The bushfire crisis has ignited important questions about everything – how to survive climate change – the impacts of social inequality and the negligent madness of the elite – the legitimacy of the ruling order and how we can replace it. Some look to the usual suspects seeking ‘strong leadership’, craving order and security in the face of destruction, fear, and chaos. Meanwhile, the most important story of the fires is written by the people who live in the affected areas and those who’ve rallied to support them.
In 2011, I wrote about the Queensland floods and responded to what I saw as the limitations of Naomi Klein’s analysis of ‘disaster capitalism’, coining the term disaster communism to describe the alternative social relations which arise during and after devastating events. Disaster capitalism is an extreme, or more fascistic, form of capitalism which takes advantage of disasters to ‘make a killing out of catastrophe’. Whereas, disaster communism is the altruism, resourcefulness, generosity, joy, and love that arise amid disaster’s grief and disruption, revealing widespread yearnings for community and purposefulness. Clearly communism is a problematic word to deploy, since many think of it as a party or state and consider all communism a disaster. Whereas, unlike previous or existing ‘communist states’ and ‘communist parties’, I see disaster communism as a continuation of the genuine communist heritage which opposes authoritarianism, repression, war and terror, and struggles for freedom, democracy, peace and love.
As I have written elsewhere, disaster communism includes network forms of organising which replace the usual state forms and are shown not just to be more inclusive and democratic, but more efficient and more productive. Disasters expose the existing social solidarities, the ‘moral’ and ‘gift’ economies of community service, fellowship, the sharing of work, money, goods, emotional and psychological support provided by the on-going organisation of non-capitalist exchanges. A range of counter-disaster activities produce new relationships, networks, shared experiences, understandings, and goals, where the lived experience of alternative society transforms norms, values and beliefs, from those of self-interest into those of human interest. Skills or attributes that are often under-valued; healing, caring, flexibility, self-sufficiency, counseling, local knowledge and community connections are suddenly understood as crucial. As people come closer to each other they are better able to share resources, knowledges, ways of doing and experiences, enriching lives and communities, opening-up new horizons for creativity, and further deepening interactions.
The concept of disaster communism has been taken-up by other people around the world, such as the authors who write under the collective name Out of the Woods. They responded with a three-part series of articles and identified two different meanings of disaster communism – “The first meaning is collective, self-organised responses to disaster situations. The second concerns the prospects for an ecological society based on human needs in the face of climate chaos.” They call the first sense ‘disaster communities’, and the second ‘disaster communisation’. For Out of the Woods “disaster communities are self-organised, non-market, non-statist social reproduction under adverse conditions. However, they suffer some shortcomings. First and foremost, they are typically short-lived, even if the experience changes the participants for life.” Whereas, disaster communisation involves ‘a qualitative shift within the dynamic of class struggle’ . . . “when the self-organised social reproduction of disaster communities [comes] into conflict with existing property relations, the state, and so on, and overcomes these limits.”
I prefer not to divide disaster communism in this way, as it downplays the extent and continuity of capitalist disasters and the enduring existence of communist alternatives. Capitalism is a continuously disastrous system and ‘disaster communism’ can be both large and small scale, with communist practices organised to deal with individual, community, and more widespread disasters on a daily basis. Today, individual and collective catastrophes are proliferating, ‘disaster communities’ are widespread, and everyday communist practices are essential to many people’s survival. Importantly, communist revolution is ongoing, not just a future moment or event. Communism is and always will be unfinished and emergent and can only be realised in multiple, ongoing and incomplete ways, as people struggle to create and recreate it every day.
Recently, Ashley Dawson, in his book Extreme Cities, includes a chapter on disaster communism and offers a similar critique of ‘disaster communities’ as Out of the Woods, arguing that “Disaster communism – on a purely local scale – does not actually constitute an inherent threat to the capitalist social order.” Alarmingly, Dawson goes on to advocate a form of “war communism” with “warlike state management of all industries” and “centralised decisions on who can consume what goods in what amounts”. Here he demonstrates, once again, how the term ‘communism’ can be deployed to suggest very different things, forgetting or ignoring the history and horrors of the 20th century.
