Rewiring Australia was always spot on about the way forward with energy. But this is also a useful way to…

Rewiring Australia was always spot on about the way forward with energy. But this is also a useful way to debunk the beliefs around activism. That last sentence, in green highlight. And ‘how communities are making it an electrification race to the top’. Both no. /1 https://t.co/c5NmOSqXtH

Activism politics loves this idea that if you mobilise people, they can force change. ‘Grassroots’ democracy, ‘power to the people!’ It’s not what really happens, and you don’t have to look hard to see it. ‘The people’ is a fiction. /2

There will always be some pre-weakening of the existing status quo, when an activist campaign seems to work. In this case, Rewiring made very little progress politically since its inception here. Certainly it had visibility, but very little punch politically. /3

What changed? The ‘cost of living crisis’, coupled with an election. The existing status quo, topped by existing parties, recognised a serious threat to themselves. Suddenly rewiring solutions were met with open arms. Not because activism forced a change. /4

But because the status quo felt threatened. It will happily chew up and spit out home electrification tomorrow, if it thinks votes are more easily had somewhere else. We saw this with Covid. Initially the status quo felt threatened, like everybody else. /5

So here in Oz we saw traditional public health kick in, and basically kick Covid’s arse. So well that the status quo thought, hang on, we could sell this whole thing as over pretty easily. /6

And that’s what they did, we were suddenly ‘living with’ a pandemic. Acting against a pandemic was doing scary things for the status quo, like freeing people shackled to their workplaces and daily commutes. And redistributing wealth through Covid assistance payments. /7

All of that had to be shut down immediately, to protect the status quo. We all saw it happening, we’re still seeing it today (still the same hysteria about lockdowns and WFH). Change never comes from the ‘bottom up’. Societies don’t have tops or bottoms. /8

They have status hierarchies, but everybody is part of those hierarchies, and mostly loves the battle to try to get a step higher in them. Only catastrophes (or the threat of) bring meaningful change. Rewiring is just the latest clear example. /end