Redefining Environmentalism: Rethinking what it means to be an environmentalist

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Introduction

Friends and Colleagues,

It was exactly 150 years ago today that there was a clash of cultures here at Ballarat at the Eureka diggings. Tired of over-regulation and its heavy-handed enforcement, a rag-tag band of miners took a stand against the establishment. They lost the battle but won the war. At that time, there was limited sympathy for the miners among the general Australian community. Many saw the ‘stockade episode’ as the result of the extreme actions of a few. But
history now remembers the event as the birthplace of Australian democracy, as well as being about freedom, enterprise and multiculturalism, standing by your mates and ‘a fair go’. The miners took an oath under the Eureka flag: ‘We swear by the Southern Cross to fight to defend our rights and liberties.’

One hundred and fifty years later, the time has come for another reckoning. As the Eureka Stockade of 150 years ago saw Irishmen fight alongside newly arrived migrants from many different nations, now is the time for academics, practical environmentalists and resource users from across Australia—miners, foresters, cattlemen, irrigators, bee-keepers, horse-riders, fishers—to take a stand against environmental fundamentalism.

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