is just as well. For their research agenda was missing several important resources and perspectives – namely people, culture and a sense of the broader world in which their AI might unfold. Which is startling, because while AI might have been named and claimed in 1956, much of its intellectual agenda had earlier roots in conversations that started in the 1940s – some of which had included and been shaped by some of these same Dartmouth convenors. Those conver- sations had taken a much more expansive view on the world of technology, framed around ‘cybernetics’. As defined by Norbert Wiener, an American mathematician, cybernetics was ‘the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine’, and also in society and in the individual. In particular, for Wiener and others, it was about the study of feedback mechanisms and circular causal systems, including in the newly proliferating space of computers. Indeed, the conversations about cybernetics were energised by, and in direct dialogue

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 253 11/12/20 1:36 pm 254 GriffithReview71

with, the strides that were being made in computing architecture and perfor- mance, and by the hope that this computational power would help unleash human potential in the sciences and arts. The idea was that cybernetics would inform new ways of making decisions and organising resources – new ways of being and doing, new systems. Wiener coined the term cybernetics himself, drawing inspiration from the Greek word for helmsman, kybernetes, illustrating his belief that the science of cybernetics would be the science of steering, or control, broadly defined. It was about a certain kind of power. At the end of World War II, the power of computing – Wiener’s ‘machine’ – was starkly visible, and its potential for scientific, political, economic and social transformation seemed extraordinary. Theorising the relationships between that machine and both humans and the natural world felt critical and timely. Cybernetics was Wiener’s framework for mediating the relationship between people and the new machines, and for processing the technical and other kinds of knowledge this relationship would bring forth. For a time, it worked. Scientific discov- eries were aided by computers, as were new forms of business, automation and productivity. Between 1946 and 1953, the Macy Conferences on cybernetics brought together a range of thinkers from across the disciplinary spectrum to explore the idea of cybernetic systems that would enhance humanity. Curated in part by anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, the meetings were radically interdisciplinary, and represented an attempt to constitute a new body of academic knowledge and a new discipline. They must have been extraordinary events: ten conferences in all with topics ranging from mind control to memory, octopuses’ consciousness, childhood learning and development, the subconscious, technical systems, computation and abstract linguistics, to name just a few. There is a thread running through many of the conversations about how we might make sense of human cognition as some kind of system, especially, one imagines, in order to help determine whether computation will ever marry or match it. What made something intelligent, and how might it be learned, communicated and studied? Here we see the beginnings of the AI agenda that would follow. There is something important to be claimed – or reclaimed – from those Macys conversations, for while there was a great deal of interest in how the mind works, there was also a clear and deliberate examination of the role of

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 254 11/12/20 1:36 pm Genevieve Bell: Touching the future 255

technology in our lives. In the fading shadows of World War II, it was clear computers would have a profound impact on our futures, and Mead and her contemporaries fretted about how to theorise a cybernetic system in such a way that it could accommodate humans and culture, and even the environ- ment. The atomic bomb was a graphic reminder of the power of technology to profoundly reconfigure the natural world. Participants at the Macy Conferences wanted a different kind of technological future – something far less destructive, although they clearly did not yet grasp the energy needs of the computing systems they were building, and their ultimate cost. The Macy Conferences captured public attention with their stories of a future with machines, of an automation that would create new kinds of jobs and new kinds of possibilities. Cybernetics featured regularly in the popular press, and the conversations and debate rippled out through the US and beyond. And then, it seemed to disappear. In an interview many years later, Margaret Mead reflected on those conversations and on the power of an interdisciplinary mix to bring something new into the world. Sitting across the kitchen table from her then former husband Gregory Bateson, with a reel-­to-­reel tape recorder spinning between them, she would recall:

There were the mathematicians and physicists – people trained in the physical sciences who were very, very precise in what they wanted to think about. There was a small group of us anthropolo- gists, and psychiatrists, who were trained to know enough about psychology in groups so we knew what was happening, and could use it and disallow it. And then there were two or three gossips in the middle, who were very simple people who had a lot of loose intuition and no discipline to what they were doing. In a sense it was the most interesting conference I’ve ever been in, because nobody knew how to manage this thing yet.

I have always imagined that Mead was referring to the mix of people at the Macy Conference when she said that nobody knew how to manage this thing yet. But perhaps Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, who would publish the transcript in 1976, heard something more. The Whole Earth Catalog – a remarkable 1960s and 1970s compendium of material culture

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 255 11/12/20 1:36 pm 256 GriffithReview71

and how-­to figures – was all about imagining a different kind of world and a different kind of future. As the name suggests, one that took the whole of the Earth as a starting point. Brand, through his catalogue and his actions, would re/ignite conversations about cybernetics for another generation. This next cybernetic wave would continue to engage with the future of computing and of humanity, and it would also focus increasing attention on the broader ecological dimensions.

IN 1956, AT the Dartmouth Summer Research Project, McCarthy and his colleagues had speculated that intelligent computers would be capable of creative acts and might make new artistic forms. This certainly built on early cybernetic imaginings from the Macys, and other intersections of technology, culture and design. But the Dartmouth AI quickly focused on areas such as strategy, reasoning, language. Yet a little more than ten years after Dartmouth, on the other side of the Atlantic, a remarkable woman curated her first major exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London – one that brought the future of computers into a very different frame and allowed a broader future to peep through again. It had taken Jasia Reichardt three years – and a lot of arm-twisting, travel, networking, and some funding from IBM and the US Department of State – to pull it off. She called the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, and it showcased the work of 325 diverse participants from Europe, North America and Japan. Boeing, General Motors, Westinghouse, Bell Telephone Laboratories and the US Air Force Research Laboratory were all represented, as were artists Bridget Riley and Ulla Wiggen, radical composer John Cage, and others whose work lacked a specific definition, such as Gordon Pask, one of Wiener’s disciples, and Nicholas Negroponte, who would later found the Media Lab at MIT. The exhibition featured digital music, light, poetry, sculpture – all created with and through computers. Throughout the summer of 1968, as many as 60,000 people roamed its expansive halls. In more than 600 square metres of space they might encounter a potted history of cybernetics along- side a robot that drew, or a Honeywell-­sponsored demonstration computer shaped like an elephant, aptly named the Peripheral Pachyderm. There were also works from the Korean-­American new-­media artist Nam June Paik,

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 256 11/12/20 1:36 pm Genevieve Bell: Touching the future 257

computer- ­generated music and movies, wire-­frame graphic representations from Boeing, Pask’s sculptural installation of televisions called Colloquy of Mobiles, and a light-­sensitive owl. It was unlike anything that had been seen before and it cracked open the world just a little bit. Amid the light and noise and spectacle, there was a series of prints created through computer programs and printed on large-­scale plotters. One of them, entitled Return to Square, might be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen a computer make, certainly the most beautiful thing that was ever made using Fortran – the early IBM programming language. It features a square that slowly metamorphoses into a profile of a woman and then reverts to a square again: simple and striking. The work came from a collective of artists calling themselves the Computer Technique Group (CTG) – the lone Japanese exhibitors to feature at Cybernetic Serendipity. Initially founded in 1966, CTG’s earliest members included Masao Komura and Kunio Yamanaka. Return to Square was derived from one of Komura’s ideas, and the Fortran programming was undertaken by Yamanaka. It was printed on a Calcomp drum plotter at the now defunct IBM Scientific Data Centre in Tokyo. Referred to variously as radicals, electronic hippies and even the new samurai, CTG created new forms of graphic art, digitally produced poetry and computer-­generated music – all of which they sent to Cybernetic Serendipity. It was a fitting mix, given that the creative process used by CTG depended on a combination of ‘cybernetic’ generation of patterns combined with the ‘serendipity’ of randomness. CTG clearly had their own cybernetic vision: one that was relational, involving humans and society, never purely technology. Their manifesto, which appeared in the program for a Computer and Art symposium held at the Great Hall of Tama Art University in October 1967, makes clear their point of view:

We will tame the computer’s appealing transcendental charm and restrain it from serving established power. This stance is the way to solve complicated problems in the machine society. We do not praise machine civilization, nor do we criticise it. By a strategic collaboration with artists, scientists and other creative people from a wide variety of backgrounds, we will deliberate carefully [sic] the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 257 11/12/20 1:36 pm 258 GriffithReview71

relationships between human beings and machines, and how we should live in the computer age.

