Stop clouding the issue
Women should use their voice to force governments to act on climate change, says Jo Flanagan IDEAS OVER A CUPPA
Climate change is our biggest public health challenge, and the women’s movement has the tools we need to address it, says Women’s Health Tasmania chief executive Jo Flanagan.
“For a long time the women’s movement has been talking about the need for solidarity,” Jo says, when we meet at Jackman & McRoss Bakery at New Town.
“Traditionally, the women’s movement was very inclusive. It has often come out in support of other groups looking for justice in the community.
“Climate change is a global challenge and we need to work together to fix this. As a principle of moving forward, that’s really important.”
Timing our meeting for the lead-up to International Women’s Day, on Sunday, I’ve been expecting Jo to talk about personal health and specific issues facing Tasmanian women. But as our secondwave feminist sisters used to say, the personal is political.
And global warming impacts are very political indeed in a country where successive federal leadership battles have been fought, one way or another, over carbon credits.
Jo is girding in her approach and global in her thinking, as befits her place in a movement of public health professionals committed to sharing their climacticenvironmental hazards on human health forecasts.
“At Women’s Health Tasmania we talk about climate change not as a random thing, but because it has been identified as such a significant public health threat, so it is completely within our remit to talk about it,” Jo says.
Don’t fiddle while Rome burns is pretty much the gist of our conversation from the getgo. Only Rome is Hobart and tinderbox-dry areas of regional Tasmania.
“And precious little seems to be happening in the State Government level to deal with the utterly predicted impacts of climate change,” Jo says. Women are particularly at risk. “The people most at risk from climate change are the people who are the most vulnerable because of socio-economic disadvantage,” Jo says. “Women are overrepresented in groups that are living in poverty and are therefore more at risk globally.”
Jo rues a lack of leadership in Australia at federal and state levels over the issue.
“In 10 years’ time, we need a government that has the courage and creativity to accept this situation and has a plan to lead us out of it.”
At the moment, attempts are even being made to shut down debate at a state level, she says, referring to the Liberal Government’s antiprotest legislation which passed the Lower House in November.
“If they get the legislation through to stop protests, we are in really big trouble,” she says. “Climate change represents a massive threat to our lifestyle, to the economy and to public health, and to think that the response to that is to keep going the way we are going and trying to close down debate and public protest [particularly around the environment] is foolishness.”
Jo says she has more faith in the soundness of grassroots leadership, including not-forprofit organisations, groundup community groups and Aboriginal organisations. She pays specific tribute to the magnificent alliance of former emergency services leaders, including former Tasmania Fire Service chief Mike Brown, who repeatedly tried to warn the Prime Minister, from the first half of last year, of the horrific fire season that lay ahead, but were brushed off.
“It’s as if the country is too complicated for the government to govern and leadership has gone back to community level,” Jo says.
“I think that’s a really good thing; it’s a bit like Australian Rules football surviving in community football, even if it’s dying at AFL level.”
At a local level, climate change-related health impacts can be as acute and lifethreatening as respiratory problems during bushfires; and they can be as insidious and life-threatening as the rise of anxiety and depression among Tasmanian women that Jo cites. While fear of homelessness was one trigger for a marked rise in these mental health conditions, particularly among older women, stress and anxiety about climate-related uncertainty and environmental damage was another.
“The trauma of something like a prolonged bushfire season, people knowing the environment is under assault and communities are under threat, and not knowing where people they care about are, or if their houses are gone, has a profound impact on people.”
Let’s call on those traditional women’s movement principles of justice, equality and fairness, she says, to bring us together, all of us, and see us through.