Feature Story - 17 June, 2011
It’s time we refocused the carbon pricing debate back on what really matters: making the big polluters responsible for the environmental damage they cause.
Big polluting companies have spent much of this year suggesting an end to life as we know it should they have to pay for their pollution, and trying to scare Australians away from introducing a price on carbon pollution. We’ve had enough of the scare mongering and big companies trying to shift attention away from their environmental liability.
Greenpeace, along with the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Environment Victoria were in Canberra today to present four of Australia’s dirtiest companies – BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside and BlueScope – with a tax bill for their pollution. Even if the carbon price begins at a very modest $26 per tonne, these four companies alone would owe $1.28 billion to the Australian community next year in the form of their carbon tax bill.
These companies can easily afford to pay – BHP Billiton alone recently posted a first half-year profit of $10.6 billion so they’re not short of a buck. Rather than inflating the profits of polluting companies, the revenue from a carbon price could be used to drive a massive cleaning up of the Australian economy, allowing us to produce and use energy cleanly and efficiently while minimising the climate impact of other polluting industries.
That will only happen if big polluting companies are liable under a carbon price. But today in Canberra the big mining companies like BHP and Rio along with LNG producer Woodside will be lobbying Treasurer Swan to exempt their emissions from a carbon price.
It is vital the Multi Party Climate Change Committee, who are currently finalising the details of the carbon price package, accepts two central facts: First, big polluting companies have never been better placed to pay for their pollution, and secondly, if they don’t pay for it, Australian households will have to.
The community has been picking up the tab for the big polluters’ climate damage for far too long. It’s time to make them pay and use that money to drive the cleaning up of our economy.