{"id":233563,"date":"2025-10-22T22:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T22:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233563\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T22:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T22:40:09","slug":"irrepressible-environmentalist-bob-brown-reflects-on-a-life-of-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233563\/","title":{"rendered":"irrepressible environmentalist Bob Brown reflects on a life of activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hobart\u2019s Theatre Royal was packed to the rafters on a chilly October evening when the irrepressible nature warrior Bob Brown launched his latest book Defiance<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Given the state of the planet \u201cwe just have to be defiant\u201d, Brown told the audience, as the image of activist Lisa Searle<\/a> was projected onto the screen behind him. <\/p>\n

Searle sat atop one of the world\u2019s tallest flowering plants, a eucalyptus tree named Sentinel by its defenders, in Tasmania\u2019s Styx Valley, perched there to prevent its destruction.<\/p>\n

Review: Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders \u2013 Bob Brown (Black Inc.)<\/p>\n

Writing is itself an act of defiance for Brown. Defiance is the latest and last in a long line of books. A collection of \u201cmusings about the human-induced plight of the planet\u201d, it contains stories, calls to action, and odes to \u201cour brilliant little planet\u201d. It is written with thanks to \u201ceveryone who has ever lifted a finger to ward off its destruction\u201d. <\/p>\n

Some of these writings have appeared previously. Some are historical recollections. Many paint pictures of unique Australian environments and places, both protected and despoiled. But all of them decry \u201cthe escalating global overconsumption of Earth\u2019s living resources\u201d. <\/p>\n

Communal action<\/p>\n

Defiance calls for open resistance, taking the plunderers head on by \u201cdefying the laws that serve those who are exploiting the planet and its people\u201d. But environmental activism is not just an act of defiance for Brown. It is also an antidote to depression. <\/p>\n

He suffered from the \u201cblack dog\u201d in the decade before he moved to Tasmania, where he fell in with local activists and, motivated by their ardour, soon found himself director of the nascent Tasmanian Wilderness Society. As history attests, Brown then plunged headlong into the ultimately successful campaign<\/a> in the early 1980s to save southern Australia\u2019s last great wild river, the Franklin.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s defiance began in the 1970s. As a young medical doctor visiting the United States, he protested in Chicago in support of students in Greece, who were opposing a military coup d\u2019etat there. Two years later, he was camped out alone and fasting for a week atop kunanyi\/Mount Wellington<\/a> in Hobart in protest at the visit of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. <\/p>\n

It takes courage to be an environmentalist of Brown\u2019s ilk. Over his activist years, which continue even today, he has been attacked physically and verbally, dragged from under bulldozers, arrested, jailed and shot at. But he has an uncanny way of shaking this off and seeing the upside. <\/p>\n

When Brown found himself in Tasmania\u2019s Risdon Prison for participating in the blockade against the flooding of the Franklin River, he played ping pong and volleyball and \u201cenjoyed the features of jail which match the wilderness \u2013 no phones, no traffic, no slick advertising, and the early-to-bed, early-to-rise routine\u201d.<\/p>\n

Only defiant communal action, Brown argues, can keep the destruction of nature in check. If, as he writes, \u201cmaterialism\u2019s dream is of a virtual reality to replace the wild Earth\u201d, we cannot stand by and do nothing. In Defiance, he evokes the great tradition of non-violent action, where \u201cordinary people take affairs into our own hands to overcome the power of corporate influence on governments\u201d. <\/p>\n

Brown intended Defiance to be a direct-action handbook, only to be overwhelmed by the stories of defiance and the good fights that needed telling. And there are many examples of communal action in his book. <\/p>\n

Defiance is dedicated to Amrita Devi<\/a>, the original tree-hugging activist, whose bravery has inspired forest defenders around the world. In 1730, Devi and her three daughters, along with 359 fellow Bishnoi people, were beheaded for obstructing the clearing of the Khejarli forest in Rajasthan, northern India. <\/p>\n

Brown also celebrates \u201cnature\u2019s defenders\u201d in Australia, including luminaries Melva<\/a> and Olegas Truchanas<\/a>, who tried to save Tasmania\u2019s Lake Pedder<\/a>, and Lionel Murphy<\/a>, the High Court Justice who played a crucial role in saving the Franklin River. <\/p>\n

He writes of Anmatyerr woman and globally renowned Indigenous artist Emily Kam Kngwarray<\/a>, who believed the power of her work would protect her Country, and whose legacy includes the magnificent Earth\u2019s Creation<\/a>. Ordinary stories about local acts of defiance are equally acknowledged.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Defiance, Bob Brown remains full of optimism.
\n Ethan James\/AAP<\/p>\n

Dance, love, read a book<\/p>\n

There is an element of being up against the impossible in such defiance. Today, the scales have tipped even further against activists, with laws in Australia curtailing civil disobedience. <\/p>\n

Following its stories of collective action, Defiance turns to what activists are up against: the brutes in suits, \u201cas rich in dollars as they are poor in spirit\u201d. <\/p>\n

Brown has no hesitation in denouncing their unrelenting pursuit of growth, because Earth\u2019s living resources cannot sustain it. He delivers blistering broadsides against capitalism, corporations, plutocrats and \u201cgreenophobia\u201d, which he calls \u201cthe fear or hatred of environmentalists\u201d. <\/p>\n

Brown has been staring down corporate power as an activist, green politician, state leader, Australian senator and environmental advocate for half a century. In Defiance, the conservative media, the egoists, the billionaires who rule the world, and the politicians who are too compromised or too feeble to resist corporate power are called out as complicit. <\/p>\n

But Brown also makes it clear that having fun is not incongruent with saving the planet. Indeed, he warns that \u201cangst at the imminence of Earth\u2019s destruction isn\u2019t helpful\u201d. Anxiety shouldn\u2019t trip you up on the path to action, he warns. There is always time on hand to turn things around. You can still \u201cdance, love, be loved\u201d, or read a book by the river. <\/p>\n

This is not to treat environmental destruction lightly, but to sustain the human efforts to address it. After decades of activism, Brown remains full of optimism in Defiance.<\/p>\n

Defiant people make things happen, author Geraldine Brooks observes in her foreword to the the book. Indeed, the arc of the moral universe only bends towards justice if brave people make it so. <\/p>\n

There is no creeping conservatism about the octogenarian Brown; if anything, he is more infectiously defiant than ever. His book concludes with a series of odes to wild places that reveal his close, indeed transpersonal, connection with nature. He wants everyone to share how it feels to see a wedge-tailed eagle rise on thermals, or the sun break through the clouds and light up a patch of forest in a distant valley. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need natural beauty,\u201d he writes, because \u201cour minds and bodies are made for wildness\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hobart\u2019s Theatre Royal was packed to the rafters on a chilly October evening when the irrepressible nature warrior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-233563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}