The Children’s Crusade.

(Source. Credit: NSW Aboriginal Land Council)

The Darling disaster affected locals. Towns and isolated homesteads lost their water supply and with it their future existence was endangered. In addition to that, Aboriginal nations are seeing their ancestral land for tens of thousands of years destroyed.

They are among the first Australian human victims of climate change.

Understandably, locals, Aboriginal and white, all are concerned. And they have done what was in their hands to solve this problem: they did their best to raise public awareness about the disaster, mayors of the towns affected traveled to Sydney to lobby the State Government; locals sponsored institutional reform proposals and public petitions and attempted to put the political heat on their political representatives; just a few days ago, they rallied along the Darling asking for a royal commission on the Murray-Darling Basin (the Australian Greens’ proposal).

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Regardless of the specific initiatives and how one evaluates them (I, for one, think shifting from Nationals to One Nation is not an obviously wise move, for instance) the bottom line is that they used the redress avenues liberal democracy offers them.

It didn’t seem to work.

As much as I sympathise with them, I fear they, unlike large irrigators in northern and southern New South Wales, have little political leverage. That explains Niall Blair’s snubbing the mayors (and that Premier Gladys Berejiklian could claim she didn’t even know of their visit) or that the rallies caused little waves, while Sussan Ley quickly volunteered to advocate for Riverina irrigators.

At most their dissatisfaction with the Nationals may affect the upcoming NSW State elections (March 23).

Let’s put it this way: a mass workers’ strike can still disrupt the economy, a manifestation of a few hundred locals cannot.

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We began today with young faces. Let’s close with young faces in a note of hope, not directly related to the Darling tragedy.

(source)

The second Aussie school kids’ strike demanding action on climate change is scheduled for today. It is part of a global wave of such strikes, inspired by the Swedish student Greta Thunberg. I’m really proud of you, kids. I’m also proud that in Australia the strikes have the support of a number of unions.

I’ll be frank. Although I sincerely wish them all success, realistically I don’t expect much in the way of immediate results from those strikes. What makes me hopeful is that kids are starting to wake up to their journey. We adults failed, it’s for the younger generations to fix the mess we leave behind.

Godspeed, kids.