This was published 4 years ago
Good Weekend's 40 Australians Who Mattered: Environment
Law student Katta O’Donnell is taking on some of the most powerful institutions in the country, but her generation understands what is at stake. Plus, Steve Meacher and Greg Mullins.
Katta O’Donnell's lawsuit could have profound consequences for the way governments tackle climate change.Credit: Josh Robenstone
Katta O’Donnell
La Trobe University law student Katta O’Donnell, 23, decided to take on our most powerful institutions and individuals in a lawsuit that could have profound consequences for the way governments tackle climate change. Filed in July, her suit claims the Commonwealth of Australia, along with the Treasury Secretary and the CEO of the Australian Office of Financial Management, have failed in their duty to disclose the potential risks of climate change to the value of government bonds. O’Donnell is arguing that the government and its agencies’ heads have a responsibility to disclose the risk climate change presents to investors.
Should she win, it could also compel the government to disclose how climate change might affect, say, the nation’s economic growth, or its international standing, or the value of the Australian currency. In turn, this could force the government to better prepare for and respond to the dangers of climate change.
An application to have the case thrown out of court is to be heard in mid-2021. Whether it succeeds or not, Elaine Johnson, director of legal strategy at the Environmental Defenders Office, says O’Donnell is to be admired. “She’s taking on some of the most powerful individuals and institutions in the country, but her generation knows the science and knows the stakes.”
Steve Meacher's activism and work has given heart to environmentalists around the country.Credit: Eddie Jim
Steve Meacher
A grown Leadbeater’s possum would sit comfortably in the palm of your hand, but it’s happiest scampering about the tops of towering mountain ash trees in Victoria’s Central Highlands. This might be why the state’s only endemic marsupial was thought to have become extinct in the 1930s until its rediscovery in 1961.
Today, the critically endangered animal is threatened by worsening bushfires and the logging of native forest, but it has a far greater chance of survival due to the extraordinary work of retired teacher Steve Meacher and the organisation he leads, Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum. Meacher and his team spent countless silent nights gazing at the tops of mountain ash trees to catch and record glimpses of the possums and log their locations via GPS. Having gathered the evidence of their presence in sections of forest set aside for logging, Meacher and the Friends launched a legal action against Victoria’s state-owned logging corporation, VicForests, asserting that it was breaking federal environmental laws with its operations in critical habitats.
In a scathing judgment in May, Federal Court Justice Debra Mortimer found that VicForests’ operations were damaging or destroying existing habitat
critical to the survival of Leadbeater’s possums and greater gliders and may prevent new areas of forest from developing into such habitat in the future.
The national significance of the decision, which the Wilderness Society called the “Franklin Dam” of forestry legal judgments, cannot be exaggerated,
according to environmental leader Bob Brown. “For years, activists have seen the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act [EPBC] as more effective at protecting loggers than the environment,” Brown says. “Steve Meacher proved that the EPBC could be used to protect critical forests. It has given heart to environmentalists around the country.”
As a result of Meacher’s work, says Brown, legal action to protect sections of forest is being planned or has begun in Tasmania, NSW and Western Australia. Meanwhile, VicForests is appealing the decision and the federal government is planning to devolve environmental protection responsibilities to the states.
Greg Mullins has helped explain the true and immediate threat of climate change to millions of Australians.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Greg Mullins
Horrified by conditions he knew to be unprecedented in Australian history, Greg Mullins made Churchillian efforts to warn Prime Minister Scott Morrison about the looming bushfire catastrophe. When the fires came, the former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner, who’d retired from the top job in 2017 only to rejoin the volunteer service, was back on the fire lines, fighting the Gospers Mountain fire north-west of Sydney as well as blazes at Batemans Bay, Bargo and Casino. But it was the work he did off the fire grounds that might prove his most significant service yet.
Having asked for a meeting with the PM in April 2019 to discuss the upcoming fire season and been rebuffed, he was the first to sign a letter from 23 former emergency chiefs calling on the PM to help state governments prepare and to take immediate action to reduce emissions. Then, during and after last summer’s fires, he made himself endlessly available to media to explain in calm, urgent language the direct link between the national and global failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decreased rainfall and humidity, increased heat and the unfolding disaster.
By speaking out, he knew he was opening himself up to criticism. “But he’s risked his life for others in the past, so he’s a pretty tough cookie,” says conservationist Tim Flannery, who in 2013 helped establish the Climate Council, which aims to provide independent, authoritative information on climate change to the public. Mullins joined the not-for-profit when he retired in 2017. According to Flannery, Mullins’ passion and willingness to leverage both his scientific and emergency service expertise helped explain the true and immediate threat of climate change to millions of Australians for the first time.
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.