Community Spirit, Self-organisation, Solidarity
Late last year, I wrote about the grief, love & rage sparked by the bushfire crisis, arguing that the response of concerned people, dedicated volunteers, community associations, and social networks offers the most reliable and resilient support to those impacted. Since then, there’s been growing recognition and appreciation of the ‘community spirit’, or solidarity, which has brought people together to help care for each other. Many thousands of people individually and collectively confronted the fire disaster, working alone and together to protect homes, salvage communities, minimise injury and save lives. We have been inundated with stories of heroic fire-fighters, neighbours protecting each other, strangers coming to the rescue, providing relief, and aiding recovery.
Since the fires began, an invaluable knowledge base has been built-up by volunteers using online networks and decentralised communications channels. For example, when the ‘Fires Near Me’ app became unreliable, local social media groups sprang up, with people sharing information about the path of the fires. Networks of legal aids, medics, translators, skilled tradespeople, counselors, community groups and volunteers have also leapt into action. Droves of independent relief groups, organised almost entirely through word of mouth and social media, have seen people open their wallets and their hearts, as countless benefit gigs, fund-raisers, and campaigns have organised money, resources, accommodation, support, advice and information, sharing grief, anger and action.
At the same time, debates have ensued about whether being publicly ‘political’ and being focused on relief work is compatible, and whether political protests should be held during such a crisis. Yet many people have viewed their response as part of something bigger. Often making the links between climate change, political processes, economic and social inequality, and the impacts of the fires.
‘Tell the Prime Minister to go and get fucked’
During the fire crisis, these concerns have had an incendiary impact across society, including much of the mainstream media. In early January, as the fire’s devastation turned much of the south east into a funeral pyre, exhausted and traumatised fire-fighters exploded onto our TV screens, saying loud and clear what hundreds of thousands of people were thinking.
As this message rang-out across the world, a rumour that the RFS volunteer in the video, Paul Parker, was being removed from his position saw tens of thousands sign an online petition in support of him in just a few hours. Money has also poured into Paul’s local hotel to ensure he won’t have to pay for a beer for a very long time. Sadly, it turns out Paul is a One Nation supporter. Whereas, his colleague, Robynne Murphy, who also features in the now infamous TV news report calling for the Prime Minister to “Stand down now!” is a socialist and a former Port Kembla steelworker. She has joined calls for concerted action on the climate crisis; including a focus on community input, an end to coal mining, transformation of the steel industry, a switch to renewable energy, and “massive mobilisations around the country” to demand change.
A week after Robynne and Paul’s outcry, thousands took to the streets to help amplify the growing fury over Scott Morrison’s negligent and dismissive reaction to the bushfires, his family holiday in Hawaii during the disaster, and the weak and uncaring government responses. Soon after returning from overseas, Morrison was forced to abandon a ‘meet-and-greet’ in the fire-ravaged town of Cobargo after he was confronted by angry residents. This tight-knit community had soon established their own independent relief centre, not administered by the government or the Red Cross, but by locals. “It is fuelled entirely by donated supplies, administered by community members organised into unofficial working groups to do things like manage first aid, sewerage, food and water for hundreds of evacuees. Everything from nappies to hay for horses was donated, trucked in, distributed and organised by ordinary people doing what needed to be done to sustain their communities.” As Alfredo La Caprara, one of the folks working in the Cobargo Relief Centre, explained to a journalist: “This is Cobargo pulling together. There’s no official titles or bureaucracy. It’s just a community looking after its own.” (From – all we’ve got is each other, and that is plenty, a zine about mutual aid).
In Balmoral, another nearby community devastated by the fires, Brendon O’Connor, the local RFS captain described the situation soon after – “We’ve not seen anybody – nobody has been to our station to ask how our welfare is or anything. We’re basically running autonomous at this point. If it wasn’t for our residents and the community bringing food into us, to feed not only our firefighters but our community, it’d be pretty hard for us to get through.” In Balmoral locals have repeatedly made clear that they feel they’ve been abandoned by the federal and NSW state governments before, during, and after the fire.
Many community run mutual aid projects are seen as a form of political participation, where people take responsibility to care for one another and attempt to change political conditions, not just through symbolic acts, or by putting pressure on governments, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable. For some this poses the question
Yet, local, grassroots, informal, and decentralised organisational formations have demonstrated their capacity to rapidly and effectively react. Being loosely organised may involve some obstacles and inefficiencies, but can also facilitate rapid and flexible responses. These adaptable forms of organising can help to weave complex networks that help people to help themselves and others and to deal with or bypass inefficient, negligent, incompetent, corrupt, or paralysed forms of government. Such response, relief, and recovery practices demonstrate that the absence of powerful organisations does not mean the absence of powerful organisation.
