Earth Matters

On today’s show we hear about Queensland’s new anti lock-on laws.  Then we get a report-back from Blockade IMARC in Melbourne and the violent police response.  Guests: Andy Paine (Frontline Action on Coal); Apsara (Blockade IMARC); Julia Dehm (MALS)    Earth Matters #1216 was produced by Teishan Ahearne.

"Everything that we have been fighting for over years of our activism has been  for the  rights to be able to make decisions about what happens on our countries. .  My Country is been raped and pillaged and plundered by mining corporations  for coal in the Hunter Valley Region and for gas in Wangkumurra Country ....." "We have been fighting for the  rights to be able to stop those industries  from...

Djab Wurrung, XR & the Nueva Vizcaya BarricadeThis week on Earth Matters we hear from Djab Wurrung and Gunai sovereign Lidia Thorpe update on Djap Wurrung protection blockade; Extinction rebellion spring actions over the last two weeks, including solidarity activist Kevin Bracken on the Nueva Vizcaya barricade against Australian mining company OceanaGold in protest against their violent and destru...

Warburdar Bununu - Water Shield documentary is a new short film highlighting the fight for water rights and mining on country near Boorooloola in the Northern Territory. In this program you'll hear from the Director Jason De Santolo and community members Scott McDinney and Gadrien Hoosam and hear of their on-going fight and struggle with local mining companies and the water contamination issues no...

Mining is at the forefront of climate change, and the opposition to it is the nexus of indigenous and environmental struggles. A prime example of this is Ecuador. It’s one of the most bio-diverse countries on earth, but it’s people and environment are under threat as mining companies - many of them from Australia - are swooping in.  From Ecuador to Australia, miners, their financiers and governmen...

 This is about  the  fate of the black throated finch  as Adani is bulldozing  some of its last natural habitat . Michael   Kane from the  Mackay Conservation Group challenges the legitimacy of using offsets to counter such habitat destruction. "Its not over yet" says Emma about the long battle to Stop Adani. She describes the ongoing prosecutions of  Adani,  campaigning to persuade companies not...

Mauna Kea Struggle: Aloha, Not for SaleThis week on Earth Matters we hear from Kanaka Maoli activists involved in the ongoing resistance struggle and protest blockade against the construction of a giant telescope development on Mauna Kea, which is a dormant volcano on the Island of Hawaii that is also a sacred site of deep significance to the Indigenous Kanaka Maoli people. And also, why this part...

Fighting eco-fascism: an environmentalism without natureWe often think of environmental politics as inherently progressive and humane. But from more mainstream far right parties with a presence in national parliaments to marginal but equally dangerous lone actors and dispersed groups organising on the internet, environmental questions are growing in importance and are becoming central to their pol...

Can we simply innovate our way out of the present climate crisis? Or do technological fixes hide another problem - that of a deeply unequal and unjust world? Until we start to understand that climate change is a also political problem we may end up carrying the problems of the present into a clean energy future. Lawyer and writer Lizzie O'Shea argues that if we are going to have a just and democra...

Adani is currently clearing trees for the construction of its Carmichael mine in Queensland. In todays show we hear Adrian Burragubba leader of the Wangan Jagalingou  family council  and  the traditional owners of the Carmichael coal mine site in Queensland.  Adani has recently made Adrian Burragubba bankrupt after several court cases with the company.  The  Wangan Jangalingou famly council  have...

Djab Wurrung Eviction: Our Way, or the highway! The Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy blockade is facing eviction this week! For fifteen months now they have made a stand to protect more than two hundred and sixty sacred trees - of deep cultural significance and up to eight hundred years old - from being bulldozed by the Victorian state government to make way for a section of freight road b...

To mark the 40th anniversary of Australia's first forest blockade at Terania Creek in 1979 Earth Matters presents a program in which musicians Brenda Liddiard and Lisa Yeates reflect on the songs that came out of that event as well as from later protests at Grier's Scrub and Mount Nardi. The role of music in securing victories, unifying blockaders and spreading the word, and the way in which the s...

