I am from Queensland, Australia. Specifically, I am from Brisbane, in South-East Queensland. I am not an indigenous Australian, and so could never claim the intimate knowledge of Brisbane – or ‘Mianjin’ – that the Turrbul and Jagera people hold, but it is my home, my heartland, and my identity.
Brisbane is set on a wide river that falls from the hills of the Great Dividing Range and out to Moreton Bay, which is sheltered by two of the three largest sand-islands in the world – Mingerriba and Moorgumpin, or Stradbroke and Moreton. The region – particularly the coastal region – has incredibly unique ecosystems, being in the transition zone between the tropics and the temperate regions of Australia. In winter, temperatures gets down to around 10C (50F) at worst, and in summer we are drenched in glorious sunshine while spectacular tropical thunderstorms roll in off the ocean.
Do a google image-search for ‘Moreton Bay’ and you’ll see why I love it.
As South-East Queenslanders, we go to the beach, we swim, we sail, we have picnics and barbeques in the sand with our friends and family. We watch dolphins and turtles cruise by the islands – and in September, whales. Turtles and sea-birds nest in the sand dunes. In Pumicestone passage you can sit and watch the sun set over the mountains while pelicans and eagles cruise the sky and dugongs poke their heads out of the glassy water.
It’s beautiful. But it just got fucked on by an oil spill. A big one.
The slick has spread along about 100kms of my beautiful coastline. It’s 230 tonnes of unprocessed crude oil, and so it is toxic and carginogenic. They’re warning the public to stay away. And to make matters worse, the same accident involved 31 containers of ammonium nitrate fertiliser being knocked from the ship and into the bay – dumping 6 times the annual nitrate load of the bay in one hit. Algal blooms are expected. Species’ annual reproductive cycles have been affected. Fisheries in the bay are hit hard. It will take at least a year to get back to something resembling ‘normal’.
My first thought after hearing this news? ‘What a fucking tragedy.’
My second thought? ‘I can’t wait for the end of the oil industry’.
As a climate campaigner, I already advocate for a just transition away from oil, to protect our atmosphere and climate. However, in the long-term, this transition will also protect our coastal and marine ecosystems from tragic accidents like this. And it will stop us having resource wars over oil.
This accident is just one part of the same great chain of environmental and social injustice that is the oil industry. And it’s time for that chain to break.
Yes, the industry employs lots of people, and yes, cheap oil has enabled us to travel in motorcars and planes. But in the not-too-distant future, we will get both our employment and our transport using different, sustainable methods, and without the associated, unwanted injustices. You know what those solutions are.
I can’t wait for that day. I will devote my life to ensuring that I see it happen, within my lifetime.
Don Henry, executive director of Australian Conservation Foundation, is also a Brisbane boy at heart – his first major conservation role, when he was about my age, was as president of the ‘Moreton Bay Preservation Society’, which he founded.
In a press statement, Mr Henry described his devastation, and is one of the few people to have publicly stated the obvious connection between this accident and climate change:
“For goodness sake, the Government must get serious about tackling climate change. This ship was hit by the tail end of a category 5 cyclone. Just as Victoria will experience dramatically increased days of extreme bushfire weather, the science is telling us Queensland will cop more destructive cyclones unless we make big cuts to greenhouse pollution.”
So oil causes climate change, climate change makes cyclones worse, and this cyclone caused an oil spill. A vicious cycle, a vicious system. Let’s get out of it.
Let’s make the mental connections and recognise this for what it is – a symptom of the resource-extraction, wasteful-consumption, environmental-pollution paradigm that we live in.
It’s high time that we change this whole system – throw it out – instead of just tinkering at the edges. I am proud to be part of the global movement that is working to do exactly that. And I can’t wait for the day that we win.
- Read the Australian Marine Coservation Society summary on the spill
- Take Action – wherever you are in the world – on April 1 to help end the oil industry – and other fossil fuels – and break the vicious cycle. We don’t want to be Fossil Fools anymore!