Those volunteering their time and energy have proven themselves far more capable than governments, both of responding to the dangers and of seizing the positive opportunities created by the fires. Often, a different set of values is being elaborated, embodied and put into practice via people’s ability to design and implement their own relief, repair, and recovery projects, and to provide care (personal, medical, psychological, etc.). Over and over you hear those impacted exclaiming that ‘possessions are not important’; life is important, we are important, our relationships and 
communities are important. Yet, despite the wide range of successful community initiatives, the response needed is vast and beyond the capacities available to all of those who need help. Therefore, along with facilitating and coordinating the circulation of community assistance, resources, skills, and knowledges, grass roots organising has directed its efforts towards gaining access to state ‘recovery and reconstruction aid’.
States of Disaster
Although there’s rising public distrust of government institutions, some continue to decry the ‘anarchy’ of self-organised measures and are keen to see the centralisation and coordination of a strong state – ignoring the bureaucracy, incompetence, inefficiencies, corruption and dangers of many state reactions. Calls for more state intervention tend to see hope attached to government responses, even though few really believe that state institutions can adequately address people’s needs.
Amazingly, during the worst of the fires, the Government announced that no extra support was needed for fire-fighters and affected communities. This was despite the desperate necessity for a whole range of assistance. The lack of state preparation, the ignoring of expert advice, large scale cuts to essential, fire and emergency services, disaster relief, welfare agencies, aid organisat
ions, national park staff, environmental protection, lack of basic equipment, such as masks for firefighters, and complacency during the fires, has been the focus of much criticism. While the level of incompetence was indicated by some noteworthy failures even in the heart of Australia’s state bureaucracy – e.g. for 48 hours, smoke in Canberra shut down the government’s Emergency Management Agency, the ACT Government’s Emergency Services Agency suffered a website outage during a rapidly escalating bushfire, and the military started a fire which ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr called the most serious bushfire threat to Canberra since 2003.
In the wake of the fires, there have been widespread outcries about the slow, complicated and inadequate systems of disaster aid and the restoration of essential services. Many people who’ve applied for ‘recovery assistance’ haven’t received any, or are finding it impossible to navigate the bureaucratic labyrinths of governments, banks, and insurance companies. The stupidity and cruelty of Centrelink was clear from the early days of the fires and the anger over inadequate support for those in need has continued to grow, as the degradation of state and business processes retraumatises impacted people and communities. Anger has also been turned on NGO relief agencies. While donations have poured in, they’ve often been poorly distributed, and many agencies have been forced to defend how and when they’re spending relief money.
Concerns over the organisation and use of disaster relief are widespread. International disaster relief is often part of state ‘foreign aid’ and despite massive cuts to this ‘aid’ the Australian military is sometimes deployed overseas in the wake of catastrophe. However, the provision of ‘disaster aid’ often becomes another disaster. As detailed by researchers, such as Naomi Klein and Anthony Lowenstein, ‘disaster capitalism’ builds on the long-running neo-colonial transfer of resources and wealth from poor people to the rich and focuses on the interests of big business and transnational corporations. While camouflaged as humanitarian operations, these disaster interventions are used to help maintain ‘order’, protecting and extending exploitative capitalist social relations and breaking resistance to capitalist state policies and practices. ‘Disaster aid’ is also used for military purposes and to promote ‘national security’ objectives. It is largely done in cooperation with the private sector, with much of Australia’s overseas aid tied to investments in oil, gas, and mining. As well, corporations are cashing in on what remains of the ‘foreign aid’ budget, securing billions of dollars to do what the Government used to do.
There are also widespread concerns about communities filling the gaps left by government negligence or cutbacks. Some argue that because self-organised disaster communities are more effective than state agencies and market forces at responding to disasters, governments can “sit back and let people suffer, then reassert itself when the community dissipates as normality returns. This is the state’s interest in ‘resilience’, exposing people to disaster, abandoning them to survive by their own efforts, and then moving in with the ‘disaster capitalism’ of reconstruction and gentrification once the moment of disaster has passed.” This is a reasonable concern, however governments tend to respond in more complex and contradictory ways.
