the Banner Bright

Rebecca Solnit writes a letter to a young climate activist: “I have seen change that was unimaginable until it happened and then became so ordinary-seeming a part of everyday life that people forgot there was a struggle, forgot there was a transformation, forgot how we got here, forgot that we are living in the once-unimaginable. I believe that there are many unimaginables in this moment that will become, must become ordinary, including the end of the era of fossil fuel. … We need to understand the worst-case scenarios and the suffering and loss happening now, so we know what we’re trying to prevent. But we need to imagine the best case scenarios, so we can reach for them too. And we need to imagine our own power in the present to choose the one over the other. And then we need to act. I believe that resistance, that standing on principle, that engaging with the trouble, is good for the soul, a way to connect, a way to be powerful. And get results.”

Frank Bongiorno: “Morrison’s political authority has fallen away more quickly than anyone could have imagined even a fortnight ago, and is unlikely ever to be quite the same again. The giant-killer and performer of miracles of May 2019 is no more. Instead, we have a prime minister whose inability to respond to the bushfire crisis has resulted in widespread national loathing, international ridicule and sharp questions about his capacity for national leadership. The background to his political nightmare is the Coalition’s failure over its more than six years in office to develop a credible climate change policy to replace the Gillard-era scheme, its enduring marriage to the fossil fuel industry, and its hospitality to climate change denialists and their fellow-travellers in its own ranks. But Morrison’s crisis of leadership is also the result of the hollow nature of his leadership style. Fundamentally, he has never established himself as an adult leader capable of dealing with serious things, a dawning realisation expressed by the Twitter hashtag #scottyfrommarketing. It seems likely to stick.”

As Australia burns and the Prime Minister pretends nothing unusual is happening, I must borrow from James Connolly’s 1916 New Year’s message: “We should in this issue wish all our readers a ‘Happy New Year’. We do so wish them. But such a wish rings better when it is accompanied by a belief that the wish may be realised, and at the present moment the signs of a Happy New Year are none too plentiful. … A happy new year! Ah, well! Our readers are, we hope, rebels in heart, and hence may rebel even at our own picture of the future. If that is so let us remind them that opportunities are for those who seize them, and that the coming year may be as bright as we choose to make it.”