Bob Brown is walking, but nearly wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
In July, while on the Tasman Peninsula, south-east of Hobart, staying at a friend\u2019s cabin with his partner, Paul Thomas, he rose from bed one morning, took a few steps to the lounge room and began gasping. He couldn\u2019t suck in enough air and had to sit. And he noticed his left calf was sore.<\/p>\n
Having trained as a doctor more than 50 years ago, the celebrated environmentalist and Australian Greens\u2019 lodestar quickly diagnosed himself: he had a pulmonary embolism. A blood clot that formed in a vein in his leg had risen to an artery in his lungs and was stopping the blood flow. Possibly in more than one spot.<\/p>\n
He wondered if that might be it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking it could be,\u201d he says more than two months on. \u201cAnd that it might not be. But I know it\u2019s coming very shortly. I\u2019m 80, but I\u2019m very relaxed about it. I\u2019ve had a good life and I see all these brilliant young people who think very much like I do coming along, so I will become increasingly redundant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown is recounting this as we stroll along a fire trail on kunanyi\/Mount Wellington, which sits above Hobart like a sentinel. We\u2019re headed for O\u2019Gradys Falls, a small waterfall beneath the summit\u2019s famous columned face, known as the organ pipes. It\u2019s late September and the sun is out, but this is Tasmania and Brown is dressed for the sub-10C mountain climate: a wool checked jacket over a flannel shirt.<\/p>\n
We walk at a slow, steady pace. Once we reach the falls, Brown clambers unassisted down the steep muddy slope to pose for photos amid the moss and ferns in front of the cascade. He has the gait of an older man, but there is no sign of his health crisis just weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
The threat was real. Rather than rush to the doctor, Brown chose to stay at the cabin, where he could gaze out at secluded, spectacular Stewarts Bay, just around the corner from Port Arthur, and collect his thoughts. Thomas brought aspirin and a tight stocking. That was Thursday. It wasn\u2019t until Monday that Brown sought a medical opinion in Hobart and was ordered to spend three days in hospital for a series of anticoagulation injections.<\/p>\n
Bob Brown\u2019s reflections on a life in activism, and what it means to fight for societal change, are collected in his book Defiance. Photograph: Matthew Newton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t worried, he says, because he had considered this moment for a long time. \u201cI\u2019ve thought a lot about death during my lifetime. Most people don\u2019t \u2013 not about what death means without there being some prop, like going to heaven, or nirvana, or whatever,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an alarming prospect, perpetual annihilation. But it\u2019s not if you put it in terms of all these people coming up afterwards \u2013 all these people who think exactly the same way and want life just in exactly the same way. We\u2019re a continuum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve become an atomised society which doesn\u2019t understand that, and we need to get back to seeing life as a flowing and innovative thing on the planet, not as something that is exclusively being created for our own existence. That\u2019s nonsense. And, of course, the commercial world thrives on talking about your individual needs and how to avoid all the pitfalls of life, and they make a lot of money on that. And we all fall for it to a degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s reflections on a life in activism, and what it means to fight for societal change, are collected in what he says will be his last significant book, Defiance. His prose is similar to his speaking style \u2013 sometimes freewheeling, occasionally laced with dry humour, but cohering around a message about what he has learned and believes is required now.<\/p>\n
He has been writing steadily since retiring from politics in 2012, including producing a sci-fi novelette aimed at young adults, Thera, in 2023. Defiance is a return to the big themes of his life, and a sequel of sorts to his 2014 semi-memoir, Optimism. It touches on some of his most celebrated moments, including the campaign to save the Franklin River<\/a> and Tasmania\u2019s south-west wilderness, and his shift into first state and then federal politics.<\/p>\n It also touches on his main post-political work: the creation of the Bob Brown Foundation, which takes a more direct and confrontational approach than some conservation organisations, including blockading native forest logging and opposing Antarctic krill fishing and salmon farming<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Defiance is just as focused on others\u2019 stories. He says the goal is inspiration, not straightforward autobiography. \u201cI brought out Optimism, which really just says that pessimism doesn\u2019t help, optimism does<\/a> \u2013 take your pick. Defiance is the next part of that,\u201d Brown says as we wander beneath a rainforest canopy.