This stance is perhaps unsurprising given that the founding members were architecture, product design and engineering students at a time when Japanese student activism was at a peak. CTG stayed together for slightly more than three short years, during which time they pushed computing (further) into the realm of creativity and art. After London, Cybernetic Serendipity was boxed up with other works and sent to Washington, DC to be installed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art. From there, a smaller subset travelled to San Francisco, helping Frank Oppenheimer to launch his new science museum, the Exploratorium. Fifteen years later, he called Cybernetic Serendipity ‘a most important beginning for our place. It really set the stage for the kind of work we wanted to do because it combined perception, art, technology and science in a wonderful way.’ The exhibit opened in the waning months of 1969 and was closed before the new year. To this day, the head of John Billingsley’s robot Albert guards the entrance of the building. And the impact of the exhibition still holds a particular place in the ways we imagine the past, and the past’s imaginings of a different future.

IT WASN’T THE first time people in San Francisco had encountered the idea of cybernetics, or the first time that a future was cast in which technology and human life might co-­exist. It wasn’t even the first time that art had been used to evoke this technological future. A full two years before Cybernetic Serendipity reached San Francisco, Richard Brautigan wrote a poem about the future, one that still ripples through the present. He was, by the late 1960s, already a well-­established West Coast author of poems, short stories and novels. He often wrote about the natural world and about human relation- ships with that world. But this poem, with its combination of technology and nature, found wider circulation. In particular, the eponymous line – ‘all watched over by machines of loving grace’ – made its way into Silicon Valley folklore, turning up in the various histories of that place and its founders. My copy of this poem is printed on a page torn from some kind of manual. You can still see the faint imprint of a technical specification diagram, and it unfolds in typeset:

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 258 11/12/20 1:36 pm Genevieve Bell: Touching the future 259

I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.

I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms.

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

Was it an invocation in 1967? A hopeful request to the makers of the future? A year later, it wasn’t exactly spinning blossoms that the world saw, but at a live demonstration at the combined Association for Computing Machinery and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers annual meetings in San Francisco, the future peeked through again. Over a ninety-­ minute period, Doug Engelbart, an electrical engineer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and his team (which included Whole Earth Catalog’s

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 259 11/12/20 1:36 pm 260 GriffithReview71

Stewart Brand as the cameraman) would showcase a suite of technologies called ‘on line computing’ – including word processing, version control, a file- ­linking structure, real-­time collaboration, hypertext, graphics, windows and a mouse. Engelbart was hugely interested in how computing technology could augment human intelligence and collaboration rather than building AI; he constructed something we now recognise as the personal computer to help make that distinction comprehensible. It was a moment when the future of computing was suddenly clearly visible, and for almost a thousand people gathered in the room that day, it was a future they wanted to go off and inhabit. You can still watch this demo on the internet – the past of the present and the future, right there. On 26 October 1969, the future showed up again when the American phone company AT&T connected two computers – one in Engelbart’s world at SRI and one at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), about 570 kilometres apart on the West Coast. At UCLA they started typing the word ‘login’, asking SRI to report each letter as it appeared. ‘Do you see the L?’ ‘Yes, we see the L.’ ‘Do you see the O?’ ‘Yes, we see the O.’ Then UCLA typed the letter G and the system crashed. Somehow, fittingly, that was the start of the internet. In San Francisco, Cybernetic Serendipity was at the Exploratorium; I like to imagine that Doug Engelbart went there and saw another future.

MORE THAN FIFTY years have passed since Cybernetic Serendipity and the internet collided in California, and whole worlds have been built out of that intersection, and out of the imaginings, silences and visions of the people who gathered there. Many of us have inhabited those worlds and would rightly ask a lot of questions of them. For me, I lived nearly thirty years at that very intersection in Silicon Valley, most of it spent in companies that were born out of those moments in 1968 and 1969. The cybernetic meadows and forests of Brautigan’s imagination have not been realised, and the machines that watch over us now seem to lack loving grace. The AI that was promised in 1956 has not emerged, and techno- logical revolutions have not led us to transcendence or a whole- ­Earth point of

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 260 11/12/20 1:36 pm Genevieve Bell: Touching the future 261

view. According to a 2018 news feature by Nicola Jones for Nature, the world’s data centres consumed in excess of 200 terawatt hours of electricity each year – this is more than the consumption of some whole countries and represents 1 per cent of global electricity demand. The same report estimates that the entire information and communications technology ecosystem – ‘including personal digital devices, mobile-­phone networks and televisions’ – generates emissions equating to 2 per cent of global emissions, putting this sector on a par with the international aviation sector. And the internet? Well, enough said. Still I am haunted by those earlier possible futures, and the worlds people imagined they could build. And now as we think anew about building into the future, I wonder what could be our touchstones and reference points.

WHEN I RETURNED TO Australia in 2017, I wanted to build other futures and to acknowledge the country where my work had started and where I was now working again. I knew I needed to find a different world and a different intersection, and to find new ways to tell stories of technology and of the future – I wanted some different pasts and some different touchstones. I first saw a photograph of the Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps in a Guardian news article, and the image stayed with me.. That black-­and-­white photograph from the late 1800s showed long, sweeping lines of grey stones arcing across a fast-­moving river. The water flowing around the lines of stones was tipped white at the breakpoints. And although there was no one in the image, the arrangement of the stones was deliberate, human-­made and enduring. It was a photograph of the one of the oldest known human-­built technical systems on the planet. And while there are ongoing debates about its exact age – 4,000 years, 10,000 years, 40,000 thousand years – there are no arguments about its complexity or sophistication. It was December 2018 and a familiar Australian summer day – hot, windy and relentlessly dry – when I found my way to the banks of the Barwon, near the New South Wales and Queensland border, on the lands of the Ngemba people, to visit the fish traps. The ground was hard and dry and very brown: we were still in drought in 2018. There were few signs or directions, and nothing to suggest the importance of where I was. It did not look much like the photo either; the water was brackish and slow moving, and weeds choked the river in a swathe of startling green.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 261 11/12/20 1:36 pm 262 GriffithReview71