 Cathryn Milne: Student and environmentalist: Mildura: " We need a royal commission NOW and a grass roots human movement."             There is desperation and calls for strong action  as the Darling River dries up.  This is  part three of  a  series of interviews with people who are living along the dying  Darling River: witnessing, grieving and crying out for action to bring the water back. Sara...

Decolonising Anarchism: Indigenous Anarchist FederationIAF members Bombshell and insurgent e on the formation of the Indigenous Anarchist Federation, and their own personal and political histories as Indigenous anarchists situated within anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, and anti-fascist frameworks. Also, the Indigenous Anarchist Convergence coming up August 16-18 in Flagstaff, Arizona. Audio exc...

Kimberley Calling: The Frack is BackThe WA moratorium on fracking is to be lifted in the Kimberley next month, with an estimated 40,000 wells set to be drilled across the region. Meanwhile big agribusiness is making moves to put a developmental squeeze on the iconic Fitzroy River. Once again, Tradional Owners & local environment groups are putting the call out for grass roots supporters around the...

Barry Stone: Employment Agent, lives on Lake Menindee in NSW.  Behind him is 15 kilometres of dry lake-bed to the other side.  As this water system  dries he knows  the actual  damage that is happening to people, communities and ecosystems.  "We out here are looking at  total destruction of  the outback of New South Wales, total destruction.  And, I'd like to say  to the city fellas, we are  not b...

Ask the Elders: Budj Bim ProtectionGuest presenter Will Mathews yarns with Uncle Denis Rose from the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners' Corporation about how the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape's nomination for World Heritage status gives prominence to the fact that First Nations civilisations on the continent currently known as Australia were easily amongst the first in global history to develop agr...

Listening to Nauru - colonialism and climate change. Over a century of phosphate mining has eaten out the small Pacific island nation of Nauru. While the mining continues, today Nauru is better known as the site for Australia's offshore detention camp incarcerating people seeking asylum. Amongst all the media coverage of Nauru, what is too often missing is the voices of Nauruans. Today on Earth Ma...

Produced  in the  Barkindji  nation  by Earthling Studios, Executive Producer  Mark Merrit "This is serious, very seriousAn ever increasing and multiplying  crime has been occurring against our people and our habitat right under our noses for decades " [The Vanishing River website]Hear the voices of people who actually live along the Darling River and Menindee Lakes in in Western NSW:  the now dry...

On this week's show we’re analysing the federal election with Elizabeth Humphrys. With growing distrust of politicians and disillusionment with the electoral system, how does the environment movement engage with anti-politics? For many, the victory of the Liberal-National Coalition at the federal election was crushing. With the polls pointing to a Labor win, their failure has lead to a scatter-fir...

Fight for the BightCoastal whale peoples from all over are concerned about oil drilling operations in the Southern Ocean's Great Bight. Norwegian multi-national Equinor released an environmental impact statement earlier this year for a proposed oil drilling site 372 km off the coast of South Australia. The document included a map showing the worst-case oil spill scenarios. Uncle Bunna Lawrie, Elde...

Sneaky, dirty business: BHP Olympic Dam expansionBHP is up to their old tricks again, trying to expand their dirty uranium mine and sneaky industrial practices, by spinning it with the tired old hype that it will create jobs. But even a cursory glance at their recent track record as an employer shows that looking after workers is not really part of their game plan. Arabunna Elder & Law Man Uncle K...

Passing the torch: A history of nuclear survival in the PacificFrom 1946 to 1998 world players in the nuclear armaments industry conducted more than two thousand nuclear test explosions around the world, including more than 310 nuclear tests that were conducted on Indigenous lands and water, in the Pacific region, by the United States, Britain & France. Protests, direct action campaigns & lobbying...

This week we welcome you to a program with our guest Shannon and he yarns about his own initiative the MY EXTREMELY LONG WALK. And this walk from Melbourne to Canberra is to create awareness and change for climate action.

On the 26th of January 2019 at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy  in Canberra in a a yurt,  I interviewed three women from Wilora ...  a small town just off the Stuart Hwy 300 ks North of Alice Springs .This is the area of the last state sanctioned massacre in Australia in 1928. The women  are from  the Kaytetye aboriginal group in Central Australia and are raising the alarm, again, about the unsafe lev...