Is Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest the climate saviour we need?

Gerard Mazza asks: What to make of green hydrogen and green capitalism?

Days before Christmas, while the rest of us were on the fruit mince pies, mining billionaire Dr Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest and a team from his Minderoo Foundation journeyed to a spot of ocean more than 100 kilometres off the Pilbara coast. They were there to film and inspect Woodside’s seismic blasting operations for the Scarborough component of its Burrup Hub gas expansions. Woodside gained approval for the blasting from federal regulator NOPSEMA late on a Friday afternoon in December, months after an earlier approval was chucked out by the Federal Court over failure to adequately consult a traditional custodian. Scientists fear seismic blasting is disruptive to marine ecosystems.

In a video of the trip distributed by Minderoo this week, Forrest, wearing a safari suit emblazoned with his name, points to Woodside’s blasting vessel from a helicopter and describes "this shocking seismic destruction, these sonic destruction booms which are happening all around.” A statement from the Minderoo Foundation said Dr Forrest (PhD in marine ecology) and his team carried out acoustic modelling to observe marine life in the impacted area and sampled environmental DNA to determine what threatened species were nearby.

During his expedition, the iron ore magnate also took aim at Woodside for its climate impacts, and not for the first time. During the COP28 climate summit last year, Forrest said Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill was “peddling poison” and “driving an agenda to get carbon bombs going as quickly as possible,” and that fossil fuel executives should have their heads “put on spikes.” (I wonder what the public response would be if this was said by a member of the direct action campaign Disrupt Burrup Hub, which I am involved with. I imagine such comments would attract heat from law enforcement - and violate a commitment to nonviolent discipline.)

Twiggy has said he wants to be judged for his actions, and has committed to a massive decarbonisation of Fortescue, the company he chairs, which plans to lead the global energy transition through green hydrogen developments. There have been questions raised about how technically feasible Fortescue's plans are, and how much of a role hydrogen has to play in the transition, but Fortescue is pressing ahead, having reached final investment decision on three major renewable projects last year. Forrest has also spoken in favour of a global carbon tax on shipping emissions, and Fortescue says it will not partake in the great carbon credit scam in its quest for 'real zero' emissions.

In his recent video, Forrest stated the obvious truth: that deadly new fossil fuel projects should not go ahead. The fact that’s somehow considered controversial, radical, or particularly laudable shows how stuck Australian political discourse is in the sludge of fossil fuel propaganda. After all, Twiggy’s only saying what scientists have been telling us for a long time. His message should be the baseline understanding, taken for granted, in any discussion of climate and energy. Given that it’s not, I suppose it's good that someone with his profile is out there saying this stuff. But I'd also suggest the climate-conscious hold off on the fawning tweets.

It's dangerous for us to become too enamoured of Twiggy and his climate crusade. As things stand, Fortescue’s iron ore operations are massively carbon-intensive. Forrest's an incredibly wealthy man who lives in a huge beachside compound and surely has a highly polluting lifestyle. More significantly, his vision of a green future still involves massive consumption. In his 2021 Boyer lectures, Twiggy laid out two possibilities for the future: one where you “fly less, drive less, slash your standard of living — but you're still killing the planet,” or one of continuous economic growth, “where we decouple our economy — for the first time — from damage to our planet”. But Forrest’s dichotomy is a false one. The world’s wealthy can obviously reduce their consumption and emissions at the same time, and as the old slogan (and more recent research) goes, there can be ‘no infinite growth on a finite planet.'

Forrest's vision is one where capitalism saves the day, and renewables win largely because of market forces, though he says this will require "businesses to work closely with governments." I presume he hopes all those fossil fuel subsidies will be redirected his way. Of course, if the world goes down this road, there'll likely be plenty of profits to be made for the few. Is it the best we can do? And will it work? An early leaked draft of the most recent IPCC report said some contributing scientists believed “the nature of capitalist society" to be "ultimately unsustainable”. Of course, the published version was watered down but spoke of the importance of ‘demand-side mitigation’, and noted that GDP growth was a poor measure of individual and collective wellbeing.

If we’re to confront the climate crisis as effectively and fairly as we can, it won’t be through billionaire saviours and green capitalism. We can push further: for much higher taxes on industry and the ultra-wealthy, for measures to limit the inequality that drives obscene consumption, for renewable developments controlled by workers and communities, and for giving up society's addiction to unsustainable economic growth. If it came down to it, Forrest’s green capitalism would be preferable to Woodside’s planet-boiling variety, but our imaginative powers are feeble if we can’t foresee other, better options.

It’s also important we don't overlook Fortescue’s allegedly exploitative relationship with the Traditional Owner groups of the land it mines upon. The Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara are awaiting a Federal Court decision on what compensation they are owed by Fortescue for mining their country without consent. Elder Stanley Warrie told the court Forrest was a “joona”, or “evil spirit”, who had torn the Yindjibarndi community apart. In some cases, the Pilbara First Nations people who have publicly spoken out about Fortescue’s dealing with the Yindjibarndi are the very same people who have campaigned against Woodside’s Burrup Hub developments. If environmentalists are to claim solidarity with First Nations people defending country, that must be applied consistently.

Some climate activists I know can’t get enough of Twiggy. One Western Australian grassroots group is rumoured to have sent a bouquet to Fortescue headquarters after he made his comments about O’Neill. I get it: When you’re constantly gaslit by powerholders who claim that increasing fossil fuel production is a climate solution, any public figure who pushes back might begin to look like a messiah. But if there’s any chance of building a truly popular climate movement, it’s not through activists aligning themselves with an elite class that has created environmental and economic catastrophe. Community groups and activists in New South Wales have recently held protests against wind turbines, some of which Forrest owns. It appears anti-renewables sentiment is on the rise. We dismiss or laugh at these people at our peril. Their general sentiment is correct (elite industrialists are fucking us over), but the specifics are wrong. Their misdirected rage should be applied to the fossil fuel industry, but if the climate movement is siding with the billionaire exploiter class, what chance do we have of winning over the disenchanted?