As the climate crisis intensifies, Australians are demanding action—and many are doing so by taking to the streets, beaches, and waterways. In Newcastle, Rising Tide’s planned “People’s Blockade of the World’s Largest Coal Port” is gearing up to be a bold statement for climate justice. But with the Supreme Court ruling in favour of NSW Police to block the protest from going ahead, a critical question hangs in the air: Is the right to peaceful assembly truly safe in Australia?
The people organising and attending these protests believe in a future where fossil fuel interests don’t overshadow climate justice, and the stakes for that vision couldn’t be higher.
Why the Right to Peaceful Assembly Matters
The right to peaceful assembly is foundational to democracy and justice. From women’s suffrage to environmental protection, peaceful gatherings have always pushed society forward. As Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter put it, “The right to peaceful assembly is a fundamental pillar of a healthy democracy and a basic right of all Australians.” When police challenge climate protests in court, it’s more than a bureaucratic move—it’s a step toward silencing public voices.
Australia’s tradition of public assembly is rooted in the belief that change requires showing up and speaking out. Ritter added, “From women’s rights to vote to worker’s rights, so much of what we take for granted today was won by people coming together to take a stand against injustice, discrimination and environmental destruction..” The stakes may feel high for those who want to peacefully assemble, but this is exactly what a democracy should encourage.
The People’s Blockade: Rising Tide’s Mission
Rising Tide’s “People’s Blockade” is set to be one of the most significant climate uprisings in Australian history. The Blockade in Newcastle will be followed by an occupation on the lawns of Parliament house in Canberra. The whole event will run from Tuesday 19th November until Thursday 28th. Thousands of people will paddle into the port on kayaks and rafts, halting coal exports in a vivid demonstration for climate action.
Why Newcastle? The Symbolism of the World’s Largest Coal Port
For many, Newcastle isn’t just a city; it’s a symbol of the coal industry’s grip on Australia. Exporting 165 million tons of coal a year on average, the port is a powerful reminder of Australia’s role as the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter. Rising Tide’s choice to protest in Newcastle emphasises the urgent need for a just energy transition, especially in areas where coal exports are a primary economic force.
As Ritter emphasised, “Coal, oil, and gas are the key drivers of climate change, fuelling worsening bushfires, storms, droughts, and heatwaves in Australia, costing us billions, harming our health, taking lives and jeopardising peoples’ livelihoods.” The damage is already here, and peaceful protests like Rising Tide’s are an expression of Australians’ deep concern for their land, their communities, and their future.
Key Demands of Rising Tide’s People’s Blockade:
- Immediate Cancellation of New Fossil Fuel Projects: The blockade advocates for a complete halt on new coal, oil, and gas projects.
- Tax on Fossil Fuel Export Profits: Rising Tide is calling for a 78% tax on fossil fuel profits to fund the transition of local communities and industries toward sustainable solutions.
- End Coal Exports from Newcastle by 2030: Newcastle’s port, the largest coal export port in the world, is at the center of Rising Tide’s call to phase out coal exports entirely by 2030.
Rising Tide’s mission is to spark serious climate action, but the blockade also aims to give people a voice and place in this fight. As David Ritter noted, “As the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter, Australia is a major driver of the climate crisis. Peaceful assembly to call on governments to accelerate the transition away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels is legitimate and valuable. Greenpeace Australia Pacific stands with all peaceful climate defenders who are advocating for real climate action.”
NSW Police and the Crackdown on Protest Rights
NSW police have been putting up barriers—literally and legally—to climate protests, and the Newcastle blockade is no exception. Citing safety concerns, police have taken Rising Tide to court, and won, arguing the protest should not be allowed. But this is not the first time police have tried to clamp down on climate activists.
Zack Schofield, one of the organisers, explained that Rising Tide “approached the police in good faith,” only to be met with resistance. “We’re really disappointed that New South Wales Police has chosen to use the resources of the supreme court to attempt to challenge this community-positive, family-friendly climate [event] in again, the hottest year on record.”
The situation in NSW speaks to a larger trend of targeting climate protesters, with civil rights organisations stepping in to criticise the government’s actions. “This attempt by NSW Police is another example of the continuing crackdown on people exercising their right to freedom of assembly in NSW,” said Amnesty International’s Nikita White. “Peaceful protests, including non-violent direct actions, are how people create change and make the world a better place.”
Greenpeace Stands with Climate Defenders
Greenpeace Australia Pacific has thrown its full support behind Rising Tide and every Australian who chooses to stand up for the environment. “Large numbers of Australians gathering in Newcastle expressing their deep concern about the damage being caused by the coal industry should be welcomed for what it is – people caring deeply about the future of our country and the safety of our children.” says Ritter.
The people organising and attending these protests are Australians who are committed to ensuring a safe future for all. Greenpeace sees these gatherings as part of a broader movement for climate justice and a necessary action when faced with the destructive impacts of fossil fuels. Peaceful protests amplify voices and bring attention to the urgent need for change.
The Importance of Peaceful Assembly for Climate Justice
- A Voice Against Environmental Injustice: Peaceful protest lets communities speak out on policies that threaten their health and environment.
- Historical Precedent for Social Change: From voting rights to environmental protection, peaceful assemblies have historically driven meaningful advancements.
- A Check on Government and Corporate Power: Protests shine a light on pressing issues like fossil fuel dependence, issues that governments and corporations might otherwise ignore.
- Public Solidarity in Times of Crisis: Coming together for a cause shows unity and can inspire a broader public movement for change.
This November, Australians paddling out into Newcastle’s waters are not just blocking coal exports—they’re embodying a vision for a fairer, more sustainable world. The People’s Blockade may face challenges, but its message will resonate long after the kayaks are back on shore. In standing with climate defenders, Greenpeace and countless Australians are showing that the right to peaceful assembly is alive and well, and it remains a crucial part of building a just and liveable future.
No new fossil fuels
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The Right to Peaceful Assembly: Defending Rising Tide’s Climate Action in Newcastle
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Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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