Here they are - Coral Bleach and The Coal Heads - at Parliament station standing up for BUMS, ahem, YOUR rightful rights and entitlements on the eve of Australia's Federal Election 2022! Making sure that peeps don't be fooled by other peeps' FAKE NEWS*!...
Sunday, 31st October 2021, from 7pm to sunset in Melbourne (from 8am Glasgow, UK time)
A performed installation of newly created music to send a powerful message to United Nations delegates as they arrived for Day 1 of COP26 climate negotiations.
As dusk fell, seven Climate Guardians performed on Melbourne’s iconic Princes Bridge; one Angel for each of the Earth’s continents. Joining as Angels, composers/musicians Susan Bamford Caleo and Elissa Goodrich performed their specially created music arranged for Federation Handbells.
To mark World Environment Day 2021, we're challenging one of Australia's most polluting proposals - BHP & Woodside's Scarborough LNG project. Seriously dodgy carbon accounting practices are enabling fossil fuel companies to exempt emissions from projects that they...
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan As reported in The Mornington Peninsula News, Climate Guardians proudly joined concerned local citizens from Save Westernport at Crib Point’s Woolley’s Beach on Monday 22 February. Our visit was strategically timed to coincide with the...
As challenging as well as deeply unfairly felt as lockdowns have been, COVID-19’s capacity to expose democracy’s diseases has been exceptional. At least it seems that a lot more people are seriously considering what the point is of: • leaders who wilfully ignore...
What follows is BUMS official submission to this heinous Victorian Government Inquiry: 24 August 2020 Crib Point Inquiry and Advisory Committee Planning Panels Victoria SUBMISSION: Crib Point gas import jetty and gas pipeline project Dear Sir/Madam, This Inquiry is...
In this leaked email from Coal Digger Coral Bleach to ScoMo, Aussie billionaire fossil fuel doyens plead for further massive public handouts. Dearly Devoted ScoMo, We can't thank you and your fossil fuel friendly office enough for entrusting us with Australia's...
As United Nations delegates were arriving for Day 1 of COP25 climate negotiations in Madrid, 624 pairs of hand cast clay skins from Bridget Nicholson’s Touch This Earth Lightly project lay in tight neat rows on the banks of the Yarra River opposite Federation Square...
Dear Mr Henry, Congratulations on your new role as BHP's CEO. We feel encouraged by reports suggesting that you intend continuing BHP's progress in response to fast evolving community expectations that companies take responsibility for their impacts on communities and...
Who is responsible for News Corp's non-compliance with basic journalistic codes of ethics that underpin the right to hold media licences? Climate Guardians are staging ongoing 'visitations' to highlight that the media giant's shameless championing of climate deniers...
Climate Guardians are immensely proud to have joined hundreds of courageous people from all walks of life—teachers, musicians, traditional custodians, doctors, writers, artists, labourers, nurses, academics and so on—at the recent IMARC (International Mining and Resources Conference) Blockade for Climate Justice in Melbourne.
All images courtesy of Julian Meehan
At the time of writing, around 90 fires are raging across Australia. In Spring.
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
Since IMARC, many in our group have fielded questions from friends and family who felt confronted by disturbing mainstream media footage and reporting of the event.
Yes, we can confirm that police on horses marched into crowds of defenceless people. Defenceless people were beaten with batons, and pepper sprayed in the face at extremely close range. Be assured this is excruciatingly painful and frightening—it feels like being on fire, blinded and suffocated.
Images courtesy ofJulian Meehan
What could possibly have created such scenes of police brutality in central Melbourne, the most progressive city in Australia?
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
How should we feel about our laws and law enforcement agencies being used against ordinary people calling for people and the natural world to be put before short-term-profits-obsessed ecocidal and antisocial industries?
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
Why are our police being used as virtual bouncers for extremely rich—as well as notoriously tax-dodging—companies making massive profits from irreparably damaging our common assets in ways that threaten all life on Earth?
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
Why are peaceful climate protectors the ones being demonised, and under threat of being criminalised?
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
Since IMARC Victoria Police has now admitted that two officers (that we currently know of) have been found using right wing extremist imagery and language at protests. This is a huge concern, especially since our purportedly progressive Premier has asserted that the police “are doing every one of us proud“.
Surely, on every level it’s wrong for people with dangerously antisocial views to be in taxpayer-funded positions of power where they can cause unnecessary harm to people they disagree with. In this case those people were seeking to hold power abusers to account for their role in propping up the extractive and exploitative industries that are destroying Everything. As has happened in other dangerous times in history with horrifying consequences, are fascists now succeeding in infiltrating our law enforcement agencies?
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
Of course it’s in ecocidal industries’ interests to portray us as violent. For, as extensive research into authoritarian regimes by leading scholar and author of Why Civil Resistance Works (Columbia University Press, 2011) Erica Chenoweth shows, campaigns of nonviolent resistance are more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts because “many more people—and more diverse groups of people—participate in nonviolent campaigns than in activities perceived to be violent”. Expressed another way, “nonviolence is not merely a moral choice for an individual, but a strategic necessity for a movement.”
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
We all know that creating controversy is the quickest and easiest means of distracting people from engaging with important public interest issues. As deeply cynical and perverse as it is, hiring shameless (and/or simply desperate) people to behave aggressively at peaceful protests is a well-worn tactic. And of course there is a long and ugly history of police spies infiltrating progressive community based groups, typically those who are peacefully challenging the status quo. It would be absurdly naïve not to expect all manner of meddling by vested interests threatened by basic science and facts, by concepts of human rights and justice.
Images courtesy of Julian Meehan
It must be stressed that in the face of escalating hostilities and shocking police brutality, the courage and solidarity shown by those who peacefully blockaded IMARC was as incredibly humbling as it was inspiring.
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
With our leaders failing us—as they have for more than half a century—it’s up to communities to defend the natural assets that support life, and to bring forward the socially and ecologically sustainable solutions that deeply conflicted decision makers have kept waiting in the wings for far too long.
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
We extend our heart-felt appreciation and props to all the caring and courageous people who took time out of their lives, and put themselves at great risk of harm by those whose job it is to protect communities, to genuinely peacefully engage with IMARC’s Blockade for Climate Justice, and special thanks to Julian Meehan for his ongoing incredible work documenting the climate movement’s work with powerful images.
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
With Love and Solidarity,
The Climate Guardians
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan
