David Cormack
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Make those responsible for climate change pay
🕑 Added 2021-01-31 22:23:42 +0000 UTCThe release of the Climate Commission's draft advice to the Government was released yesterday and it's ... well it's advice.
First off, there was a comms fuck up in that some journalists got embargoed copies, and some did not; meaning that some outlets were able to have fulsome articles about it as soon as the embargo lifted as others struggled to read the hundreds of pages and pull a piece together quickly.
I don't think there was anything malicious in who did and didn't get copies ahead of the launch, I just think it was a cock-up. However we need our institutions to not make this sort of cock-up if we're to trust them; this is important to me because I work in communications and this is a communications issue.
But to the advice in general, it's fine. And you know overall it's not going to have the seismic impact on people's day-to-day life that was feared, but there are a few blind spots.
For the most complete picture of the report, I recommend reading Newsroom's coverage. Marc Daalder and David Williams have done superb work in digesting and regurgitating something that's very complex in a comprehensible way.
If you recall, getting the Climate Change Commission started at all was a Green Party initiative and part of its confidence and supply agreement with Labour in the last term. However to get bipartisan support for it from National it was watered down to be non-binding. That means the Government can choose to accept its advice or just, y'know, flag it.
The major issue that faces nearly all climate change action is the downstream costs borne by those least able to afford them. The Climate Change Commission acknowledged this by nothing that the risks to Māori, low-income earners and others from lower socio-economic classes would be likely to be hit hardest by things like price rises in petrol. The Climate Change Commission recommended targeted support for these groups.
This is a common problem. I can remember when I was in the Greens and we were talking about getting rid of single-use plastic bags; I raised the problem that "single-use" plastic bags is a privilege that not everyone enjoys. For a lot of people those "single-use" bags were actually multi-use. They were used for lunch boxes, school bags, rubbish bins, and if we were going to phase them out then we needed to do so in a way that didn't incur a cost on those who can least afford it.
It's why I hate the petrol tax, it's a regressive tax that hurts low-income earners the most.
Climate Change mitigation is necessary, but so often it's mitigation that only the wealthy can afford.
Which sucks because it's not the poor who caused this. It's not the poor who continue to cause this. But it's the poor who hurt.
Until we understand that an economic model of capitalism provides incentives to pollute, not much is going to change. Over 70 per cent of all harmful emissions worldwide come from just 100 fossil fuel companies.
We run the risk of shovelling the burden of responsibility onto the individual consumer for something that is not their responsibility. Sure, it was good to phase out something like single-use plastic carrier bags, but let's not pretend it's some environmental panacea.
Under capitalism, the private sector own the means of production and it is very much driven by profit. Economists say that cost is a great incentive for all sorts of behaviours, however it seems that fear of a destroyed earth is not, so let's make it more expensive to operate business in a way that could damage the environment.
The companies who are the worst polluters organised strategic disinformation campaigns that delayed any effective policy response or decarbonisation for at least three decades. They set out to actively mislead so they could continue to pollute knowing they were inflicting massive harm onto the planet. Nice work big corporate. You guys are tops!
On the flipside, 3.5 billion people worldwide have contributed just 10% of the emissions due to individual consumption. That's nearly half the world's population responsible for a tenth of the problem.
When your primary driver is money - which for these huge multinational fossil fuel companies it is - there is a stronger incentive to pollute and get bigger profits than not pollute and have reduced profits. We've chosen money over existence.
So sure, take up the Climate Change Commission's recommendations. But let's make the culpable pay for it, not those who are already living pay cheque to pay cheque.
