10 November

Its almost miraculous that social media protest groups emerge so fast at every new renewables development. Except it isn’t, it’s very deliberately planned. The Atlas Network is a key player here, funded by fossil fuel interests and generating think tanks all over the world to create these campaigns and drive them into social media, where communities pick them up. They’ve been doing it with pumped hydro here in Lithgow too. They even funded the major Vote No campaigns in the referendum, because they saw a Yes as obstruction to more fossil fuel projects. Why I say social media is a disaster for societies, it allows bad faith actors to undermine critical work, by weaponising communities with cheap propaganda.