Episode guests

Joana Partyka (She/Her) | Disrupt Burrup Hub Activist

Mitchelle Mhaka (She/Her) | African Climate Alliance Programme Manager

Gabriel Klaasen (They/He) | African Climate Alliance Programme Manager

Heather Alberro (She/Her) | Nottingham Trent University Lecturer

Robyn Gulliver | Australian National University and the University of Queensland Research Fellow

Resources and documents mentioned in this episode: 

Hyperobjects, by Timothy Morton

Disrupt Burrup Hub website

African Climate Alliance website

More on Dr Robyn Gulliver, including her publication list

Episode summary

In this episode of Climate Decoded, we unpack climate activism — what it is, how it works, and how it can work better. It’s one of the principal ways the general public can communicate to people in power and encourage others to do the same. You’ve probably heard of Greta Thunberg, the Fridays for Future movement, or seen some headlines about Extinction Rebellion stopping traffic or throwing soup on paintings. But is that really the essence of climate activism? And does it really move the needle on climate justice? How do we define “climate activism” and measure its effectiveness? 

Climate activism is part of an ecosystem of activist movements. And not everyone identifies as a “climate activist”; some people resonate more with “advocate” or “intersectional justice activist”. In this episode, researcher Robyn Gulliver walks us through some of this terminology, and explains how different types of activism can be tracked and measured. We go on-the-ground in Perth, Australia, where Disrupt Burrup Hub activist Joana Partyka is speaking up against Woodside Energy’s gas extraction project threatening 12 different marine parks and indigenous rock art. From Cape Town, South Africa, Mitchelle Mhaka and Gabriel Klaasen explain their work as programme managers for African Climate Alliance, a youth-led, movement-based, grassroots organisation acting and advocating for Afrocentric climate justice. They talk through the importance of education, communication, and rest in activism work.

Lecturer Heather Alberro brings further understanding of how to conceptualize activism on a topic - climate change - that is so clearly a hyperobject: something whose dimensions in space and time are so massive in relation to a human life that it is impossible for us to fully conceptualize it. And yet we must still try to make change for the better. This episode offers a hopeful yet realistic view of the ground work done and yet to do in the climate activism space.