Climate protesters from Extinction Rebellion — including CoCo Violet, who was previously charged for blocking Sydney Harbour bridge — have caused major disruptions at the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne in an effort to push the government to call a climate emergency.
Three members of the climate activist group stopped their truck on the bridge, which blocked three lanes of traffic. The truck was draped in a banner that said “climate breakdown has begun”. According to VicTraffic, two lanes of traffic still remain open.
The protest comes ahead of the ASEAN Summit in Melbourne this week — where Australia will host nine ASEAN world leaders and hundreds of delegates — which has prompted protesters to pressure Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to “declare a climate emergency”.
“The ASEAN climate talks should be seriously addressing the need for urgent, global action to halt the warming and begin the enormous task of climate repair before it’s too late,” Brad Halmwood, one of the protesters, said in a statement.
The protest has been met with backlash by commuters who have slammed the protesters for inconveniencing “ordinary people”.
However, Halmwood told ABC Radio Melbourne that they had only resorted to these tactics out of desperation, because their other attempts at being heard have been ignored.
“We’ve tried all the conventional methods of campaigning, none of them have worked so we are engaging in non-violent civil resistance,” he said.
“We’re calling on the Albanese government and the ASEAN leaders are in the country at the moment to acknowledge the scientific reality and formally declare a climate and ecological emergency.”
CoCo Violet, who was initially sentenced to 15 months in prison for blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge but was then placed on a 12-month conditional release order, released her own statement calling for the Australian Government to be on the right side of history.
“The government must choose which side of history they will be on,” she said.
“Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, and thus one of the biggest contributors to the global death project that is already killing people via flood, fire, drought and famine — particularly in low-income countries like those in South East Asia.”
Even locally, heatwave deaths — fuelled by climate change — are expected to increase by 500% in some parts of Australia.
The catastrophic flooding in northern NSW 2022, and the severe weather all states and territories have also experienced in terms of fires and floods should have been a wake-up call to our government.
And yet, we’re still here, with our oceans experiencing 1.5 degrees warming for the first time — which we weren’t predicted to reach until 2040. A marker that it will soon be too late to turn this ship around.
Sure, protesting might inconvenience some commuters — that’s kinda the point — but, more importantly, the climate crisis is killing people. And our government’s inaction is, too.
Image: Nine.