But you could still see the arc of stone nets stretching down the river from a modern concrete weir – and the sheer scale of the work was extraor- dinary. Given that many rocks had been taken from this riverbed and put into the foundations of nearby buildings, or cleared to make room for paddle steamers, this is a much-­shrunken version. Still you have marvel at its size, and wonder where all the rocks came from, and how they were all moved to this place, and how long it must have taken to make, and why it wasn’t mentioned in the histories of Australian engineering and technologies we learnt at school. These dry-­stone fish traps are certainly the oldest and largest system of their kind in Australia. Known to the local traditional owners and custodi- ans as Ngunnhu, their patterning was revealed by an ancestral figure named Baiame to his sons. Generations of Aboriginal people have shaped these stones into loose curves stretching down the river, mimicking fishing nets, allowing fish to be trapped in stone containers at different heights of the river. There were also pens with stone walls to keep fish – big and little – in clear, cool running water. This was a meeting place, a place where multiple different Aboriginal nations gathered, where ceremonies and ritual and knowledge were established and shared. It is still a significant and special place, and the local Aboriginal community continue, when they can, to fish there. The traps were added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 2000 and the National Heritage List in 2005. Standing on the banks of the Barwon, I came to think that the importance of this place was not about the traps per se. It was about the system those traps create, and the systems in which they are, themselves, embedded. This is a system thousands of years in the making and keeping. This is a system that required concerted and continuous effort. This was something that required generations, both of accumulated knowledge about how the environment worked and accumulated knowledge about hydrol- ogy and about fish, and an accumulated commitment to continuing to build, sustain and upgrade that system over time. The technical, cultural and ecological elements cement the significance of this place, not only as a heritage site but as a knowledge base on which contemporary systems could be built. Ideas about sustainability; ideas about systems that are decades or centuries in the making; ideas about systems that endure and systems that are built explicitly to endure. Systems that are built to ensure the continuities of culture feel like the kind of systems that we might

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 262 11/12/20 1:36 pm Genevieve Bell: Touching the future 263

want to be investing in now. This feels like the outline of a story of the future we would want to tell. Silicon Valley, where I’ve spent a significant part of my career so far, is a place where the stories of past futures and their technologies are made and remade, and where many pieces of those pasts are erased or rewritten or just forgotten; where stories of the future are told all the time. Now, we need to make a different kind of story about the future. One that focuses not just on the technologies, but on the systems in which these technologies will reside. The opportunity to focus on a future that holds those systems – and also on a way of approaching them in the present – feels both immense and acute. And the ways we might need to disrupt the present feel especially important in this moment of liminality, disorientation and profound unease, socially and ecologically. In a present where the links towards the future seem to have been derailed from the tracks we’ve laid in past decades, there is an opportunity to reform. Ultimately, we would need to think a little differently, ask different kinds of questions, bring as many diverse and divergent kinds of people along on the journey and look holistically and critically at the many propositions that computing in particu- lar – and advanced technologies in general – present. For me, the Brewarrina Fish Traps are a powerful way of framing how current technological systems should and could unfold. These present a very different future, one we can glimpse in the present and in the past; one that always is and always will be. In this moment, we need to be reminded that stories of the future – about AI, or any kind – are never just about technol- ogy; they are about people and they are about the places those people find themselves, the places they might call home and the systems that bind them all together.

Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell AO FTSE is the inaugural Florence Violet McKenzie Chair in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University. She is also a vice president and senior fellow at Intel Corporation, the inaugural Douglas Engelbart Fellow at Stanford Research International, and a member of the Prime Minister’s Science and Technology Council.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 263 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman Our troubled relationship with the Blue Marble Lesley Hughes

RACHAEL: Do you like our owl? DECKARD: It’s artificial? RACHAEL: Of course it is. DECKARD: Must be expensive. RACHAEL: Very. Blade Runner (1982)

THE COURSE OF human history has sometimes been shifted on its axis by a single image. Phan Thi Kim Phúc fleeing naked from a napalm attack in 1972 brought the pointless brutality of the Vietnam War to suburban American TV screens. Similarly, the tiny, lifeless body of Aylan Shenu being carried from a Turkish shore in 2015 catalysed an international outcry about refugee policies. Ironically, the image credited with galvanising the modern environmental movement was not taken on Earth at all, but about 29,000 kilometres up in space. On 7 December 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 – en route to the moon – snapped a shot of the Earth, the first such image to show the planet almost fully illuminated. Known as the ‘Blue Marble’, it is one of the most widely shared images of all time, showing the Earth at once achingly beautiful, utterly lonely...and comprehensively finite. Even before the astronauts returned to Earth, the image was appearing on T-­shirts and posters everywhere. ‘Regional conflict and petty differ- ences could be dismissed as trivial compared with environmental dangers that threatened all of humanity, travelling together through the void on this fragile- ­looking marble,’ wrote Gregory A Petsko in a 2011 essay in Genome Biology.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 264 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley Hughes: Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman 265

Perhaps the ultimate paradox of the Blue Marble is not just what the image depicts, but how it was taken. What other species on the planet is so brilliantly inventive as to be able to land itself on the moon – yet so systemati- cally determined to soil its own nest?

ATMOSPHERIC CHEMIST PAUL J Crutzen received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the damaging impact of nitrous oxide from fertilisers on the ozone layer. But he is probably better known for popularising the concept of the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans have emerged as a planetary force of such power that we have comprehensively transformed the Earth. Crutzen and colleagues identified the mid-­eighteenth century as the beginning of this era, when polar ice-­core analysis first provided evidence that human activities were changing the composition of the atmosphere, distinguishing this pivot point from the previous 11,000-­year-­long Holocene period in which the Earth’s climate had been relatively stable and benign. In terms of biological impacts, of course, human presence on this planet has been felt far longer. The big-­brained hairy bipeds that emerged from Africa more than 50,000 years ago were able to use tools, control fires and communicate in an increasingly sophisticated fashion. Armed with these talents, they wasted no time in showing the lack of self-­restraint needed to share their world with fellow species, contributing to the extinction of more than half the Earth’s mammalian megafauna – woolly mammoths, giant sloths and the like – in the late Quaternary Period 50,000–10,000 years ago. The rise of organised agricultural societies accelerated these effects by clearing land, transforming soils and domesticating certain favoured species. It was in 1776 that James Watt and his coal-­combustion steam engine really got things going, ending the Holocene – described by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre as ‘humanity’s period of grace’. Today, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, largely derived from the burning of fossil fuels, is almost 50 per cent higher than in the Industrial Revolution, and the impacts are all around. In the words of novelist Ian McEwan, the Earth is now ‘subject to the hot breath of humanity’, with average global temperatures about 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than in Watt’s time. It doesn’t sound like much, but shorthand averages hide a world of momentous disruption that started to become pretty obvious, at least with hindsight, in the 1950s – a period now designated as the Great Acceleration.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 265 11/12/20 1:36 pm 266 GriffithReview71

Fast forward to 2019–20 and we have experienced unprecedented bushfires in Australia that burnt an area nearly three times the size of Tasmania and killed or displaced at least three billion native animals. Last June, the town of Verkhoyansk in north-­eastern Siberia recorded a daytime temperature of 38 degrees. As I write, in the late winter of 2020, the latest manifestation of the climate disaster is the news that twenty-­eight trillion tonnes of ice have been lost from the Earth’s surface since 1994. Greenland’s ice sheet has ‘passed a point of no return’, meaning that the snow that normally replenishes the glaciers each year can no longer keep pace with the ice melt. This is a process that could continue for millennia, even after global temperatures stabilise. The Greenland ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels seven metres. I could go on. It’s not just the climate we are transforming. To quote BBC journalist Laura Holt: ‘There remains very little of nature that does not bear the “sticky fingerprints” of humanity in some way.’ If the Earth is our home, we are certainly re-­engineering the plumbing. We divert more than 50 per cent of the Earth’s freshwater for our use, and over the past 140 years one new dam (forty- ­five metres or higher) has been built every day. With about half the Earth’s land area exploited in some way, extinction rates of species are at least a hundred, perhaps a thousand times the average rate estimated from the fossil record, and accelerating. But it is our penchant for domesticating and eating a small number of favoured species that provides the most compelling evidence of transfor- mation. An extraordinary census of the distribution and trends of life on Earth published in 2018 estimated that the present-­day biomass of wild land mammals is sevenfold lower than before the Quaternary megafaunal extinc- tion. Today, humans and their mammalian livestock – cows, sheep, pigs and the like – comprise nearly 96 per cent of all mammalian biomass on Earth, and more than 70 per cent of all individual birds currently alive are domesti- cated poultry. That’s an awful lot of chickens.

THAT THE ANTHROPOCENE is upon us can hardly be doubted, but what has increasingly been questioned over the past decade or so is whether the Anthropocene must be all bad. Can we have a good one – or at least a less bad one – than we might otherwise be fated to? The original concept of a ‘good’ Anthropocene can be traced to ‘The planet of no return: human resilience on an artificial Earth’, a paper published

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 266 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley Hughes: Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman 267

by environmental scientist Erle Ellis in 2011. Ellis argued that humans are not fettered by the same biophysical limits as other species, as evidenced by the fact that we have continued to prosper while transforming the Earth, a concept more recently dubbed ‘the environmental paradox’. Human systems, Ellis argued, have proved ‘extraordinarily resilient’ to both environmental and social change, urging us to ‘not see the Anthropocene as a crisis, but as the beginning of a new geological epoch ripe with human-­directed opportunity’. In Ellis’ view, the succour of the Blue Marble is limited only by our imagina- tion and technology. Ellis is entitled to his opinion, but I can’t help wondering how much comfort his words would be to any one of the twenty-­million people displaced by not-­so-­natural climate disasters every year or, closer to home, to anyone who lost a loved one or home in the unprecedented ferocity of the Black Summer bushfires. Global trends can mask many local tragedies. In a spirited riposte to the very notion of a good Anthropocene, The Australia Institute’s Clive Hamilton declared: ‘The power of positive thinking can’t turn malignant tumours into benign growths, and it can’t turn planetary overreach into endless lifestyle improvements.’ So much for the glass half-­full. The alternative, and far more prevalent, view is that we have made such a comprehensive hash of looking after our life-­ support system that the best we can hope for is to slow down our inevitable catastrophic demise. The most recent United Nations assessment of the health of global biodiversity gave humanity an F-­minus report card, noting that we have failed to meet even one of the twenty targets for ecological recovery set a decade ago. Even without climate change, the sixth mass extinction event is clearly underway, and this time we can’t blame a stray meteor. The ‘bad’ Anthropocene is predicated on the notion that human activi- ties are overwhelming the carrying capacity of the Blue Marble. There is even an official day each year designated Earth Overshoot Day, when we are estimated to have consumed our whole year’s supply of renewable biological resources. In the early 1970s, this day was in late December, creeping forward to late July/early August over the past decade. In 2020, it was 22 August, the COVID-­19 pandemic having delayed it by about three weeks. It’s worth noting that if the rest of the world was as profligate with resources as Australians, the day would be around the end of March. An attempt to put some solid numbers on how close we are to the precipice of peak everything was first attempted in 2009. A group of Earth

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 267 11/12/20 1:36 pm 268 GriffithReview71

system and environmental scientists, led by Rockström and Will Steffen from the Australian National University, identified nine ‘planetary life-­support systems’ that together define ‘a safe operating space for humanity’. They estimated that three of these boundaries – biodiversity loss, climate change and the altered global nitrogen cycle – may have been crossed already and, like the Greenland ice, be potentially past the point of no return. Having alerted us to the proximity of catastrophic tipping points beyond which we are basically screwed, Rockström has surprisingly proved to be an optimist. His 2015 book Big World, Small Planet: Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries, illustrated with images from photographer Mattias Klum, is a rallying cry that it’s not too late, setting out a safe – albeit challenging – path to avoid disastrous tipping points. ‘Abundance within planetary boundaries requires a deep mind-­shift,’ he says. ‘Not growth without limits. Not limits to growth, but growth within limits.’ So, if indeed the future is challenging but not completely without hope, if perhaps we can save ourselves despite our dismal track record thus far, the question is: how?

A LAY PERSON might imagine that all those scooped under the umbrella of ecologists/environmentalists/hairy greenie tree-huggers would have roughly the same approach to saving the Earth. Not so. And not only is there significant disagreement about what to do, each has made some fairly trenchant criticism of the other sides. Johan Rockström, for example, writes that environmentalists are part of the problem – creating a movement based on protecting nature that has been so successful it has ‘contaminated every- one’s thinking’ by emphasising the intrinsic separateness of humans and the natural world. They seem like harsh words, but in fact Rockström was only echoing a controversy brought to a head in 2005 with the publication of ‘The death of environmentalism’, an essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, published by the Breakthrough Institute. Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ essay decried the notion of idealising nature and treating all humanity as a blight. This idea, they declared, ‘must die so that something new can live’. ‘Naturalness’, they suggested, was no longer a suffi- cient guide as to what must be conserved. Thus, the battle between the ‘deep greens’ and ‘ecomodernists/ecopragmatists’ was set. Not surprisingly, many in the environmental movement took deep offence at being seen as part of the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 268 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley Hughes: Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman 269

problem, with Carl Pope, former CEO of the Sierra Club, doing a particu- larly thorough demolition job of the Shellenberger and Nordhaus straw man. But with whichever end of the good versus bad Anthropocene continuum one feels most affinity, all can agree that nature ain’t what it used to be – human- ised landscapes are everywhere, and the concept of what is ‘native’ as opposed to what is cultivated continues to blur. In her popular 2016 TED talk, Emma Marris, a prominent advocate for the ecopragmatism/modernist greens in a post- ­wild age, raised applause when she noted that even national parks take a lot of work to make them look untouched. What can also be agreed is that whatever we have left is worth looking after. In the words of Paul Wapner in Living Through the End of Nature, ‘we must rise to the level of responsibility that taking over nature entails’.

