Scales of Environmental Engagement in an Industrial Town: Glocal Perspectives from Gladstone, Queensland

ABSTRACT

Gladstone, Queensland, is one of Australia’s largest coal ports and the site of many industries. Few of the 65,000 residents of the region are socially and economically independent of the fossil fuel industry. Environmental engagement is fragmented. The city epitomises, in a striking way, the double bind of growth and sustainability. The Australian environmental movement is generally seen as distant and irrelevant to local concerns. The article analyses conditions for, forms of and implications of environmental engagement in a city where coal, gas and industry are taken for granted as necessary conditions for prosperity and economic security. To what extent are ecological relevant to the residents; and how can they be dealt with within the parameters that define their lifeworlds? What can the Gladstone experience teach us about possible solutions to the double bind of growth and sustainability?

KEYWORDS:

• Scale
• environmentalism
• energy
• double bind
• Australia

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my Overheating colleagues and three anonymous referees for useful comments. The gist of the argument was presented at the Department of Anthropology at the LSE on 19 June 2015 and at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen on 3 December 2015, and I thank the participants at both events for excellent comments. I also thank friends and acquaintances in Gladstone and beyond for making my research possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Fieldwork in Gladstone took place from November 2013 to March 2014.

2. Eventually, the Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone Project, organised by the Gladstone Regional Council, published a report (Queensland Government 2010) on the quality of the air in the city. Although it was occasionally referred to by my informants, many tended to base their conclusions on personal experience and news stories.

3. Martin Hanson (1923–1976) was a Labor politician and member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1963 to his death. Rio Tinto is the most powerful corporation in Gladstone, and is the main shareholder in the alumina and aluminium industries as well as the power station.

4. The installation ‘Crime Scene’ was composed of debris and fragments of houses which had been demolished to make way for new buildings, suggesting that social memory and local heritage were being sacrificed at the altar of progress (Eriksen in press-a).

5. Toadbusting consists in collecting and killing invasive cane toads, which threaten ecosystems in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Additional information

Funding

The research on which this article is based forms part of ‘Overheating’, funded by the ERC through an Advanced Grant [Project ID 295843].