Page 163 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

154 B. BREVINI AND T. WORONOV

the distance of domestic Indian coal—adding additional greenhouse pol-
lution related to transport” (Australia Institute 2016, p. 5).
Another ‘truthiness’ tactic used by pro-coal politicians to support their
claims has been to re-frame the term ‘activist’ so that it connotes an enemy
of both the Carmichael mine and the national interest. Government
labelling of mine opponents moved beyond turning ‘activist’ into a nega-
tive term, with Parliamentarians calling members of green groups ‘sabo-
teurs,’‘vigilantes,’‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists,’ and accusing them of
waging warfare on Australia’s economy. Far-right Queensland Senator
George Christensen, for example, accused environmentalists of being
enemy combatants who will damage the economy:

[We must] end the ongoing warfare being waged by extreme green groups
against major job-creating developments in the north. The recent setback
with the Carmichael mine has alarmed many eager job seekers and business
owners in the region who were looking at the opening up of the Galilee Basin
and the expansion of the port of Abbot Point as a shot in the arm for our
local economies (Christensen 2015).

This narrative casts environmentalists not only as economic enemies of
Australia, but opposition to the mine as a form of terrorism. Senator
Cristensen again, in the House of Parliament refereed to legal action to
stop the mime as “an act of ecoterrorism” (Christensen 2016). He
continued:

Their lies, misinformation, slander and the frivolous legal action attacking a
company for the sake of furthering an ideological cause can only be described
as terrorism if you look at the criminal code (ibid.)

Australia is not the only place this discursive strategy of demonising envi-
ronmentalists has been used. Recent scholarly inquiry into accusations of
“eco-terrorism” (e.g., Potter 2011), however, has focused on whether or
not environmental groups, such as Earth First and various Animal
Liberation groups, are really terrorists, concluding that the vast majority of
environmental activism cannot be genuinely labelled as ‘terrorism’ (Potter
2011). The accusations of “eco-terrorism” and “sabotage” related to
anti-Carmichael mine activists have no foundation in fact whatsoever and
are not linked to any actual illegal activities on the part of environmental
groups.