HOW THEN, SHOULD we navigate this precious ark, overstuffed as it is with people and cows and chickens? The challenges have never been greater, and resources never so stretched. With a solid dose of deep-­green idealism but with more than a pinch of pragmatism, I humbly offer my top ten sugges- tions, a personal manifesto for the Blue Marble. One: We must never give up the fight to stop the big bad things. While ever there is land to build on, a species to make money from or an atom of fossilised carbon to be burnt, some human will seek to invade, occupy, exploit or burn. I hope that some of us at least will keep taking to the streets, laying down before the bulldozers, chaining ourselves to trees. Resisting and repelling has a proud history – and sometimes it even works. The collective effort to ban commercial whaling has seen the global humpback population restored to over 90 per cent of its pre-­whaling numbers, incidentally bringing joy to thousands of people and supporting a multimillion dollar tourist industry. Bob Brown refused to give up on the Franklin River, spawning the Australian green movement; the Franklin-­Gordon Wild Rivers National Park is now part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area covering 20 per cent of the state. Once upon a time, Adani was an ordinary Indian surname, but has now become a rallying cry for the anti-­fossil fuel endeavour, a community of activists that will continue to grow and draw strength from one another long after the last coal-­fired power station has been left stranded on the shore of rationality. Two: ‘Restoration’ is dead; long live ‘renovation’. Given the scale and rapidity of climate and other environmental change, turning back the clock to some

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 269 11/12/20 1:36 pm 270 GriffithReview71

past Edenic vision is a futile exercise. Nature is redistributing itself whether we like it or not. Suzanne Prober and her colleagues at CSIRO draw the analogy best: some areas should be treated like a historic house, with conser- vation activities aimed at preserving the good bits – being faithful to the bones, but without going back to chamber-­pots and candles. Let’s nurture the fragments that remain, abiding by Aldo Leopold’s dictum that the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts. Consider the critically endangered Marsican brown bear in the central Apennines of Italy, where old apple trees in abandoned orchards are being maintained by volunteers to feed the sixty or so remaining individuals – not a traditional wilderness program, but gentle nudges of nature that benefit both human and non-­human participants. Let us also seek interventions that, where we can, put back the wild things that have been lost. Growing enthusiasm for the ‘rewilding’ of landscapes, whether to conserve endangered species across broader ranges, or restore ecological functions such as predation, is appearing on multiple continents with some notable successes. Giant tortoises have been introduced to Madagascar to replace the ecological functions of the now extinct native species and the reintroduction of grey wolves in Yellowstone has rebalanced food webs. Like any quality home renovation, however, taking care of nature costs money. Brendan Wintle from the University of Melbourne and colleagues have estimated that only $122 million per year is currently spent on targeted threatened species recovery in Australia. This is a tenth of what is spent in the US endangered species recovery program, and about 15 per cent of what is needed to avoid extinctions and recover threatened species. Now consider that every one of the twelve new submarines ordered by the Australian Government will cost $18.75 billion over their lifetime. Just saying. Three: Let us be bolder in our positive interventions. A Hippocratic-­style oath to ‘Do no harm’ is all very well, but let us not interpret it as ‘Do nothing at all’. For a start, we need to be a bit more relaxed about where things live, as long as they live somewhere. Consider what a humble rat can tell us about what happens when we are too timid, or too lazy, or just don’t care enough. The Bramble Cay melomys, a native Australian rodent, was formerly resident of just one tiny sandy atoll in the Torres Strait. In the late ’70s, the melomys population comprised several hundred individuals. By the ’90s, less than a hundred remained, and the species was listed as endangered in 2000. The last melomys was seen by a fisherman in 2009, and in 2015 the species was

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 270 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley Hughes: Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman 271

declared extinct. Inspection of the atoll revealed that it had been repeatedly inundated in storms – the last of the species likely to have simply drowned while no one was looking. The melomys now has the dubious distinction of being the first mammalian extinction anywhere in the world that has been confidently attributed to climate change. The real tragedy of the melomys is that its demise was utterly avoidable. How hard would it have been to put a few individuals on another island (perhaps a bit further above sea level) as an insurance policy? Some might think it an ‘unnatural act’, but extinction is indeed forever. I can hear Shellenberger and Nordhaus saying, ‘I told you so.’ Four: Try to not screw up the lives of other living things as we adapt to our own changing circumstances. As Erle Ellis and fellow ecopragmatists assert, humans (well, at least the ones with money and other privileges) can indeed adapt their way out of many tight spots. We can build dams to shore up our own water security, bulldoze fire breaks to protect property during wildfires and erect sea walls to keep rising waters at bay. But actions such as these have collateral damage for species and ecosystems. Some conservation biologists have gone so far as to assert that humans adapting to climate change is a greater threat to biodiversity than the direct impacts of the climate itself. Instead of these hard engineering responses to the climate threat, we can look to natural systems for solutions – let us create ‘living seawalls’ that provide habitat to protect us from inundation and restore mangroves and coral reefs that protect shorelines and people from storms and coastal erosion. Save nature, save ourselves. Five: We need to face our cognitive dissonance with respect to environmental management. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about our approach to the world around us is just how hard it is to undertake positive environmental interventions, and how astonishingly easy it is to do harm. Moving a rat, or a possum or even a rare tree to another place requires the jumping through of so many legislative and policy hoops that it has thus far proved virtu- ally impossible. But we continue to clear land and destroy habitat with near impunity. Sixty-­eight million animals were estimated to have been killed by land clearing in Queensland from mid-­2013 to mid-­2015 alone. In 2018, the WWF Living Planet Report declared eastern Australia one of the top eleven worst deforestation hotspots in the world, the only developed country to make this list of shame. More than 90 per cent of that clearing was for beef-­ cattle grazing. How extraordinary that moving a few little rats to save a

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 271 11/12/20 1:36 pm 272 GriffithReview71

whole species is too hard, while it’s okay to cover swathes of the country with sharp-h­ ooved, methane-­belching ruminants – surely there is no species more deserving of the moniker ‘invasive alien’ than the cow? Six: Rejoice in all nature, even in our own backyards. With fading hopes that the aspirational target of the Paris Agreement – to keep global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees Celsius – will be met, there is much interest in so-­called ‘negative emissions technologies’, methods to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Most of us have the original and best negative emissions technol- ogy in our backyards. It’s called a tree. Greening our cities doesn’t just have carbon benefits. Urban centres, where more than half of the world’s people now live, can be several degrees warmer than surrounding areas, but can enjoy substantial climate ameliora- tion from green cover. Around a quarter of Australia’s threatened plants and 46 per cent of threatened animals are found in urban areas, so it’s critical that conservation strategies be implemented literally at our back doors. But perhaps most importantly of all, abundant evidence (especially during the 2020 lockdown) points to the green in our environs being critical for our mental health. Let us look to Singapore, one of the most densely populated cities on Earth, that continues the work of six decades to achieve its vision not just to be a garden city, but a ‘city in a garden’. Seven: Use economic arguments when we need to. In 1997, a group of econo- mists led by Robert Costanza at the Australian National University made the extraordinary calculation that global ecosystems provide subsidies to the world economy of US$16–54 trillion annually (estimated average: $33 trillion) – about 1.8 times global GNP. This was considered on the conser- vative side, and in 2014 a second paper by the same team later upped the ante: global ecosystems were valued at $125–145 trillion per year. A decade on again, the global project The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity was initiated in Europe with the aim of ‘making nature’s values visible...to mainstream the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision-­ making at all levels’. For some, putting a crass cash value on ecosystems amounts to an insidious neoliberal agenda aimed at selling off nature to the highest bidder. But it is also the ultimate form of ecological pragmatism – fighting the economic rationalists with their own medicine to put paid to the notion that the economy and the environment are separate and competing entities. If it works, let’s use it.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 272 11/12/20 1:36 pm Lesley Hughes: Postnatural, post-­wild, posthuman 273