State institutions still tend to have the most money, personnel and resources to react to major disasters and during and after disasters, some government intervention can be useful. There are a variety of capitalist state forms, some of which are worse than others. For example, state funding for fire and emergency services, welfare and health support, etc. can be helpful. Yet governments seek to contain, restrain and exploit people. Grassroots initiatives can be considered both hindrances and assets to different state institutions, as they have various interests in interacting with popular activity. Many state disaster planners are aware of the limitations and mistakes of traditional hierarchical organisations and seek to combine grassroots efforts with those of government agencies. This approach aims to manage the complexity of communities, create resource and information sharing networks and coordinate relief efforts, often dominating the way people relate to and work with each other, and without genuinely shifting power from state agencies into the hands of communities.
Contemporary governments are grappling with increased management of eco-systems, looking for ways to address the climate crisis while continuing to support ‘economic growth’. State crisis management ‘attempts to combine mechanisms that individualise, isolate and create competition, with controllable forms of cooperation and community’, aiming to socialise the costs of disasters while providing ‘business growth opportunities’ for the private sector. Yet, despite mounting evidence that governments oppose the radical action required for climate justice, and will continue to defend capitalism to the death, calls for a stronger and more interventionist capitalist state remain the common focus of much campaigning.
While the ability of people to powerfully self-organise helps to shape, transform and limit the impact of state power, calls for government ‘leadership’ and demands for powerful state reactions during the fire crisis have helped to shift the focus in a direction the government likes – towards a more authoritarian state. For example, Jeff Sparrow explains how right-wing forces have highlighted the limited amount of arson, transforming “an ecological crisis into a law and order problem, paving the way for new legislation and fresh penalties”. While in 2019, politicians spent more time discussing how best to punish environmental protesters than they did addressing the climate crisis. With Peter Dutton, for instance, calling for activists to be shamed, jailed and cut off welfare, declaring; “These people are anarchists and fringe-dwellers and they should face the full force of the law.” Similarly, in Queensland, the ALP premier Annastacia Palaszczuk rushed through draconian laws to jail Extinction Rebellion supporters.
‘Force May be Used’
IMARC blockade in Melbourne.
In late October, during the early weeks of the bushfire crisis, we saw a powerful state response to defend the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) from climate protesters. As people blockaded the Melbourne event, police horses were dangerously ridden through the crowd, rendering at least one person seriously injured. Dozens more were assaulted by police, including some who were choked and several who were beaten with batons. Alarming amounts of pepper spray was also used to hurt many others. The police violence was clearly premeditated and political. Snatch squads arrested people considered to be protest organisers, targeted those with megaphones, and the police tried to stop media coverage of their violence. Regardless, the corporate media suggested it was protesters who were violent, despite all of the images confirming the police as the aggressors.
A few weeks later, demonstrators set up tents outside Kirribilli House and demanded that the Prime Minister return from his holiday to take action on the fires and the climate crisis. The tent occupation in a cul-de-sac was peaceful and wasn’t blocking traffic. A 13-year-old school student, Izzy Raj-Seppings, was sitting quietly among the protestors, who were singing Christmas carols, performing spoken word and dancing, as the riot squad marched through the smoke haze towards them, and began arresting people. When the cops approached Izzy they made their intentions clear, if she refused to leave the area they would be arresting her, and if she didn’t comply – “force may be used”.
Gladly, at the end of a year when young people led a radical transformation of the climate justice movement, the police treatment of Izzy was widely condemned, she received extensive support, and her refusal to be intimidated was broadly hailed as an inspiration, even from the mainstream media. However, it’s important to note that although ‘force may be used’ is true in specific circumstances, in general this is a lie – force is being used. The rule of capital is an unending war, a social relation of constant violence, while the appearance of peace is dependent on the continual threat of more violence. This is why governments regularly deploy the weapons at their disposal and why they let us know that more violence can be unleashed whenever they want.
‘Send in the Army’ – It’s War!
Naomi Klein has previously talked about how wildfires act like an ‘invading army’ and it didn’t take long before the language and metaphors used to describe the local fire crisis were similarly those of war.
