✌🏽 G’Day

Welcome to Startups Will Save Us, a newsletter for founders building solutions to the climate crisis and the investors who back them, powered by Raaise.

This week, we’re sharing something a little different, because—if we’re going to have any chance of preventing the worst effects of the climate crisis—we’re gonna need to shake sh*t up once in a while and maybe even break a few things. Read on to find out why this particular fight matters to us.👇👇

As always, if you’re enjoying this newsie, hit a share button ☝️ and let your friends know. Or simply forward on to anyone who’d ❤️ it.

💪🏽 Frack Free Kimberley:

Last Friday, on behalf of the Frack Free Kimberley campaign (an alliance between Lock the Gate, Broome-based Environs Kimberley and Traditional Owners), Raaise helped put on a screening of the beautifully made documentary film Fighting Giants at Nala Bardip Mia (Our Story House) on Wadandi Boodja (Margaret River).

Western Australia’s Kimberley region is historically and culturally significant—it is home to a vibrant, living Aboriginal culture that is tens of thousands of years old. The Kimberley also boasts some of the world’s largest, intact, natural landscapes, with globally significant wetlands, free-flowing river systems, pristine oceans, and wildlife species that have disappeared from most of the rest of the continent.

But now, the Kimberley is under threat like never before, as multinational giants line up to frack it, against the wishes and protests of Traditional Owners. Communities are opposed to the damage fracking would cause to Country, including the Fitzroy River catchment, Roebuck Plains, La Grange and the Great Sandy Desert.

Apart from transforming the Kimberley’s pristine wilderness into an industrial landscape, fracking would also worsen the climate crisis and increase the risk of extreme weather events (like the January Kimberley floods that wreaked havoc on the region’s people, wildlife and cattle).

The risks of fracking (which involves injecting high-pressure fluids, sand and a cocktail of chemicals into horizontally drilled wells, causing the shale to crack and releasing gas and oil) are becoming more and more apparent, and include water pollution, air pollution, and soil contamination. For Traditional Owners, the effect that fracking would have on the Fitzroy River catchment is of huge concern, since the River is absolutely fundamental to the lives of six language groups in the region.

Fighting Giants is a potent reminder to those of us in the climate startup world that it’s not enough to just keep our heads down, day-to-day, building solutions—we’re going to need to keep an eye on the wider environmental movement, too. And, from time to time, we’re going to need to break some things, starting with the fracking industry.

Remember, people power has stopped destructive fracking projects many times before, and it can do it again. The Kimberley and its people are counting on us to do our bit. 💪🏽

If you’d like to help us stand up for climate justice in all its forms, please share this campaign, stand up and shout to amplify the voices of the Traditional Owners of the Kimberley, and (if you’re in Australia) take a minute to sign and share this link with 5 friends now. If you’re in the UK/Europe, sign up to the campaign to stop the development of the Rosebank Oil Field.👇️ 

🚨What’s Caught Our Attention:

The world is on track for 2.7°C heating and “phenomenal” human suffering, scientists warn, pushing billions out of the “climate niche” that has allowed humans to flourish for millennia. But, sure, let’s keep burning those fossil fuels! After all, these multinational corporations really need to add some more 💰 to their record-breaking profits, even as the world literally burns. 👏 😱

📣 ICYMI:

Watch this impassioned speech from young Scottish climate activist Lauren MacDonald who recently implored Equinor (and, by extension, the Norweigan government) to halt its plans to develop the 500 million barrels of oil in the Rosebank oil field, 130kms west of the Shetland Islands, which would blow the UK’s entire carbon budget: