ARTISTS ARE FIRST users, we are productive, always willing to try new ideas, and needing to do more with less, especially in my field where we occupy the same space as American or European artist with much bigger budgets.

Likewise what does a former politician share with you? A lawyer and a regulator who with his colleagues was able to stop Japan killing whales in the Southern Ocean in the name of science, and aimed to keep the mammoth piles of electric detritus, the digital waste of the modern era, out of landfill as noted in the program? Or a conservation activist, who now spends time working with remote communities under the pump from governments and mining interests trammelling their hard won land rights. Communities, who if they live north of the Tropic of Capricorn, are now, according to the findings of the National Climate Risk Assessment, more likely to die of heat related deaths than previously, and who will have to flee their homes in order to survive.

To these questions I offer that is a working life of public advocacy, i.e. putting a point of view, and if, ostensibly, this was one of the reasons that brings me here, thank you for the honorary fellowship the Academy has seen fit to bestow. Still I feel like an imposter of sorts given the plethora of brains and output represented by this year’s ATSE Fellows. It is a helluva time to be gathering!

A much discussed accelerating, energy hungry technology – AI – is upon us, sucking up water and blowing our limited carbon budget whilst promising boundless wealth and opportunity. Its overseas commercial proponents, determined tax avoiders, leery of regulatory guardrails and indifferent to societal impact, are sparing no expense. An accelerating climate crisis, impossible to rationalise, is building terrifying momentum. Hurricane Melissa anyone? Here the promised zero carbon market transformation, assisted by the rapid deployment of new technologies, is being criminally stymied by the power of fossil fuel interests. I use the expression ‘criminally’ advisedly given the foreseeable harm already being caused by their actions. Yet these entities - sponsoring sport, community, arts - remain protected by most governments, including our own.

They are are now in full embrace with right wing governments as genuine climate action is abandoned. The urgent memo from climate and earth scientists that we are racing past the 1.5 degree limit on warming designated to allow a reasonably liveable world, is ignored, scattered like confetti on the floor of the wedding chapel in Las Vegas as the guests depart for the casino and a big night out. This is a climate emergency, a major political and social systems crisis, and it seems self-evident that we need to act as if our lives depended on that fact. Surely armed with knowledge and skill we are all activists now.

Suffragettes, anti-slavers, peacemakers, human rights campaigners … the road ahead is well lit. And for ATSE, as Nick Fleming laid out in his compelling presentation, consider not only how to shape constructive responses to what has been called an existential crisis, but engage with those causing it. Yet in this moment we are witnessing a sustained and visceral attack on facts, and on science itself, by the 47th President of the United States and his government, as reason is discarded, institutions of learning and research eviscerated, and evidence based policy overturned in the blink of an eye. Freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom full stop, is now imperilled with inevitable, albeit unpredictable consequences – one senses a hard rain is gonna fall. Galileo found out to his detriment what that means.

Karl Popper, Einstein, Jane Goodall and James Hansen, to pick a few names at random, assert, and Indigenous knowledge holders confirm, that scientific and technological endeavour doesn’t take place in a values free vacuum. It never has, it never will. The production of reliable knowledge about the natural world, which is the province of science and technology, as American writer Audra Wolfe constantly reminds us, exists in a ‘web’ of politics and power. Politics and people, their culture and governing arrangements, determine the conditions under which human relations are mediated, and, whether imagination and technical intelligence is encouraged, supported and harvested, or not.

There have been hints at this conference of the tectonic changes that are washing over us, and a whisper (perhaps) that it’s not the technology per se that is the issue, helpful, exciting and necessary as it is. At heart it’s the character and depth of our human response to an unparalleled situation that is being tested. The world is changed, for better or worse by those who show up, those who reasonably advocate and then act. There is no safe middle ground here, even in our relatively benign circumstances.

We shouldn’t think for a moment that compulsory voting and a well-educated populace are sufficient bulwarks against extremism and irrational prejudice. Especially with the fracturing of traditional media. With nature, there is no second guessing. So how long do governments think they can maintain the fiction of aiming to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions whilst approving Santos, Woodside and others’ massive planet frying emissions intensive projects without consequence?

Mother Nature packs a mighty punch, as we are witnessing in cascading, frequent instances. She is all powerful and cares nothing for our follies or fantasies. With society, it’s often gleaned from history, there is not much second guessing either. We can resemble a mob bent on revenge, feeling left behind by progress, fuelled by enmity for the ‘other’, ready to embrace fascism, nationalism and prejudice. Or we can be civic minded patriots - the true democrats - committed to equality of treatment and opportunity, empowered by knowledge, and resolutely sticking to the ideals of the enlightenment that have brought us this far. Our hope lies here with patriots, citizens who get out of their comfort zone, leap from the ivory tower or the lab, from the boardroom and the barbecue, who refuse to be comfortably numb, and who dive in.

I acknowledge the giants of politics and science who advocated for the common good, for the very principles and values that have enabled inquiry leading to science and technology based improvements, to which this Academy is committed. I applaud that spirit wherever it rises up, and tonight especially in this gathering, where it manifests in breakthrough science and technological innovation that, if fairly deployed, can improve the lives of many and assist in confronting these big ‘challenges’ that face us all, right
here, right now.