Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to remember Philip Sutton, a dear friend and climate campaigning colleague. Philip died suddenly on 13 June, aged 71. He was a pioneer of the climate emergency movement and a powerful influence on environment campaigners across the globe.

I met Philip when I started working at the Conservation Council of Victoria in 1983. Philip was the vice-president and I was fresh out of uni. I remember so well late-night conversations with Philip after CCV executive meetings, over a chocolate mousse, yarning about what was needed for all life on the planet to have a healthy future—in particular the need for strategic planning to start at the end point of where we needed to be and then to develop genuine strategic plans that would achieve that, rather than so-called strategies that are actually just lists of incremental actions reflecting on what is judged to be pragmatically possible at the time.

Philip was one of the authors of the 1978 book Seeds for change: creatively confronting the energy crisis. It was a groundbreaking alternative energy strategy for Victoria. Philip initiated the campaign that led to the banning of nuclear power in Victoria in 1983, and he was the architect of further groundbreaking work for the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee legislation, which became the model for wildlife legislation across Australia. Then, as the gravity of the climate crisis became clear, Philip turned his huge intellect and drive to tackling this existential challenge.

Philip Sutton campaigned, knowing that the climate risks threatened the future of the planet and of humanity and that therefore they required a society-wide mobilisation at an emergency scale and speed. He argued that getting into emergency mode rapidly was the central challenge for the climate movement, and he outlined this in his 2008 book Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action, written with David Spratt, which codified the term 'climate emergency' and shocked many readers into becoming climate activists.

Philip was active with a huge range of environment and climate organisations. I'm indebted to Luke Taylor from Breakthrough, the National Centre for Climate Restoration, and the Sustainable Living Foundation for his obituary for Philip published in the Guardian, from which I have drawn much material for this speech. Philip was an initiating member of the movement that led the Darebin council in Melbourne to become the first local council in the world to declare a climate emergency, and he played a leading role in the international campaign that has resulted in more than a thousand local, regional and national governments to follow suit. However, I received a classic Philip response when I texted him in 2019 after the Oxford Dictionary announced that 'climate emergency' was its word of the year. Philip immediately texted back to say that he wasn't interested in ego gratification, nostalgia or virtue signalling, saying, 'There is too little time.'

Philip emphasised the need for climate strategy to have an approach to risk with no less rigour than those applied in engineering and aviation. He railed against the 'two degrees safe warming limit'. Such a result would amount to 'a death sentence for billions of people and millions of species', he argued. Setting goals based on the protection of 'all people, all species and all generations' or 'maximum protection' was a framework which he pursued with tireless dedication.

Philip was so frustrated at the slow pace of action on climate. He railed at our Greens policies as not being ambitious enough. In this place, Philip is always with me when I hear the ongoing spruiking of coal and gas by both the Liberal and Labor parties and when I contemplate the unthinkable consequences of our climate crisis. To Philip, the future was real and tangible. He refused to look away from how we are heading over the climate cliff. He loved nature in life and he felt the pain and the suffering of people and animals and precious environments now and in the future.

I send my love to Philip's sons Daniel and Joey; his former partner, Kathy; his sister, Vidia; his brother, John; and everyone who knew and loved Philip. Philip's legacy is the enormous role he played in our journey towards the time when we as a global community recognise the crisis we face and take the action needed for a healthy future. We aren't there yet. It is up to all of us to take this action and to continue this journey at emergency speed in emergency mode until we succeed.