Opinions
They were protesting against WWF's decision to partner with the coal industry, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the environment think tank the Climate Institute in working to accelerate the development of carbon capture and storage technology, otherwise known as clean coal.
This was just the latest exchange in the simmering brand war between Australia's two biggest green groups, WWF and Greenpeace, revealing the widening ideological divide between conservationists and activists of the founding denominations in the broad church of the environment movement.
The World Wildlife Fund was founded by British biologist Sir Julian Huxley in 1961. Its first president was the Duke of Edinburgh. It modernised its brand by switching its name to WWF.
The Australian Conservation Foundation was established as a local variant in 1964. Its first president was not Peter Garrett, but Sir Garfield Barwick, the conservative High Court chief justice who later recommended the sacking of prime minister Gough Whitlam on November 11, 1975.
Conservation was a relatively conservative affair: the organised response of the ruling establishment to environmental management, starting with species conservation. Both have become more radicalised over time, but have retained their foundation role of working with government and industry to find solutions to major environmental problems.
The ACF is funded mainly from memberships and donations. It has on occasions partnered with companies. The WWF is funded by memberships, but also receives financial support for its programs from the federal Government and companies such as ANZ and Rio Tinto.
The recent Earth Hour campaign, encouraging households and businesses to switch their lights off for an hour on a Saturday night, is as much a branding exercise by WWF as an effort to "raise awareness" on climate change. Earth Hour and the strategic partnership to try to drive clean coal technologies reflect an increasingly pragmatic approach to its style of environmentalism. Down the deep green end of the church, the activists hate it.
In 2004, the left-wing think tank, the Australia Institute, released a report entitled, "Taming the Panda", which accused the WWF of being too close to the then Howard government.
Greenpeace was created as a by-product of the peace movement that galvanised public opposition to the Vietnam War and the unease about living under the apocalyptic threat of nuclear annihilation. It started as a small group of protestors who raised money to charter boats and sail them next to planned nuclear testing, then whaling fleets.
At the same time, similar loose coalitions were uniting to fight the Tasmanian government, which wanted to develop the state's substantial hydro electricity resources, flooding lakes and valleys in the process. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society was officially formed at a meeting held at the house of a local GP, Bob Brown, in 1976. Activist campaigns successfully stopped the Franklin Dam in 1983 and a road through the Daintree forest in 1987.
Initially, activist groups were forged in protests against governments. Corporations came later. Greenpeace is, unsurprisingly, funded solely by membership fees, and refuses to take any money from governments or business. It is suspicious of anyone who does. Because it seeks to reform the institutions of government and business from the outside, its activists take a much harder line on key issues. Organisations such as Greenpeace need to maintain a high public profile to sustain membership numbers. Irrelevance is suicidal.
These groups found the greatest success by operating as environmental pirates, conducting high-profile smash-and-grab raids against the actions of governments and companies. The romance of activists casting themselves as heroic figures in a David and Goliath battle against the villainy of big business or government is more appealing to its members than the comparatively dour process of hammering out solutions, which inevitably involves engaging and compromising.
When it comes to climate change, Greenpeace and its fellow travellers have vested considerable time and effort in demonising the coal industry. Last year, they released a report claiming coal and other fossil fuels received $10 billion a year in government subsidies. Last week, it released another report claiming clean coal technology was nothing more than a "scam". The report handpicked and, in some cases, misrepresented reports and research by CSIRO and other agencies who are trying to make it work.
Through their different approaches, both groups have made different contributions to progressing the environment debate. But both face an uncertain future as the debate becomes increasingly mainstream. The ideas and opinions of governments, scientists, economists and industries are already crowding them out of the space they once held unchallenged.
| < prev | next > |