This seminar was recorded at the Australian National University on 5 December 2017. Please do not reproduce without permission.

While the political right may harness fear to resist change, fear (and fearlessness) may play very different roles for environmental activists. The Lock the Gate alliance and its siblings have brought together a diverse group of farmers and other landholders, environmental activists and local communities in a remarkably effective grassroots movement to oppose the expansion of coal mining and coal seam gas exploration. Its activities have generated powerful emotions, perhaps most strikingly in the case of the Bentley Blockade, when protesters were preparing for the arrival of 850 riot police.

About the speakers

Neil Gunningham is a Professor at RegNet. He is an internationally recognised academic in the fields of environmental regulation, health and safety regulation, and energy and climate governance. Most recently, he has focussed on the role of grassroots activism in climate change governance.

Annie Kia is the Community Engagement Coordinator of the Lock the Gate Alliance. She helped develop grassroots power while working as Lock the Gate’s Community Engagement Coordinator.. She has written on the power of networked humanity and on how an understanding of complex systems helps scale up social movements. She has written on the power of networked humanity and on adaptive and complex systems.

Hedda Ransan-Cooper is a Research Fellow at the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science. Her interests lie in the intersections between everyday life and global processes of change, including the role of emotions in climate activism. She is the project coordinator for the CONSORT project - an ARENA funded trial of renewable technology on Bruny Island, Tasmania.