Climate change is "the ultimate wake-up call" says Peter Garrett -- and he
should know, having sounded quite a few alarms in his time. As the whirling
dervish lead singer of the aggressive hard rock/punk band Midnight Oil he
helped shake up the music industry. As an environmental and human rights
activist he has long campaigned on issues ranging from uranium mining to
indigenous people's rights, from homeless young people to tropical rainforests.
And now, as a politician, he is devoting much of his time to global warming.
Born 54 years ago in Wahroonga, on the outskirts of Sydney, he grew up
playing in, and exploring, the bush around his home -- and beat asthma
partly by taking up surfing. He told Our Planet: "I think these experiences
awakened in me a love of the natural environment."
In his late teens he helped form a progressive rock group, which evolved into
Midnight Oil in 1976. Originally closely associated with the Sydney surfing
community -- and described by Rolling Stone Magazine as "one of the most
significant bands ever to come out of Australia" -- it became as noted for
its fiercely independent stance and campaigning as for its sound. "We were
always interested in what was unfolding around us," he says, "and as writers
and musicians we travelled a lot and came to see that deterioration of the
environment was happening all around us."
Their songs and albums picked up their campaigning themes,
but they became
particularly
known for protest and benefit shows. In 1990 they performed on a truck in
front of the Exxon building in New York under a banner reading "Midnight
Oil makes you dance, Exxon Oil makes us sick" in protest at the Exxon Valdez
oil spill in Alaska. They staged similar protests at the Jubiluka uranium mine
in Arnhem Land; at Clayquot, on Canada's Vancouver Island, scene of an epic
battle over the future of temperate rainforest; and against air pollution in São
Paolo, Brazil.
Garrett points out that many other artists took up environmental causes,
but acknowledges: "I think we were part of the change in attitudes to the
environment that came to the fore in the early 90s, so maybe in some ways
our music simply became a soundtrack for that period."
But perhaps Midnight Oil's most effective coup came at the closing ceremony
of the 2000 Sydney Olympics when the band walked onstage in clothes bearing
the word "Sorry", in apology to the `stolen generation' of aboriginal children
taken from their parents by Government agencies and religious missions in
the first seven decades of the 20th century. As he points out: "There is a very
important linkage between the state of the environment and the capacity of
indigenous people to have productive livelihoods and a strong say over what
happens in their community."
He served two terms as President of the Australian Conservation Foundation,
during which it grew strongly in capacity and influence, built partnerships
with other conservation groups, farmers and business -- and won important
campaigns, not least over protecting Antarctica and conserving Queensland
rainforest. In 1984 he ran for the Australian Senate as a candidate of the Nuclear
Disarmament Party, which he helped to found, but finally entered parliament
in 2004 as a Labour member. He is now Shadow Minister for Climate Change,
Environment and Heritage and Shadow Minister for the Arts.
"Climate change, with its pervasive scope and likely consequences, has
arrived as the ultimate wake up call for us all," he says. "It is a once in
a generation opportunity to harness our human endeavours, and
build a low carbon economy where the prospects for future
generations are good."
Peter Garrett
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