Eight: Celebrate human ingenuity in shaping the natural world to our own ends, but use it for good. In 2005, Richard Pell and Lauren Allen coined the term ‘postnatural’ to describe organisms intentionally and/or genetically altered by humans, and set up a small museum in Pittsburgh to showcase them. The Center for PostNatural History has an eclectic collection of organisms that are the ‘living embodiments of human desires and fears, heritably accumu- lated over time’. Exhibits include Freckles the BioSteel™ Goat, genetically modified to produce spider silk proteins in her milk that are spun into high-­ tensile fibres; a ribless mouse embryo; and Escherichia coli bacteria genetically engineered to be the first living photographic biofilm. Interesting oddities perhaps, but also a celebration of human creativity in the Anthropocene, using the building blocks of millions of years of evolution. The ultimate manifestation of postnatural cleverness is the burgeon- ing field of synthetic biology that puts together new, useful organisms from natural and artificial components. It’s like Lego for biology nerds. Rapidly advancing techniques are finding many applications for conservation, such as the precision genetic manipulation of the mosquitoes that transmit avian malaria in Hawaii, a disease that has devastated endemic bird populations. A high- ­tech version of rewilding is now also being used to ‘bring back’ species that have been extinct from decades to millennia. ‘Resurrection scientists’ are aiming, for example, to bring back woolly mammoths – or at least something approximating a mammoth – by introducing genes that mimic characteristics of the extinct species into the genome of the Asian elephant, a close relative. Like any potentially positive environmental intervention, ‘de-­extinction’ has its detractors. Some make practical arguments: where would you put a mammoth if you had one anyway? But others go to the heart of conservation practice. Conservation ecologist Stuart Pimm, for example, warns against ‘molecular gimmickry’ that ‘gives unscrupulous developers a veil to hide their rapaciousness with promises to fix things later’. But given that agricultural scientists have been tinkering with the genetics of plants and animals for millennia via selective breeding, can the approximate re-­creation of species no longer with us be all bad? Surely it’s still better than the Blade Runner owl. Nine: Never forget that we are nature too. René Descartes has a lot to answer for. In the so-­called Age of Enlightenment, the father of modern philosophy framed humans as essentially separate from nature and non-h­ uman beasts, a dualism that has pervaded Western thought and behaviour in relation to the environment ever since. This idea, never shared by indigenous peoples, should

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 273 11/12/20 1:36 pm 274 GriffithReview71

now be well and truly put to bed. The iconic Paul Kelly, Kev Carmody and Mairead Hannan song about a land dispute puts it best. The farmer, voiced by Kelly, sings ‘This land is mine’, followed by the spine-­shivering response from Carmody: ‘This land is me.’ Ten: Stay hopeful – for without hope we give up. It can be hard. As Aldo Leopold noted in A Sand County Almanac, ‘one of the penalties of an ecologi- cal education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds’ – and that was published in 1949! Environmentalists are battle-­weary, attempting to maintain their psyches by celebrating tiny victories against a backdrop of extraordinary loss. Climate scientists lie awake at night fearing the end of the world and wondering if having children was such a good idea. But really, what choice is there but to keep trying? Let us hold to the advice of Wendell Berry in his ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’: ‘Be joyful / though you have considered all the facts.’

WE EMERGE BLINKING from the Great Anthropause of 2020 to reflect that humanity, for all its ecomodernist optimism and technological bravado, has been brought to its collective knees by an organism one thousandth the width of a human hair. As we locked ourselves away, portents of a posthuman world materialised: clean water, clear skies and wild animals roaming the streets of cities. Non-h­ uman nature impatient to reassert itself. The social scientist Christian Lund has described such life ruptures as ‘open moments, when opportunities and risk multiply...when new structural scaffolding is erected’. Perhaps we can erect new scaffolding on the lonely Blue Marble with a little more humility? Let the last lines of Haroon Rashid’s lockdown poem ‘We Fell Asleep’ have the last word: The world continues its life and it is beautiful. It only puts humans in cages. I think it’s sending us a message: ‘You are not necessary. The air, earth, water and sky without you are fine. When you come back, remember that you are my guests. Not my masters.’

For references, see griffithreview.com

Lesley Hughes is Distinguished Professor of Biology at Macquarie University, a director of WWF-­Australia, a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and a councillor with the Climate Council of Australia.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 274 11/12/20 1:36 pm ESSAY Gifts across space and time Journeying together in speak/listen trade Nardi Simpson

YAAMA MALIYAA! RESPECTS, friend, to the lands we are both on. I can hear birds talking to each other, and the newly arrived sunshine is begin- ning to bless the mornings. It is healthy and in full bloom. May your place continue to sing also, and we sustain its song. My regards to your grand- mother, I hope she is well. My baagii is in Warrambool, my nanna and her sister both in heaven, but I know they are watching and are keen that I should make a good account of myself and, in turn, of them. Now, to business. I am about to share with you. I will give you words that will combine to make stories that will lead to thoughts and hopefully feelings. You are showing me respect through your listening and attention. If you had called me to listen to your thoughts and ideas, I would, of course, show you the correct respect, deferring to your words and allowing them precedence in our meeting. Hopefully our dreamings will weave together again soon and I will get the chance to return the favour. Let us call what we are about to do a speak/listen trade. Usually this type of trade sees words tumbling between people, some finding their way into dhuwi or spirit essence, others dissolving into burruguu. This way of talking is beautiful. Thoughts and fragments of information form and then melt away, others emerging to take their place. Our conversation becomes what is needed, rather than what is sought. When this happens, bodies and minds feel good because we are connecting. It means we are looking after each other and the words we exchange are caring for us too.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 275 11/12/20 1:36 pm 276 GriffithReview71

A speak/listen trade will always include things that have never been thought or said before as well as the word gifts I wish to give. When things like this appear in a trade, don’t worry – it doesn’t mean I am making things up or holding information back. I’m not ripping you off! It is a sign there is respect in the speak/listen relationship. It is proof the relationship is alive, growing, and we are learning together. This happens a lot when people meet to talk about culture and cultural things. But writing changes this; it complicates things a little. Writing down our transaction freezes the words. They grow cold quickly because while the conversation lasts, the people who inspired it are missing, their energy is dispersed and the connection is paused. While our sharing is alive and energised, its written shadow chills and starts to die. This is what usually happens when you try to keep things forever. In our way, it is always best for people to be speaking directly with each other, connecting to each other and the earth beneath them. If they are only markings on paper, words become devoid of the mutual respect of a speak/listen trade. Writing our trade down has consequences for me. It means now my grandchild and great-­great-­grandchild will inherit this conversation; they will become part of the exchange. But I want this speak/listen trade to be between us. I want to share these words with you so we can think important things now. So, there is a need to agree on one particular detail. It is impor- tant. In this speak/listen trade, I will give you ownership of the conversation, but I will be custodian of its words. This is a way of ensuring that context and meaning will remain within my community, my family and my country. It is also a good deal for you. To those of you who are reading this in the future, know that this trade was done between two people at a moment now gone. What was real then may not be real now. Know that the context and the spirit in which these words were given belongs to a different time. Know, too, that the trade was done with a set of rules in place. If you need to reference our speak/listen trade, be mindful that the experience of the exchange is cared for by one and the content owned by another. Your space in our already lived relation- ship is to think about what our interaction has inspired for you. Forget us. We have moved onto other things by now and are busy at being wiser and more compassionate thanks to our exchange. Your role, future listener, in our speak/listen trade, is personal, silent, reflective. It’s hard these days to

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 276 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nardi Simpson: Gifts across space and time 277

be this way, but I think it is a good way to be. You can get so much from approaching words, thoughts, ideas in this way. By allowing the context of giver, receiver, place and time to be outside yourself, you are free to think and to dream. So, let us caretake the words and conversation, but find a way to connect them to something deep within your own dreaming. That is a way you can be part of this trade. You see, we have left space for you even though you are not here yet. So now, my friend, maliyaa ngay, let us look into the distance, towards the gentle twist of the still river bound by sturdy, dark mangroves. I want us to visualise this kind of country because it is where I sit and speak to you; it is the Dreaming buzzing around me now. In old days, the parks and playgrounds that now hug the river’s edge were swamp marshes, bursting with paperbark and rushes. Long before that time, the river was as command- ing as the great Murray herself. Much wider and with sheer, towering cliffs. But now, let us enjoy what we see in our time, for it is truly a gift: children on bikes, cars rushing past, the occasional train ticking by. You will soon notice the sprouts of deep green, the browning sandstone and the brilliant white of the oysters that grow there, the native grasses have been cultivated here and are beginning to dazzle, adding the lightest touches of gold to the water’s edge. The river is without waves or disturbance, its only movement dictated by the waxing and waning of grandmother moon. Take your mind to the edge of the water, among mangrove and grass and sandstone and shell, and sit under the large casuarina that awaits you there. It is sure to house a noisy cockatoo at its top. They love swaying in its heights, nibbling and screeching and trying to be the boss of the place. That noisy old man can join us if he likes. Take your time. There is no rush. It’s beautiful here, all the things we can see and hear. They are dear to us in our lives now. Under this tree, you can become still and perhaps focus on a small patch of ground or bark or river shallow, and a world of busy, tiny creatures will fill your view. How wonderful to live in a place important to you and to me, to an ant and to a tree. When you are comfortable and have found a groove for your body next to the river, close your eyes. Don’t worry about how silly this sounds. You don’t always need your eyes to see. From this moment, we are connected, by the river, to almost any place we wish to go. The river is now our highway – it is the way we will travel to our next trading destination. Whether you choose

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 277 11/12/20 1:36 pm 278 GriffithReview71

to swim or paddle or shoot through the water like a spider or sprite is up to you – no matter how fast or slow you choose to go, we will arrive together exactly at the moment we were meant to. So, from your place under the casuarina, let me take your hand as I walk with you into the water. There is no worry of glass or shells or roots waiting to hurt us at the bottom. Walking into the water, hand-in-hand, in the respect of a speak/listen trade, we are protected within creation. We are doing something good for us, but, most importantly, essential for country. Moving through the water together, the river levels will rise, escarpments will fall away then reappear, trees and grasses will change, and the water itself will transition from salt to sweet to fresh. We will navigate the rivers, creeks and estuaries through stretches of time, the great shifts taking place around us helping us arrive at our destina- tion. As we near the place I wish to show you, the temperature of the water will rise – it will become warm, then hot. Its smell will change, and you will notice it is unlike any other water we have been. I love to float here. The minerals of the hot bore are good for your muscles, good for your mind. This will help to relax us from our long, liquid journey. My favourite thing to do in the world is float like a speck – with my body or in my mind – on the hot bore water of my homelands, a two-­million-­year-­old soak at my back and the overflow of the infinite past above me. How small I feel! How alive and lucky and insignificant and loved. One quick duck dive, then a thrust with our arms, and we will be pushed along by the hot underground waterway to our destination. This place is very special to me and I hope, by tapping into its magic, you can begin to feel some of its beauty also. We are at the edges of a series of inland lakes. The land here is flat. And it is incredibly red. Take a look around if you like. Enjoy this place. You might notice how the delicate young mulga trees fan out like a firework shooting out of the ground and into the sky. You may catch the budgerigars as they swarm in their hundreds across the open flat. How much better is it to see them flying and showing off and tittering and free. If you take your time you will also begin to see that this place is not only red dirt. It comprises minute pinpoints of colour, as if a great artist has added a fleck here and a dab there to her canvas, these fragments, tiny flowers and morsels of food, purple and yellow and cream and ruby, that speckle and dot the land. It is a long way from the parks and the playgrounds of the city, yet this bush canvas works in similar ways to the great billboards of our city homes.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 278 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nardi Simpson: Gifts across space and time 279

I SUPPOSE YOU can already see how important this place is to me. I speak of it as if it is the most beautiful place in the world. I gush and gloat about its marvellousness, its significance and its strength. I feel so overwhelmed when I am here that I forget myself. In doing so, I have been improper. My apologies, friend. Let me feel my mistake and try to make amends. The shores of this lake, while special to me, are no more special than where you live, or where we have travelled from. All land is sacred, all land is special, whether it is a carpark or ceremony ground, playground or neglected lot. It is wrong of me to speak in boastful ways when introducing you to my country. It is not humble or respectful. It fails to consider the homelands of others. So, as you enjoy my ancestral home, please join with me in being mindful that everywhere is somebody’s special dreaming place. Each and every part of country, whether it is a great city, little town or expanse of pristine bush, is as magnificent and significant as another. But here, on the shores of this lake, we are to harness the strength of our trade. This country has a history of facilitating exchange. Large gather- ings between local and faraway tribes happened right where we are now. My people would provide food for the gathering, collecting freshwater mussels from the lake to share. Our midden lies to your right. It is the evidence of thousands of years of gathering and trading. Visitors would bring with them objects that could not be found in this area, maybe wood and shell and fibre and precious stone, to trade. Each tribe – we like to call them mobs – would have their own part of the lake system to camp on – and while they were here, treat as their own. Marriages were also made here on the shores of the lake. Please don’t mistake this as a trading of women. Wirringaa are the bosses of the communi- ties of this area. You may be familiar with the description of our community as matrilineal, but this does not adequately describe the importance or position women have in our world. If I tell you women hold the lore, then you will see how impossible it is for us to use women as a trade commodity. So, from food to materials to marriage, exchange runs through the veins of this place. After nights of story and dancing and song, when the days of feasting and sharing and trading were over, each group would return to their homelands with strong relationships and new goods to share among their own. We perfected large trade events such as this over time so that we came to call them ‘ceremonies’. We elevate the language and the way we

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 279 11/12/20 1:36 pm 280 GriffithReview71

interact with trade concepts because they are matters of life and death. Only by sharing do we sustain life. These ceremonies connect us to a network of people and places, ensuring we will never go hungry, never be in danger and never be friendless or unknown. Our ceremonies are investments in each other’s success. We are good at sharing and trading, at this way of being; our landscape means we need to be this way and we love to be this way with those around us. I wanted to come here for many reasons. Firstly, and selfishly, because I always love a chance to travel to my home. I do it whenever I can. So why not now, with you? I know you will forgive me for being cheeky in this way. Secondly, here is the only appropriate place for me to talk on such things. From the lake’s edge I can speak about what I know and how it relates to the world. In another country it is proper that countrywomen owners speak about the things and places they know. On my ngurrambaa, I am able to lead discussions. Outside of it, I must be respectful and listen and observe, just as you are doing now. Thirdly, my wish was to bring you to this big trade place with its wide, red plains and unending sky so we can focus on a tiny, almost invisible spot in the land. It lies in the scrub ahead of us, at the far side of the big lake, a little way past its edge when full. Maybe it is a half day’s walk from here. The site of which I speak is only a hole, no more than the slightest depression in the ground. Yet it holds within it a universe of relationship. The coolibah scrub is a favourite feature of my homelands. I am training myself to look through its detail, to allow its greens and greys and yellows and pinks to blur together to create a great oneness. The coolabah gives height, the scrub baseline. I could dream or wander or stare at it happily for years. So imagine, if you will, us stepping among a dense patch of coolabah and yellow box, with young bimble shoots and tall grasses growing in tufts on the ground. Somewhere in the tangle of life, the ageless trees and newborn stems, a border between nations buzzes through the ground. The border is blind, but does not go unseen, so well-­known is it in the minds of those living either side. Rather than a divide, this border is an exchange point. Among this coolabah, obscured by the scrub quietly nestled in the borderline, is the hole. A foot wide, no more than one or two deep. Its lip is slightly raised. From a distance it is invisible. If you follow my lead we can fly over to the hole. I know just how to tilt my chin and lift my chest to the breeze that rises from the great Oobi Oobi mountain. It will lift us off the

