In 2013, Gregory Andrews was an adviser to the then atmosphere minister Greg Hunt, working in an workplace that scrapped the Tim Flannery-led Local weather Fee and abolished a nationwide carbon value scheme.
Late final 12 months he was Australia’s excessive commissioner in western Africa, the place his job centered on serving to push oil and fuel developments by Australian firms.
Shortly after daybreak on Wednesday, he was a part of an Extinction Riot protest exterior Parliament Home, calling for a right away finish to fossil gasoline growth.
“Two years in the past I might have thought [Extinction Rebellion protesters] have been annoying and we ought to be making an attempt to result in change one other method,” he mentioned of his abrupt transformation from civil service to civil disobedience.
“However I've had a rising consciousness that it is a worsening local weather emergency. The proof is obvious that the world’s already a harmful place, and it’s on observe to change into unliveable for billions of individuals in my youngsters’s lifetimes. That wasn’t the case once I was at college.”
Andrews mentioned he had a wakeup name in Africa after being appointed excessive commissioner and ambassador to 9 international locations in 2020 and discovering a central duty was representing the business pursuits of Australian companies.
“In that a part of the world Australian pursuits are mining and assets,” he mentioned. “A extremely essential a part of my job was selling fossil gasoline developments together with the large Sangomar oil and fuel growth in Senegal. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d stayed in Africa and stored selling an enormous fossil gasoline undertaking like that.”
Earlier than his last abroad posting, Andrews’ profession as a public servant included a stint as a world local weather negotiator for the Rudd and Gillard authorities and being appointed the primary nationwide threatened species commissioner. He's additionally recognized for a controversial nameless TV look in 2006 that was blamed for instigating the Howard authorities’s Northern Territory intervention.
Now a self-described “full-time Dad” and adjunct affiliate professor in ecology with the College of Canberra, he was considered one of a number of former civil servants to hitch the Extinction Riot crowd on Wednesday. It adopted younger local weather protesters from the group the Tomorrow Motion holding an illustration within the parliament home lobby on Tuesday that was damaged up by police.
Andrews shouldn't be a spokesperson for Extinction Riot – which says the local weather science signifies the world ought to be aiming to achieve web zero emissions by 2025 – however mentioned he was pushed to hitch the frontline activists partly by concern over the rise of “extremely draconian” anti-protest legal guidelines in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.
He mentioned he believed that, regardless of the Albanese authorities’s robust rhetoric on lowering emissions as the brand new parliament sat for the primary time this week, the local weather disaster continued to be handled as a fringe concern.
“It's nice to have a extra progressive and kinder authorities, one which I believe displays the values of many Australians, however we have to do rather more than they've promised,” Andrews mentioned.
“Because the secretary normal of the United Nations [António Guterres] has mentioned, half of humanity is within the hazard zone from local weather change. The bushfires and floods we’re seeing now are only a style check. We have to stop all new coal and fuel initiatives right away.”
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Requested how he reconciled his previous roles along with his newfound activism, Andrews mentioned he was happy with his profession however seeking to the long run, and Extinction Riot had made clear it “needs defectors”.
“I’m not taken with blame, I’m taken with local weather motion, and having a protected local weather for people and our extraordinary wildlife and biodiversity,” he mentioned. “That’s what issues now.”
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