<\/p>\n Why? \u201cBecause the inaction that is compliance, rather than defiance, is the end of the planet as we human beings know it. That\u2019s rapidly approaching us now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cHere we are, approaching eight-and-a-half billion human beings, the biggest herd of mammals ever on the face of the planet, wanting to consume more, to have growth. And growth in a finite system ultimately must [lead to] collapse.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the great wizards, economists, powerful leaders of the world say, \u2018we won\u2019t listen to that because it doesn\u2019t fit in with our wish to convert the planet into just a perpetual money-making machine\u2019. Well, I like being an environmentalist because it\u2019s sensible. And I like defying the growth mentality because it\u2019s irrational. It\u2019s nice to be on the rational side of existence.\u201d<\/p>\n Defiance was initially envisaged as the middle part of a trilogy, but plans for a third book \u2013 to be called Caring, or possibly Compassion \u2013 have been ditched, at least for now, in part because \u201cpeople know what caring is\u201d.<\/p>\n Brown is less confident they have their heads around defiance. As the Albanese government tries to get a contentious re-write of environment law through parliament, he is blunt about where he thinks Australians stand on protecting the environment in 2025.<\/p>\n In the book, he quotes Martin Luther King Jr\u2019s observation that \u201cshallow misunderstanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will\u201d and \u201clukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection\u201d.<\/p>\n Bob Brown says \u2018it\u2019s past time to defend this life-giving planet before we destroy it\u2019. Photograph: Matthew Newton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n King was talking about the US civil rights movement, but Brown sees echoes in his own work.<\/p>\n \u201cIt applies to the great majority of Australians who want the environment protected, but don\u2019t want environmental conflict. In other words, they want us to lie down and allow the bulldozers in [to destroy nature],\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are being asked to sign petitions [for environmental causes] that don\u2019t even get read out in parliament. Clicktivism<\/a> is rampant when activism is required. We\u2019ve got less than 2% of philanthropy going to the environment and less than 1% of government funding<\/a> going to the environment. It\u2019s incredible that so many people think that we should protect the environment, but we shouldn\u2019t do anything actively to protect it.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fairly stinging review of the collective behaviour of people Brown hopes to win over. It also reflects a divide within the environmental movement over how change can happen. At its simplified extremes, the split is between those who believe the path to a better world is through working with governments to improve laws and pocketing the wins that are possible and those who think the times demand condemnation of leaders and large-scale nonviolent protest. The Bob Brown Foundation is in the latter camp.<\/p>\n Speaking a few weeks later, after the federal environment minister, Murray Watt, has released the details of the government\u2019s proposed overhaul of conservation law<\/a>, Brown is sharply critical of Anthony Albanese.<\/p>\n He calls the prime minister an \u201cenvironmental spoiler\u201d who is \u201cderelict in his obligation\u201d to protect nature, argues the government has written laws to \u201cappease the Coalition and big business\u201d and says it is \u201cabsurd\u201d for Watt to suggest the Greens should pass the legislation, reasoning it does not properly address the climate crisis or loopholes that allow agricultural land-clearing or native forest logging.<\/p>\n Yet he still sees reason for optimism. He cites the \u201c3.5% rule\u201d<\/a>, which says that engaging that proportion of a population in a mass movement nearly always leads to success. \u201cIf we had 300 million people out on the streets globally, that would change the way politics disregards the environment overnight,\u201d he says. \u201cI keep coming back to the suffragettes: 99% of women didn\u2019t take part, but 1% changed the world because their time had come. For us, it\u2019s past time to defend this life-giving planet before we destroy it.\u201d<\/p>\n He eyes a longstanding roadblock in News Corp media outlets \u201cpouring absolute scorn on environmentalists and implying that we\u2019re a threat to society, when in fact we\u2019re the salvation for society\u201d and concludes \u201cit\u2019s time we got over being nice in return\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2018So many people think that we should protect the environment, but we shouldn\u2019t do anything actively to protect it\u2019: Bob Brown. Photograph: Matthew Newton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n As we return towards where we started our walk on Pinnacle Road, Brown gestures towards the Tasmanian parliament on the waterfront below us, where he entered politics in 1983, and raises the state election held in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n