Carlton: Melbourne University Publishing, 2023. x, 139 pp. (Tables.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 9780522879810.
Stopping Oil is a compelling and comprehensive look into the saga that was the battleground of the resistance movement against deep-sea oil exploration in Aotearoa-New Zealand (A-NZ). It brings together the experiences of the three authors taken from over four years of fieldwork and interviews with more than 50 people involved in climate justice or oil free activism, as well as analysis of media reporting on the movement.
The in-depth analysis and interviews tell a deeply troubling story of the struggles for those opposing oil and gas exploration led by Indigenous A-NZer’s alongside local community groups and NGOs. These were heroic struggles in the face of an aggressive and progressively more morally bankrupt response from government, the extractive industries, and other vested interests.
While deeply distressing, the government response is to some extent ameliorated by the many heartening examples in the book of the solidarity and unity of the numerous people bought together in opposition to the exploration.
The first chapters describe the government together with oil and gas industries promoting the narrative that economic security depends on economic growth. Using this storyline, they created a fear narrative that by not exploiting fossil fuel resources, the economy and thus individual security is put at risk. This theme conveniently ignores the obvious risks of exploration and extraction, the climate change impacts like storms and rising sea levels, and the fundamental unsustainability of fossil energy.
The authors make it clear that of the vast array of ways to approach climate action, they take a feminist political geography perspective, noting that politics and activism are happening at every scale, and no one is more important than any other. The first chapter poses the question: For whom is this alleged security? Who is made more secure by oil and gas exploration and exploitation? Feminist political geographies they say, need to ask who is being made secure when governments claim the need to secure oil and gas. The answer is clear: climate change is not an apolitical issue that can be simply fixed with better technology, more modelling, or simple behaviour adjustments; it is about the power of vested interests and privilege.
Thus, the security for-whom-question is clearly answered; it is security for the oil and gas industry and the few who gain most from economic growth. Crucially it also means less security—in fact greatly increased risk for the public, especially those with few resources to escape climate harm. This conundrum is central to neoliberalism, short-term prioritization of profit, and economic growth over long-term consequences.
The book further describes the neoliberalization of A-NZ which began in earnest in the 1980s, the same time as the process of recognizing Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a 150-year-long struggle by Māori to get the government to recognize what was promised in the 1840 treaty. Crucially for the oil and gas exploration industries, the neoliberalization of the 1980s included the opening up of the oceans in the Exclusive Economic Zone around A-NZ to the global petrochemical industry. Under British law, minerals and petroleum get special treatment. The Petroleum Act of 1937 extinguished all private ownership of petroleum resources and reserved it for the Crown. This enabled the Crown to control all extraction and take royalties.
The next two chapters, “Taming the Narrative” and “Securing Business-as-Usual Legislation” describe the undermining of the protests by the superior power and resourcing of the petrochemical industry and sympathetic government departments as well as the passing of legislation to outlaw protests and further protect the oil and gas industry. The subsequent chapter, “Policing and Dehumanizing Activists,” describes the role of police enforcing the legislative frameworks and narratives outlined in earlier chapters. The dark undercurrent of the government, police, and military response is that the roots of the enforcers are in the forces that violently disposed Indigenous New Zealanders centuries before. Hauntingly, the experiences described in the book by protesters reveal that violence is not only allowed but is encouraged when policing oil and gas resistance because of the ubiquitous belief that police and military are protecting economic security by prolonging the extractivist status quo.
The book includes ominous revelations about the tactics used by police and military to forcefully control protest and protect fossil fuel industry events. Such actions are made worse by prosecuting the activists. For many young white activists having been raised to have a high level of trust in authority, the tactics used by police and military have come as a deep shock. They had grown up on narratives emphasizing policing by consent, so this contrary dark side revealed to them was traumatizing for many.
This use of police and military to ensure the smooth operation of fossil fuel industry activities reveals the close relationship between the state and the oil and gas industry. This frightening situation is as the authors describe made possible through neoliberal logic that the state provides the conditions for privatized wealth accumulation, and anyone threatening that safe space must disciplined.
The final two chapters discuss contemporary society in which wealthy countries reflect a lack of care or responsibility for the care of others. There is a focus on how activists engage in a care ethic to enable them to face the dehumanizing, delegitimizing, and violent tactics of industry and government. Celebrating the fact, they are trying to save their own futures and those of generations to come. A prescient prediction is made that the much-celebrated wins of activists achieving a ban on oil and gas exploration could be undone with a change of government in late 2023. This prediction has unfortunately proven correct. The new National/Act/NZFirst coalition government, coined by some Māori as the three-headed taniwha, elected in late 2023 has made overturning the exploration ban a priority and have begun weakening long fought for environmental protections.
Mike Joy
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington