Here’s a Wacky Idea: Stop Voting for Parties That Are Destroying the Planet

words JONATHAN SRI

Ahead of the federal election this Saturday, Jonathan Sri – musician, poet and the first Greens city councillor in Queensland – stresses why it’s more important than ever to Vote 1 for the planet.

Something is eating our future.

In early 2020, bushfires burned through 30 million hectares of the Australian continent.

People lost homes.

People died.

Our cities were smothered by choking smoke from incinerated forests. Video feeds were crowded with scorched koalas and blackened trees. And finally, more of us began to grasp the full gravity of global warming.

But Covid short-circuited the mass protests blossoming in the streets. The arsonists who masquerade as mining company CEOs blundered along with ‘business as usual’.

Then in February 2022, it felt like an entire ocean was falling from the sky. Creeks and rivers rose fast, with little warning. I kayaked through inner-Brisbane neighbourhoods, passing over street signs that are usually well above head height, ferrying supplies to residents who’d been stranded overnight by the brown, soupy floodwaters. Hundreds – perhaps thousands – had become homeless.

image JONATHAN SRI KAYAKING THROUGH EAST BRISBANE AFTER THE FEBRUARY FLOODS. PHOTO BY BELINDA TURNER. 

Then the rains moved south to Lismore, Ballina, Byron Bay, decimating an entire region. Barely a month later, that ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ catastrophe repeated, and people who were only just cleaning away the mud were evacuated a second time.

Many more Australians started saying, “See! This is what climate change will mean for us!”

But they were only half right…

Recent floods, fires, cyclones and droughts are still only a foretaste of what we’re in for if we don’t rapidly reduce fossil fuel emissions.

We can also expect disruptions to supply chains, widespread crop failures and food shortages, greater global conflict over scarce resources and further zoonotic disease outbreaks. Entire ecosystems will collapse. Millions of climate refugees will be displaced by desertification of farmland and by rising seas.

Recent floods, fires, cyclones and droughts are still only a foretaste of what we’re in for if we don’t rapidly reduce fossil fuel emissions.

India and Pakistan skipped spring this year. It’s technically not even summer on the subcontinent yet, but temperatures are already approaching 50°C in regions that rarely used to exceed 35°C. When reports speak of a global average of 1.5° warming, this buries the depressing truth that many regions will become much, much hotter than that. Thousands will die simply from the heat itself.

The good news is that we still have time to unplug this faulty machine before it burns down the whole house.

We already have the tools to transition to renewable energy systems and phase out dependence on fossil fuels. We can create alternative employment pathways in coal and gas mining communities, and we can give younger generations a fighting chance for a better world.

But the future-eaters have spent vast sums of money spreading fear and misinformation to stall this essential positive transformation.

First they told us “the jury was still out” and that the science was in doubt.

It wasn’t.

image 2019 SCHOOL STRIKE 4 CLIMATE. PHOTO BY KELLEY SHEENAN.

They tried convincing us that even if we took action, it was pointless because other bigger countries wouldn’t. But many other nations are transitioning faster than us. And Australia is among the world’s largest coal exporters, so although our population is relatively small, the volume of coal we dig up and sell is huge. Globally speaking, we’re one of only a handful of bartenders who can cut off the booze supply.

Then the future-eaters told us that, ‘Poor people in India need our coal so they can have electricity!’ This too was a lie. If you travel to remote villages across the globe, you’ll find communities already investing in decentralised, locally generated solar systems as a cheaper, more practical alternative.

Often, it’s hard to tell where politicians stand. They’ll sit on the fence, or their actions won’t match their words. But when it comes to climate change, Labor and the Liberals have both been uncharacteristically clear: they’ve proudly promised to support new gas and coal mines.

The two major parties have offered us all a deadly commitment that stinks of river mud and bushfire smoke. They want to keep extracting, exporting and burning fossil fuels for decades, making global warming even worse.

One of the saddest consequences is that by pretending the transformation will be harder and costlier than it has to be, they’re also robbing us of hope itself.

Positive change won’t come from the ballot box alone. But it’ll get a heck of a lot easier if more people give their first preference vote to parties that are serious about global warming.

In contrast, the Greens have been equally clear, saying they won’t support new fossil fuel extraction projects, and proposing a robust plan to transition energy systems (and mining industry workers) away from coal, gas and oil.

Proposing to dig new coal mines when we should be closing down existing ones is madness.

So why are Labor and the Liberals still super-charging global warming and telling Australians we’re powerless? Fundamentally, it’s because they’re more worried about pressure from fossil fuel industries than they are about losing votes to science-driven parties like the Greens.

This needs to change. The two major parties will not take climate change seriously unless they start losing more seats over this issue.

So when you go to vote, and the campaigners at the polling booth are shouting slogans and shoving flyers in your face, remember that you are not silly for demanding and hoping for a better world.

Positive change won’t come from the ballot box alone. But it’ll get a heck of a lot easier if more people give their first preference vote to parties that are serious about global warming.

It’s time to take back our future.

Have you ever wanted to ask a politician a question? Send an email to lauren@peppermintmag.com if there’s something you’ve been wondering about and would like answers to!