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 280 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nardi Simpson: Gifts across space and time 281

ground and carry us there. Come, let us see this tiny cosmos cradling hole. I have a feeling looking into it that it will have a good effect on our spirit. It will also fill us with energy for our return home, as our speak/listen trade is almost at an end. As we approach, it seems nothing more than an ant mound. But let me tell you that the hole is an indicator of the way life is lived by freshwater plains people. Mari travel to this small opening outside ceremony times to place within it an object they wish to trade with their neighbouring tribe. Practical, you would think. Except the items placed within the hole have no agreed value, no timeframe for reciprocation, no confirmation of receipt. They are simply deposited there because they help others on the plains thrive in some way. There is no knowledge of the final recipient, no anticipation of thanks. The only arranged outcome in this trade is reciprocation. So why do it, I hear you ask, when so much is unknown, unvalued and unaccounted for? My simple answer to you, gayliyaay maliyaa, my good-­hearted friend, is this: why would we not? Let us land and peer into the hole and wiggle our toes at its edge. Here, my fellow journeyer, I wish to make clear the true point of our meeting. This hole at our feet is not defined by the object that is put within it. Our country does not cradle an object; it embraces relationship, it is oriented around respect and care for networks of people outside our own existence. Take a moment to think upon that and how we use this sophisticated way to ensure strangers to our country are never alienated or ostracised. This hole is a well of commitment, investment and generosity towards others. This is our ceremonial Yuwaalaraay way. I am proud to come from a tradition such as this. Perhaps your elders have encouraged you in similar ways. But standing here now, thinking of the beauty in caring for others in this way, makes me feel no good about the attitude governments and politicians and everyday people have towards outsiders in need. Here on this patch of black soil, with this hole nestled between us emanating kindness, I can’t help but be reminded of times I have failed to show care – when I have spoken angrily or with ego, when I have been selfish and greedy and failed to be humble and respectful. I have been this way many times, largely with those I love most dearly. Places like this, concentrated and strong, bring failings such as this into sharp focus. This tiny hole was designed to resonate with our highest form. That is why it

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 281 11/12/20 1:36 pm 282 GriffithReview71

was made on the buzzing borderline and why when we come here, we move in ceremony and lore. The hole teaches us the dangers of coveting attention or affluence or control or resource. It shows us that real value will always and forever lie in people and the care we have in helping each other. You may see my tears fall into the dirt between my feet, dear friend. They are for asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants and exiles and the wrong-­way lore we show them. We have so much – why can we not share? But I am getting sad. Let me end the sadness by saying that, apart from us countrywomen and countrymen – the first peoples of this land – all Australians were asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants and exiles once. To shake off this sorrow, I will take a walk among the coolibah groves, if you don’t mind, friend. I won’t take long; the trees will soon soothe and sing me back to myself. If you wish, use the time to immerse yourself in the spirit of the hole. When I return, it will be time to travel home.

MAY I TAKE YOUR hand? I have found the tree that will take us back. She is mingga, or spirit tree, and she has told me she will carry us back to the city and our homes. As we nestle into her branches, our eyes have been trained to see the small hole, even from a distance. Now that we are cradled by her bark, we will begin our ascent. Mingga extends, lifting us quickly from the ground. The tree grows high above the lake as the mussel shells wave a sparkling goodbye. Quickly we separate from Yuwaalaraay and we are among the stars. As she bends through space and time, we notice the shapes in the darkness between the stars: the great emu and crocodiles in the sky. They are powerful wirringin and so take no notice as we pass. Just as well – they get cranky sometimes and look for mischief. But look: Miyaymiyay, the Seven Sisters constellation, is twinkling at us. The sisters seemed pleased to see us travelling through their home. See how they laugh at those three boys of Orion’s Belt, Birraybirray, chasing hard after them, yet making no ground. Those sisters are too clever for those silly boys. And there are the birds, brolga and eagle and two cockatoos, that make the points of the Southern Cross. You see how birds teem in the sky during both day and night? I love to watch them float, their wings free to dance and preen as they glide through the atmosphere. Mingga lowers her foliage. It covers our faces and shields our bodies. She has been kind enough to shield us from the dangerous ones that lurk here. Hunters and mad men and forever lost souls. They are important

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 282 11/12/20 1:36 pm Nardi Simpson: Gifts across space and time 283

parts of the cosmos too and are ballasts in baayangali: the natural order of things. Thank you though, Aunty Tree, for looking out for us in this way. Your leaves smell beautiful, let me rub them into my skin to remember you a little longer after we separate. Burruguu is so colourful from where we now sit, safe in mingga’s arms, shooting through the stars. The colours of the planets and all the solar systems, the celestial clouds, comets, meteors and vortexes contrast against the black- ness. Earth’s inversion pulsates its own form of black beauty. Up here, at this distance, we see how expansive the world truly is. The wonder is what effect we can have in such a world, where we are only a minute speck. But you are not a speck to me. Our family is more than a fleck of dust to us. Mingga is far greater than an insignificant organism taking us from A to B. Maybe, friend, as we voyage through Warrambool, the great Milky Way, and return to our homes and conclude this speak/listen trade, we can reflect on our true cause in this world. My guess is it does not lie in items of trade or material goods, in money or houses or collections of cars. The most invaluable thing is not a possession we own or pass down, but the parts of ourselves that we give. We have landed, you at your doorstep, me at mine, our speak/listen trade concluded. We have seen much together, felt many things, considered many new thoughts. I hope you feel happy and healthy and strong, as I do. I also hope you managed to leave something of yourself in my homelands and at its border, in the trade hole for another.

This article was commissioned by Grace Lucas-­Pennington as part of ‘Unsettling the Status Quo’, thanks to support from the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller from NSW freshwater floodplain. A 2018 black&write! fellow, her debut novel Song of the Crocodile is published by Hachette.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 283 11/12/20 1:36 pm take two subscriptions Support literary culture and save 20%.

Did you know that when you subscribe to Griffith Review, you Subscribe to Griffith Review today can get a discounted one-year subscription to another magazine and get a discounted one-year subscription to another of great new writing and ideas? magazine of great new writing and ideas.

QUARTERLY

QUARTERLY

Support literary culture and save 20%. Visit griffithreview.com and choose Go to griffithreview.com, and choose the Take Two Take Two Subscriptions from our subscribe page. subscriptions option from our subscribe page.

•GriffithREVIEW71.indb 284 11/12/20 1:36 pm