The laptop was second-hand, but Julien Vincent had a free room and a very, very big idea: he could start a move to persuade Australia’s largest financial institutions to stop investing the billions of dollars they spend. did they sustain the fossil fuel industry?
“There wasn’t really much to lose,” Vincent says. “But yes, I was nervous at first about the importance of the people we were taking. The banks and the fossil fuel industry … will be as cold and ruthless as they can be.”
A decade later, what became this idea, Vincent’s campaign group, Market Forces, has helped drive Australia’s four largest banks to commit to ending coal investments by 2030.
In the public mind, the climate crisis campaign looks like marches, banners, stunts and activists chained to railway lines and coal conveyor belts. Vincent’s approach saw climate activism put on a business suit to sit in the offices, boardrooms and shareholders ’meetings of financial institutions.
Today Vincent receives the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award, described by some as the “Green Nobel”.
He is honored to have created a “challenging financial scenario for the Australian coal industry, a major step towards reducing fossil fuels that are accelerating climate change”.
With this award, Vincent’s work stands alongside previous winners who were at the center of some of Australia’s most famous environmental battles, from saving the Franklin River to blocking uranium mining.
The weather is not the weather
Growing up in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, Vincent was no more interested in the environment than most young people. There came a crucial time when he went to Monash University to do a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science.
“I wanted to be a man of the time,” he says. But among his course teachers was Professor David Karoly, a veteran of Australian climate science. What Karoly and other teachers told student Vincent was crucial.
“I was confronted with all these graphs and it was as if it was a terrible secret that these scientists were desperately trying to extract.
Julien Vincent with his Goldman Environmental Award, in Melbourne. Photography: Goldman Awards
“I saw these graphs and their profound consequences. I was out of scale. It was all over by the time I finished those first climate science lectures.”
Vincent finished his degree with honors in arts and climatology, but did not know what to do. He had some savings working in a bottle shop.
He resigned, paid rent for his Melbourne flat, and volunteered and, most importantly, a four-month internship at Greenpeace, which turned into a job as an activist. “I didn’t have money, but I had time,” he says.
In 2012, while working for Greenpeace, Vincent was part of a campaign that blocked the construction of a new coal-fired power plant in Morwell.
That campaign, Vincent says, was successful because it focused on the legitimacy of the project’s revenue stream, in this case, federal and state government grants.
“It simply came to our notice then. I thought, why isn’t there a group in Australia that is concentrating on that day after day? “
Armed with that second-hand laptop, Vincent researched who was financing coal projects and calculated the billions spent by Australia’s four largest banks: Commonwealth, NAB, ANZ and Westpac.
He named his company Market Forces. Slowly adding to the original one-man bandwagon, Market Forces would publish its results, organize public protests, and “divestment days” where customers would close accounts to coal-backed banks.
At the same time, Vincent says his campaign meets with financial institutions, from executives to executives, to describe their campaign plans.
Blair Palese, a longtime climate advocate who founded the 350.org group in Australia, worked alongside Vincent on some of these early campaigns.
“Julien is an Everest climber,” he says. “He is a very determined and focused human being. We had a great time doing some really difficult things. “
He says that while many environmental campaigns will have a short shelf life, Vincent and Market Forces got hooked on the task. It meant that the financial institutions he was running against and campaigning “knew he was coming next month to check them out.”
“Julien makes them responsible every day,” Palese says.
Power of the people
The Commonwealth Bank’s 2019 promise to stop funding thermal coal in 2030 was a turning point for the campaign, Vincent says, and the other three major banks followed shortly afterwards.
“It was campaign years: we had days of divestment, shareholder shares,” he says, as well as a series of meetings with bank chiefs.
“The lesson was that you can reach a point of mutual understanding and trust. We weren’t happy with what they were doing and they didn’t value our campaign. But we had years of meetings and there was an understanding. It’s about being genuine and sincere “.
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Market Forces also published a detailed survey showing how banks and retirement funds used by Australians supported fossil fuel projects.
“People are very powerful,” he says. “The role of people like me is to create the context and the conditions for them to use that power. They take the information and then do something with it. “
When the Market Forces began to gain strength, the attacks began. Vincent says he has had legal letters from mining companies and many awkward meetings.
In 2019, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and then Attorney General Christian Porter attacked Vincent’s work, and Vincent described Market Forces as a “radical activist” group trying to “impose its political will on companies across the country through coordinated harassment and boycott threats. ”Porter said he would try to explore legal options to reduce campaigns.
Vincent at the Melbourne office of Market Forces. Photography: Goldman Awards
“There’s a correlation between the risk and discomfort you feel and the change you get,” Vincent says. “But there is a lot of humanity and ecosystems to save and to fight. What better way to be there than to try to protect it?”
Market Forces, now with a workforce of more than 20 people and bases in Australia, Asia and the UK, began focusing on coal and banking, but is now targeting other financiers and fuel project insurers. fossils.
The main goal of the campaign is to “stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry,” says Vincent, “because this is the time we are in. We are here to stop rampant climate change.”
He is concerned that a move to massively expand liquefied natural gas (LNG) could be as damaging to the climate as the coal he claims to replace. The campaign is funded by about 1,000 regular donors and 10 philanthropic sources.
Overwhelming honor
Each year the Goldman Award nominates an “environmental hero” from six different regions around the world. This is only the fifth year the award has been in Australia since its launch in 1990.
Bob Brown was one of the inaugural recipients of his role as the “irresistible moral force” that led the campaign to protect the Franklin River in Tasmania.
“If it weren’t for Bob Brown ‘s beautiful, elegant defenses of the environment, decency and common sense, I wouldn’t be involved. [in environmental campaigning]. A big part of that honor is that I’m on a list that starts with Bob Brown, “says Vincent.
Other former Goldman Award winners have fought in some of Australia’s most famous environmental battles that blocked sand mining and logging on Queensland’s Fraser Island, fighting uranium mining in the National Park of Queensland. Kakadu and faced a nuclear waste dump in South Australia.
“Putting my work on the ground with this is a little overwhelming,” Vincent says. “I feel very, very proud.”