Now is the time to hold polluting industries liable
For years, people and organizations around the world have called to make polluting industries pay for the damage they have knowingly caused and intend to continue to cause. In 2019, hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of people united to say, with one voice: it’s time to Make Big Polluters Pay. This global call urges world decision-makers to act to hold liable the industries and corporations that have fuelled and continue to worsen the climate emergency.
Since, the crisis has only deepened. We are breaching environmental tipping point after environmental tipping point. Science now shows that the Arctic sea ice could be completely gone within the decade, which would release the equivalent of 20 years of human emissions into the atmosphere. It also shows that we may already be facing 10 – 20 meters of sea level rise. The World Economic Forum’s latest assessment shows that the climate action failure civil society has warned of is now a greater threat—both in likelihood and impact—than weapons of mass destruction.
Climate inaction is placing entire nations, and billions of lives and livelihoods, directly at risk. Many of these lives are simultaneously threatened by the global COVID-19 pandemic and brutal, systemic racism: Deeply entrenched inequities, further perpetuated by corporate greed, have placed Global South communities, Black and Indigenous people, people of colour, women, and low-income people squarely on the front lines of both climate change and COVID-19—as well as the social and economic crises unfolding around them.
While communities around the world are fighting for their lives, polluting industries like the fossil fuel industry and agribusiness are preparing to ramp up expansion for their own greed. For example, the recent Production Gap Report indicates that the fossil fuel industry intends to produce more than twice as much fossil fuel by 2030 than is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s commitment to keeping global temperature rise to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius [RRJ2] as possible.
At the same time, these polluting corporations depend on a system built on racism and oppression, and they manipulate this system to their benefit, treating human lives—especially the lives of people of colour—and the natural world as expendable. They are attempting to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic. They are demanding government bailouts. They are rolling out PR schemes that paint them as saviours in a crisis they were central to orchestrating. And they are attempting to push forward unreliable and risky climate techno-fixes [RRJ1] that won’t work and will exacerbate existing inequities.
[RRJ1]Link to WGRS policy brief
Moreover, these very industries are in large part responsible for the multi-faceted crises we’re facing. They knew for decades their activities were fuelling [RRJ1] climate change—but funded denial and junk science to delay action. They’ve simultaneously driven the extinction and biodiversity loss crises that drive animals out of their habitat and enable pathogens to spread around the world. They have eroded the power of governments to effectively address global disasters like the climate crisis and COVID-19—disasters that are increasingly devastating and expensive. These polluters are the ones who should be paying, not being bailed out.
The need is tremendous. But so are the potential resources that become available when polluting corporations are held to account. For example, in 2019 alone, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP, and Total S.A. had revenues totalling approximately US$1.35 trillion. Compare this to the 2019 combined GDP of five of the developing countries (Mozambique, Ethiopia, Philippines, Fiji, and Bangladesh) hardest hit by climate change: approximately US$786billion.
Holding polluting industries—including the fossil fuel, mining, and agribusiness industries—liable can, among other things:
o Release urgently needed funding to address the climate emergency by requiring these actors to pay (not only financially) for the past, present, and future damage they cause.
o Revoke corporations’ license to continue “business as usual.”
o Contribute to bringing about the systemic change needed to ensure a world where people and the planet thrive and where global average temperature rise is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
o Help end the status quo that has sacrificed frontline countries and communities in the name of polluters’ profits.
o Strengthen international climate action alongside equity, honour reparations and historical responsibility.
o Strengthen protection of human rights and Mother Earth.
Liability is not a ground-breaking idea[RRJ2] . It is a concept that has been practiced by communities around the world for centuries, through restitution and reparations, through legal means, legislative means, cultural means, and other means. When done comprehensively, holistically, and equitably, it also has the potential to proactively end (not only respond to) practices that are abusive to people and nature.
The liability roadmap presented here [RRJ3] draws from the vast experiences of communities and experts around the world, particularly those across the Global South and the frontlines of the climate emergency. It presents decision-makers at all levels of government with a menu of measures and tools they can use to finance the systems change we urgently need, to access publicly controlled solutions, and to address the climate crisis.
Of course, enacting the policies and measures laid out here is simply the first step: There will be much work to do to ensure these measures are fully implemented and move us toward the transformative change the world needs.
Amidst a global pandemic, an international recession, and a public health crisis, the broken systems that have fuelled climate change and caused centuries of great injustice are crumbling. We are now faced with the choice to lay the foundation for a better, fairer world—one where people and nature thrive—or to fall back on the systems of oppression, racism, and colonialism that have only served to entrench the power of an elite few. That more beautiful, fairer world becomes possible in part through at last holding accountable and liable the industries that have knowingly driven countries, communities, and the planet to the edge of collapse.
Science shows that the actions we take now will shape [RRJ4] the course of action for the next ten years, and in turn determine whether the we are set to experience environmental and social collapse. Decision-makers around the world should lead by example and embrace the unprecedented moment we are in to shift power into the hands of people and communities, and to work together to build new, more equitable, people-centred systems, now.
[RRJ1]Exxon knew
[RRJ2]Ref global litigation report as well as:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3374730
[RRJ3]link back to home page or embedded tag for LR
[RRJ4]ref ipccc report