“But this wasn’t just a fire, it wasn’t just a bushfire….it was a war zone. We feel like refugees in our own country.” (Illawarra Mercury, 10 / 1/ 20)
“It was like an atom bomb. Plants and animals here have been vapourised.” (Illawarra Mercury 7 / 1 / 20)
“This is our bushfire Gallipoli.” (David Bowman, Professor of environmental change biology)
The largest peacetime evacuations in Australia’s history were seen by some as an echo of the Gallipoli retreat, when thousands had to be rescued from beaches by Australian armed forces. Even though most people on the South Coast were rescued by each other, rather than the military, including by a ‘people’s armada’ of small boats and tinnies. Other commentators deployed jingoistic and reactionary war-time politics to stir people into action – illustrated by these posters from the Climate-Action Canberra Facebook page.
At the same time, Federal ALP MP, Mike Kelly, called for a ‘war-like national mobilisation effort’ to deal with the threat of climate change, suggesting the federal government establish a civil defence corps (CDC) that could operate as a national disaster response reserve. Kelly, a former soldier and currently the shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support, argued the CDC should be modelled on the Australian defence force reserves and if the CDC was unable to attract sufficient personnel, the government should establish a compulsory national service scheme. “This would require all high school graduates to be absorbed into the CDC on leaving school for perhaps a one-year period, after which they would be required to render service as required,” he said.
Joining the call to arms, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Secretary Sally McManus also demanded – “A war time mobilisation to overcome this national disaster and to fight to stop and defend against the ones that may come.” South Coast Labour Council (SCLC) Secretary, Arthur Rorris, agreed and declared – “this is the greatest threat to our National Security since World War II” – arguing that; “In World War II in the battle against Nazi Germany and international fascism we relied heavily on our steel industry and particularly the Port Kembla Steelworks on the South Coast to make the ‘bullets and the bombs’ for the war effort. Today we again rely on our Steel Industry to fight the battle, only the ‘bullets and the bombs’ we desperately need are the massive turbines, solar arrays and other renewable energy systems which are all steel based.”
From ‘Stop Adani’ Facebook page.
At the same time, some of those promoting the expansion of military industries also began comparing the impacts of climate change in Australia to a foreign invasion, denouncing ‘appeasement towards the planet’s third superpower’, and calling for increased military spending to fight the ‘climate war’.
While a surprising number of people on the ‘left’ echoed calls to ‘send in the army’ and ‘fight a war’, retired major general Peter Dunn, who has been in military combat operations and now lives in the fire devastated area of Lake Conjola, explained that what his community faced on New Year’s Eve and in the weeks following was completely different to warfare and when it became obvious the community was on its own, they organised themselves, supported each other, and established a community-led relief centre which has been operating ever since.
Of course, when much of the landscape looks like a ‘scorched earth’ battlefield, with ‘water bombers’ flying overhead, the shock, awe, level of destruction and the amount of trauma involved can make us feel like we’re living in a war zone. And when we think of the armed forces personnel and resources, all cashed-up and with nothing to do, calls to ‘send in the army’ are understandable. Yet the amplification of war cries helps to conjure up the ideological armoury of colonial, corporate, and fascistic violence.
Importantly, associating world war with social and national unity against a common enemy neglects the ‘war efforts’ that don’t fit this romanticised narrative. Glorifying such conflicts ignores the war crimes of the victors and the dominant tendency of warfare towards brutality and dictatorship. Calls for war-like mobilisations also disregard the fascistic tendencies of today’s states and their militaries. In World War One, more than twenty million people died to defend the power and privileges of the ruling class. While the sanitised version of World War Two rests on illusions of a noble victory against fascism, where we forget about the fascistic practices of the victorious allies, the firestorms unleashed on the civilian populations of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the environmentally destructive ‘Atomic Age’ and ‘Cold War’ forms of development ushered in by the war’s destructive impetus, which has helped to bring us to our current precipice. Let’s stop and think about why many of today’s calls to action are reminiscent of previous appeals to send our young people into the flames, and why veteran firefighters have described how RFS volunteers feel like “cannon fodder”.
For people seeking safety and security – the Government has attempted to weaponise vulnerability, fear, and uncertainty. When they eventually took concerted action following the New Year fire surge and the spreading anger against them, it was predominantly a military response – seeking to demonstrate concern, strength, and menace. This belated reaction was the largest military operation in Australia since World War Two. A few weeks later, Scott Morrison was at the National Press Club announcing he would be examining how to allow the Government to more easily declare a state of emergency and deploy the military. Now we have a Royal Commission on the fires, led by a retired air chief marshal, looking at what ways the armed forces should be used to respond to disaster emergencies.
