By Situation Theatre 14/5/2020
Really Australia, you have renewed faith in this ecocidal Government?
Back in May last year, Brooklyn-based climate journalist and co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal, Kate Aronoff, made the case that fossil fuel executives should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
First, she pointed to the immense human toll of climate change.
Left unchecked, the death toll of climate change could easily creep up into the hundreds of millions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in turn unleashing chaos and suffering that’s simply impossible to project. An independent report commissioned by twenty governments in 2012 found that climate impacts are already causing an estimated four hundred thousand deaths per year.
Counting a wider range of casualties attributed to burning fossil fuels — air pollution, indoor smoke, occupational hazards, and skin cancer — that figure jumps to nearly 5 million a year. By 2030, annual climate and carbon-related deaths are expected to reach nearly 6 million. That’s the rough equivalent of one Holocaust every year, which in just a few short years could surpass the total number of people killed in World War II. All caused by the fossil-fuel industry.
Second, she argued that fossil fuel executives are aware of this toll.
Knowing full well the deadly consequences of continued drilling, the individuals at the helm of fossil-fuel companies each day choose to seek out new reserves to burn as quickly as possible to keep their shareholders happy. They use every possible tool — and they have many — to sabotage regulatory action.
Third, she outlined how these actions meet the definition for crimes against humanity.
The fossil industry’s behavior constitutes a Crime Against Humanity in the classical sense: “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack,” including murder and extermination. Unlike genocide, the UN clarifies, in the case of crimes against humanity, “it is not necessary to prove that there is an overall specific intent. It suffices for there to be a simple intent to commit any of the acts listed…The perpetrator must also act with knowledge of the attack against the civilian population and that his/her action is part of that attack.”
Fossil-fuel executives may not have intended to destroy the world as we know it. And climate change may not look like the kinds of attacks we’re used to. But they’ve known what their industry is doing to the planet for a long time, and the effects are likely to be still more brutal if the causes are allowed to continue.
Is there any evidence that fossil fuel executives in Australia and their representatives in the Morrison Government are conducting a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack?
Just a bit.
A Widespread and Systematic Attack Against Any Civilian Population
There is little doubt that the Morrison Government/fossil fuel industry is undermining our life support systems by ramping up coal and gas production/export, that they “use every possible tool to sabotage regulatory action”, and that this constitutes a widespread and systematic attack against civilian populations both here and abroad. We see this across government personnel, subsidies, donations, advertising, the COVID Commission, and policy.
Government Personnel
According to a piece in Situation Theatre, based on the work of Michael West and Greenpeace:
Morrison’s staff is a regular who’s who of coal industry luminaries. His Chief of Staff, John Kunkel, used to be mining giant Rio Tinto’s Chief Advisor for Government Relations and before that he was Deputy CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia for over six years. His Principal Private Secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, is the former CEO of Crosby Textor (now C|T), a multinational lobbying firm with close ties to the mining industry. C|T’s corporate clients include coal giants Glencore and Mitsubishi Development, along with the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association and the Queensland Resources Council. They ran a 2017 campaign to undermine confidence in renewable energy on behalf of Glencore which included fabricating news stories and spying on environmental groups. Andrew Hirst, former Crosby Textor Director, is now Liberal Party Campaign Director.
According to the Greenpeace/Michael West documentary below, “mining billionaire Gina Rinehart is a Coalition donor, whose staff have included former Liberal MP, Sophie Mirabella, and Adam Giles, former Liberal Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. Rinehart maintains a close relationship with former Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, whose campaigns she’s also helped fund.”
“As co-owner of major coal mining licences in the Galilee Basin, Rinehart stands to receive significant benefits if the area is opened up, via approval for the Adani-Carmichael mega coal-mine, currently being pushed through by the Coalition Government.”
Environment Minister Melissa Price gave approval for Adani’s groundwater plan, despite advice from the CSIRO. She used to be the Vice-President at a mining company owned by Mitsubishi Development, co-owners of a portfolio of Queensland coal mines.
Advocate for coal expansion and Federal Resources Minister Mathew Canavan has a brother, John Canavan, who was once an executive at coal giant Peabody Energy and now part owns Queensland’s Rolleston coal mine. No conflict of interest there.
Matt Canavan has ministerial responsibility for the $5 billion Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility Fund. Five of the seven board members have strong mining industry ties.
Ian Macfarlane, the Resources Minister who scrapped the mining tax, shocked the world when in 2016 he took a job as CEO of the Queensland Resources Council.
Current Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, consulted for the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA – otherwise known as “The Bad MCA”) before becoming an MP.
In 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appointed Sid Marris, an MCA Director, as his senior advisor on energy, climate change and resources. He’s now back at the MCA.
In 2018, Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg gave $444 million in taxpayer money to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation without a competitive tender or application process. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the chair of that tiny body is John Schubert, an executive of Esso, owned by ExxonMobil. The Foundation’s Chairman’s panel is tied to Peabody and BHP, both members of the bad MCA.
Donations, Subsidies, and Advertising
Analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) found the fossil fuel industry has doubled its donations to the major parties in the last four years, including $1.9m in 2018-2019 alone.
Quoting The Guardian:
The three biggest donors in 2018-19 were the oil and gas behemoth Woodside Petroleum, the coalminer Adani, and industry lobby group the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.
Across the four years, the largest donors were Woodside ($1m), Santos Limited ($567,537), Chevron ($452,017), Mineral Resources ($373,650), Origin Energy ($360,047), and Bluescope ($337,655).
The analysis excludes the massive $83.3m in donations made by Clive Palmer’s mining company, Mineralogy, to his United Australia party.
The ACF report also found “extractive industries are by far the largest donors from the coal, oil and gas sector, accounting for more than half of the total donations to the major parties since 2015-16” and “there is a severe lack of transparency in Australia’s system of political donations, with more than $102 million of declared donations in the 2018-19 reporting period having no identifiable source”.
The International Monetary Fund costs annual energy subsidies in Australia at $29 billion, 2.3% of Australia’s GDP, equivalent to $1,198 per person.
Back in 2015, Australia’s peak oil and gas industry lobby group, the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA), spent almost $4m trying to obstruct more ambitious climate policy, and in 2017, coal lobby ads were the biggest third-party political expenditure.
COVID Commission
A report by 350 Australia which was well summarised by Sandi Keane for Michael West Media detailed the COVID-19 National Co-Ordination Committee’s (NCCC) links to fossil fuels.
It was set up on March 25 as an advisory body of business leaders and bureaucrats to lead Australia’s economic recovery from coronavirus. According to Keane, it has “no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest with even less divulged about its financial resources”.
It also has some pretty colourful characters. And by that I mean the colour of ecocide, black, which is more a tone in any case.
Lucy Manne, CEO of 350 Australia said the NCCC is “stacked with fossil fuel company executives and gas ‘kingmakers’ whose vision for Australia is framed by pipelines and fracking wells, which will lead to runaway climate change”.
Here are some lowlights from Keane’s summary:
Chair, Neville (Nev) Power, former Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) CEO is also Deputy Chair of Strike Energy which is seeking to exploit gas reserves in WA and SA. Power’s shareholding in Strike had a market value of $1,639.675 as of May 4, 2020. His shares in FMG have a market value of $16.2 million as of the same date.
Andrew Liveris is a special advisor to the NCCC and Deputy Chair of WorleyParsons (Engineering Company, Resource and Energy Consultants) as well as Board Member of Saudi Aramco (Saudi Oil Company). He is reported in The Australian to have advised the NT Government on the development of the gas industry, noting the potential of Beetaloo Basin. Last May, Liveris was reported in The Australian as saying: “There is a lot of gas sitting under the ground in Australia onshore (which could be tapped by) working with state governments.”
Catherine Tanna, one of the Commissioners, is the Managing Director of EnergyAustralia, the second largest climate polluter in the country. It’s also one of Australia’s biggest tax dodgers. As Michael West reported in Michael West Media on March 1 (after Senator Rex Patrick called for her to stand down from the board of the Reserve Bank for running a company with a tax haven structure).
James Fazzino, a member of the Manufacturing Working Group and formerly Managing Director and CEO of Incitec Pivot Ltd, is on the Board of APA, an energy infrastructure company which owns and operates the largest interconnected gas transmission network across Australia.
Policy
The effects of fossil-fuelled government personnel, subsidies, donations, and advertising are manifest not just in the COVID Commission but also in the 129 harmful climate/environmental actions taken by the Abbot/Turnbull/Morrison Governments dating from Abbott’s election in 2013 to January 9 this year.
These widespread and systematic attacks have not stopped under the cover of COVID of course. 350 Australia details 36 demands by fossil fuel lobbyists for project-specific support between 10 March and 11 May this year, 69% of which have been agreed to by the Morrison Government. These include “14 requests to slash important environmental or corporate regulations, 11 requests for tax cuts and financial concessions, and 12 instances of requests to fast-track project assessment”.
Manne describes this as “rank opportunism for the fossil fuel lobby to call for slashing of corporate taxes and important environmental protections under the cover of COVID-19”.
With Knowledge Of The Attack
There’s no pleading ignorance to the unfathomable harms caused by these actions.
Exxon scientists knew about the dangers of climate change in the late 70s.
A 1988 report showed Shell executives had a similar understanding of the threat and their own contribution to it.
Since then we’ve had 30 years of scientific consensus, global climate conferences, and increasingly desperate pleas from experts, NGOs, activists, community and even many business groups for the existential need to phase out fossil fuels, culminating in the widely publicised 12-year UN timeline for radical change back in 2018.
Still, the coal lobby’s ventriloquist dummies governing the nation are vigorously perpetrating crimes against humanity, condemning domestic and international civilian populations to an omnicidal future.
Yet according to recent polls, trust in the Federal Government and Scott Morrison’s popularity are soaring.
You might want to rethink that Australia.