The Greens Want Big Polluter Companies To Pay For Climate Change

Greens leader Adam Bandt is pushing to make big polluters liable for the damage they’ve done to the environment.

Bandt has introduced a bill that’s trying to make it possible for victims of bushfires and extreme weather events to sue Australia’s big polluters like coal, gas and oil corporations for their contribution to climate change.

It would also allow state and the federal government to seek reimbursement for damage to public properties as a result of disasters caused by climate change.

The bill (called the Liability for Climate Change Damage) would make these corporations liable for damage to the climate caused since the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Speaking about the bill’s introduction on Twitter, Bandt said “The bastards knew. Big coal, oil & gas corporations knew as far back as 1977 their products would cause climate collapse”.

They knew.

The bastards knew.

Big coal, oil & gas corporations knew as far back as 1977 their products would cause climate collapse.

But like tobacco & asbestos, they went on selling.

I just intro’d a Bill to make them pay, making them liable for climate damage they caused.

— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) May 24, 2021

Any company responsible for more than one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over 12 months would be liable under the proposed legislation.

In a media statement, Bandt said that ExxonMobil’s in-house scientists have been aware of the dangers of global heating since the 1970s and the damages caused by corporations like it could stack up to around $100 billion.

“This bill is about justice,” Bandt said.

“It’s about making sure that big corporations can’t profit from destroying people’s lives”.

The bill is highly unlikely to pass Parliament but it’s the first attempt to establish that liability through legislation.

The movement to hold polluters and governments accountable for climate change through lawsuits has been growing over the past few years.

Only around 100 investor and state-owned fossil fuel companies are responsible for 70% of the world’s historical greenhouse gas emissions.

There have been multiple cases around the world of people successfully suing corporations and governments for either contributing directly to climate change or continuing to invest in those that are.

One lawsuit pursued by hundreds of citizens in the Netherlands in 2015 saw the supreme court rule against the Dutch government and mandated a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Here in Australia, a 24-year-old member of the superannuation fund, Rest, settled with the fund in 2020 and forced them to recognise the financial risk of climate change.

Some of the biggest oil and gas companies have been embroiled in these lawsuits for years.

In the US, multiple cities and counties have sued major fossil fuel companies, seeking compensation for damages.

Lawsuits against ExxonMobil in particular were spurred by an LA times investigation in 2015 that found the company’s researchers were not only aware of the damage they were doing through emissions but sought to publicly undermine the science through prominent ads in newspapers for decades.