Armoured personnel carriers on the way to Kangaroo Island.
Eco-fascism & Climate Barbarism
As we face the dangers and anxieties of climate, environmental, and extinction crises, these concerns are added to the other insecurities of contemporary capitalist society. Among them, worries about how the forces of capitalist states are being deployed. As Naomi Klein has argued, the ruling class is implementing measures of climate change adaptation on their terms – building border walls, unleashing white supremacist ideology, and creating the intellectual rationale for allowing millions of people to die. As the rising influence of the far-right seeks to mobilise grief, despair, trauma and anger, turning people against each other and the environment, millions of people are already dying to protect the interests of the ruling class and the system which keeps them rich and powerful.
Authoritarianism is embedded into contemporary government and the Australian economy is tied to expanding militarism. As governments cut social aid and welfare support, they increase spending on police, military, and security forces, while introducing more repressive laws governing protests, strikes, behaviour, speech, movement, use of public space, and other civil rights. So, it’s no coincidence that state emergency planning is often in the hands of the most fascistic/militaristic sections of the government, or that someone like Peter Dutton is the senior minister responsible for Emergency Management Australia (EMA), helping to explain the lack of a humanitarian response. As evidenced by the bushfire crisis, EMA is not really a ‘disaster preparedness agency’, instead its chief concerns are ‘law and order’, the protection of private property, and national security. Those calling for a strong leader, or military intervention, should be aware that the ‘climate war’ is becoming very profitable for military, security, aid, relief, and other ‘disaster capitalism’ enterprises. The chief architects of contemporary disaster management are among the most vicious defenders of the capitalist system – who have long prepared for battles to defend capital and its state forms during crises – planning for ‘continuity of government’ via dismantling existing forms and replacing them with fascistic ‘emergency measures’. So, we should be aware that so-called ‘Civil Defence’ can easily become a military/police/security operation, with authoritarian ‘disaster management’ potentially rolled-out indefinitely.
The ability of people to resist disaster capitalism and to construct communist alternatives is due to the history of struggles prior to disasters and the ways in which disasters cause a breakdown in both the administrative capacities and the authority of governments. In disasters the hierarchies and institutions, the social structures, tend to fall apart and the rise of disaster communism can become very threatening to elites, which is one reason they often react to disasters with military/police power. Large scale mobilisations are required to help defend the environment and living things and although the military can potentially do some of this, their dominant tendency is the defence of colonialism, capitalism, and the ruling class. Helpful resources and efforts, as well as the way we think about and articulate them, must be demilitarised.
We’re not ‘all in this together’
Social inequality means that when facing the climate crisis we are not ‘all in this together’. Disasters, like the fires, exacerbate existing and long-term vulnerabilities, poverty, precarity, access to power and resources. The poor and marginalised bear the brunt and struggle to survive/adapt/take action. If the climate crisis is a war, it is part of class war, colonial war, and the war against nature. To end such a war we must end class and colonialism and make peace with the earth. So, it’s crucial to challenge the thinking and practices which reproduce violence and destruction. Rather than enlisting an army to conquer the earth, we need to nurture ecosystems of care, protecting ourselves and other living things with democratic defence systems which are self-organised and non-hierarchical; which build solidarity, link egalitarian social movements, and prepare for future disasters.
Governments are signalling a new stage of climate change politics – a sinister shift to so-called ‘practical measures of adaptation’. This is doomsday prepping writ large, expanding on survival and disaster-preparedness strategies from a right-wing perspective, influenced by fascistic ideas of defending ‘your turf’ from disaster victims, with ‘masses of desperate people at your door’ who are ‘trying to take what you have’, amidst a ‘breakdown in law and order’. And we can see how envisaging the popular dystopias of capitalist culture, prepping for Armageddon, or dreaming of a world better off without humanity, can become self-fulfilling prophecies. These types of preparations already involve the construction of bunkers, gated communities, travel restrictions, border fences, roundups, deportations, detention camps, and the hoarding of supplies.
During the fire crisis, we have seen how attention can be turned away from acknowledging people’s care and generosity, or from state and corporate environmental crimes, in order to focus on ‘arsonists’, small scale ‘scammers’, and ‘looters’, and how concern for wildlife and eco-systems can be diverted into the need to protect property and businesses from the ‘hazards’ of bushland, eco-systems and habitats. Here the need to ‘adapt’ is used to justify reducing national parks, increased forestry and land clearing, building more dams, expanding fossil fuel and other destructive projects, the construction of warlike defences, and continuation of the ‘war on nature’.
As Mark Gawne and I outlined previously, communal opposition to these adaptations from above – adaptation from below or solidarity adaptation – involves the organisation of resources and relationships which meet the existing material needs of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, those living through or displaced by drought, sea level rises, floods, fires and so on. As well as the organisation of resources for the extension of collective control and decision making in the hands of those affected. These forms of adaptation require appreciation of the other worlds that already exist and a growing commitment to struggle for radical alternatives.
Caring for Country and Nurturing Loving Relationships
Today, humanity’s survival hinges on the preservation and extension of loving relationships that nurture the biosphere, people, flora, fauna, land, water, air, life. One of the most positive things emerging from the fire crisis is the growing embrace of Indigenous cultural burning. Aboriginal land management practices need to be front and centre of the way we deal with the risks associated with climate crisis, environmental destruction and the regularity and intensification of fires. As Lauren Tynan, a Director of Koori Country Firesticks, outlined at the Wollongong bushfire climate protest in early January, cultural burning is a tried and tested methodology that uses a whole of system approach. “This way of burning is more than land management and hazard reduction- it’s living together as mob, with our children and allowing them to learn from fire themselves, allowing them to have a relationship with Country that is healing and revitalising.” And “Climate action is also about relationships, communities and families. Decolonising ecology means restoring Indigenous stewardship to stolen lands [and] colonial governments must cede control over land management and make space for Indigenous people to bring ceremony and healing to their lands and bodies.”
Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council Chairman, Jade Kennedy, explains that Country is “intimate, interconnected relationships” involving various roles, obligations and connectedness based on respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. Caring for Country involves learning how to work with and for Country so that we can nurture and sustain life. Relationships of care are crucial to the creation of healthier environments, focused equally on humans and the nonhuman world in a dynamic of interdependence and love, devoting more time, energy, and resources to what’s most valuable – our relationships, environments, and communities. Although Indigenous people only have custodianship of around a quarter of the world’s land, they currently protect eighty per cent of the world’s biodiversity. For over two hundred years Aboriginal peoples have fought the destructive path of colonialism and capitalism. They have been on the frontline of resistance and their care for Country stretches back tens of thousands of years. We must listen and learn.
Communing with Nature
The fire crisis has unleashed on a massive scale something which occurs every day – people offering others a helping hand. These acts of care make a lie out of the idea that people are selfish, self-absorbed, and apathetic. Instead people are often generous, loving, and communally minded. When disasters hit, people responding in caring ways reach out and get to know each, take action, re-configure spaces and relationships, and develop more egalitarian social processes. During the bushfire crisis, many have learned that the best way to cope with grief, trauma, and feelings of helplessness is by helping and being part of a communal recovery. Resiliency is a product of social connectedness, community cooperation, and collaboration. What tens of thousands of traumatised people need now is more care, compassion, safety, comfort, and support.
Having no answers to prevent a rising tide of anger, political ‘fossil fools’ continue to scurry for cover from enflamed communities who want to know why they haven’t acted. But, of course, they have acted – they have acted for the rich, for the corporations, and for themselves. Fantasies of a benign state are incredibly dangerous when so many state forms are becoming more repressive. In the face of disaster, many people see that they cannot rely on corporations, governments and bureaucrats, and in response they turn to each other for support. And these are the alternative social relations that we can rely on, in the face of future disasters, by nurturing communal reliance rather than state-reliance or corporate reliance.
Here on the South Coast, we are now positioned as an important location in the global climate, environmental, and extinction crises – due to the impact of the fires and our responses, the struggles over the future of coal mining, the growth and radicalisation of the climate justice movement, and the development of alternative ways of living and creating. In response to the dangers of annihilation and the adaptations of disaster capitalism, we can construct our own futures and assist revolutionary global transformations, while hoping that time is on our side. We have the power to create radical social change – but we need to organise the best ways to use it – so that we can be the hope we’re looking for.
Nick Southall
taking action for themselves. Yet, much of our crucial and powerful caring activity will remain invisible. Late last year, 
revolts now 