Darlington Review column: Let the Polluters Pay!

Arguments in mainstream Australian politics around climate change are increasingly narrow.

Neither major party is prepared to force the big profiteering polluters to pay for the transition to sustainability.  They are both focused on making ordinary people carry the burden, while subsidising the polluters.

Both parties are hoping that a conservative, hip-pocket-nerve backlash from suburbanites like Darlington residents might allow them to go even softer on dealing with the climate emergency.

Added to this is a trend towards nationalism, xenophobia and racism among climate sceptics.  Talk about refugees is intruding into discussions of climate change and assertions that China is responsible for the carbon crisis.

Both arguments are specious.  There is no national solution for climate change; it is international.  And people who are worried about refugees had better get used to them; climate change will create millions more.

Australians rank with Americans as the highest per capita emitters of carbon dioxide (about 20 tonnes per year).  China’s carbon emissions per head are 5.8 tonnes but are increasing, doubling since 2001 due to expanding coal-fired power. 

This is directly linked to the behaviour of Western companies in China.

“China-fication”, a term coined by US business magazine Industry Week, is the “transplanting to China what you do well in manufacturing in the West, while exploiting the unique competitive aspects of the Chinese market.”

China’s “unique aspects” are dirt cheap wages and a dirty environment.

US environmental scientist Gregg Marland, who has studied Chinese carbon emissions, says: “We’re shipping our emissions offshore.”

The people responsible for wrecking the planet are the same whichever country they are operating in – the rich and powerful, interested in making money from polluting industries.  Those who suffer are the poorest.

In Australia, producing a safe environment also involves fighting racism and xenophobia.