Adrian Cosgriff has charted an unusual path from being a former Latrobe Valley oil and gas worker to becoming an active and outspoken supporter of the energy transition in Gippsland.
Born and bred in Gippsland, Cosgriff has been living on a small property on the outskirts of Traralgon for close to 40 years. Having worked as a heavy industry electrician and FIYO worker in the oil and gas industry, his interests include cars and motorcycles , industrial technology and science.
“I grew up on a farm effectively in the sixties and the seventies. While I guess there was a sense of looking after the environment, it was through farming rather than environmental eyes. My parents grew up during World War Two, they were children of the Depression. They knew what tough living and lack of resources was like. That was just kind of bred into us as kids as well. You used what you needed, you didn’t waste stuff and you looked after things.”
Today Cosgriff has replanted his 5-acre property with trees and enjoys riding his dirt bike out to remote places in the bush with a group of mates. “On a dirt bike, you can get to places that you can’t get to on a four-wheel drive, and you can get there quickly. So we get into these really quite remote places where there’s nobody and you can just sit there, you turn everything off and just really appreciate the beauty of nature as well as the fun of getting there.”
Cosgriff says it is in these moments that he reflects on humans’ impacts on nature and how we need to pay more attention to science and preserve what’s left. “I’m in my 60s, so the worst of climate change will probably be beyond my lifetime. But having said that, now that we really understand the science of climate change and the serious effects that come with it, we should be doing something about it now. The longer we leave it, the worse it will get.”
He admits that he sometimes has ‘interesting’ conversations with his dirt bike mates who are a little more conservative than him on climate. “ They are still a bit more traditional, old school. And I kind of wind them up a bit,” he says. “Every now and then we’ll be talking about something, and someone will make a sarcastic comment – oh, I suppose that’s because of climate change too? And I’ll say, haven’t you got solar panels on your roof, mate? I just kind of leave it there, shame them in a friendly kind of way.”
As someone with a direct knowledge of the technical and industrial aspects of energy, Cosgriff says renewable technology has developed faster than anyone could have predicted. “You look back on our recent history of burning coal and chopping down trees and think, well, that arguably was a necessity at the time. But we learn from history. I’m glad we’re moving away from that sort of stuff now.”
These days Cosgriff says he just follows the scientific evidence. “It’s now about the burning of fossil fuels, but also looking after the environment in other ways, too, such as returning flows to rivers and trying to get things back to a better balance.”
He says his initial entry into becoming more environmentally active was from his concern about coal jobs disappearing in the valley. “I think it was just the end of the Morrison government – no one was talking about what jobs were going to exist for people leaving the coal sector. I believed solutions were there, so I joined Voices of the Valley. At first, I didn’t want to speak publicly. I cringed when I had to write my first letter to the local paper.”
It was during the recent nuclear debate that he was asked to step up because he had a reasonably good understanding of the industrial science behind the proposal. He found himself doing ABC radio interviews and then being featured on A Current Affair as a former gas worker speaking out against nuclear in favour of renewables.
“I realised someone has to do it. The world will be a much better place with a widely distributed renewable energy system. We’ll have abundant energy that will be really cheap for everyone. The bonus will be fixing climate change at the same time. So it’s like a double win, if you know what I mean.”
Cosgriff says that because of the rapid pace of change and growth in the renewable sector, he is absolutely optimistic about solving the climate crisis. “That’s not to say that we’re going to do more damage before we turn things around. But because there’s so much clever innovation going on around the world and it’s changing so fast. So that’s why I think the change will happen faster than most people realise.”
