Everyday people are paying the price of climate change, while big coal, oil and gas corporations are making huge profits.
These corporations, who are responsible for 75% of Australia’s climate pollution, are taking billions in government handouts and often pay less tax in Australia than our teachers or nurses.
Meanwhile, communities and government budgets in Australia and the Pacific are paying the price for climate change through increasing insurance bills, food prices, and huge recovery costs from more severe storms, drought, bushfires and floods.
It’s unfair and unjust. But we can do something about it.
It’s time to make big polluters pay
Communities in Australia and our Pacific region are paying the price for climate change. The cost of climate disasters in Australia is now $38 billion per year, equivalent to $3,500 per household on average.
The costs are highest for communities directly hit by disasters. Some of these families may never recover financially or emotionally after losing everything. In Vanuatu, for example, a shocking three severe cyclones hit in 2023, costing nearly 70% of the country’s annual GDP in recovery costs.
It’s time big polluting corporations pay their fair share. They produce three quarters of Australia’s climate pollution and should be contributing to the costs of climate damage and disaster recovery, instead of local communities and government budgets.
Funds raised through a Climate Pollution Levy on big coal, oil and gas corporations must go into a Climate Compensation Fund that can help support communities with climate disasters and offsetting rising household costs.
Will you join us? Demand the government take action to ensure big corporations polluting our climate have to pay their fair share to support impacted communities.
Urge the Federal Climate Change Minister to make big polluting corporations pay now.
Dear Federal Climate Change Minister,
People everywhere are pay the price of impacts from climate change, including through increasing insurance bills, food prices, and huge recovery costs from more severe storms, drought, bushfires and floods.
Meanwhile, polluting coal, oil and gas corporations are making huge profits, often pay no taxes, and are failing to contribute to responding to the harms of climate change. It is only fair that the government holds these polluters to account for their climate damages.
We ask you to make coal, oil and gas corporations pay a Climate Pollution Levy on their fossil fuel extraction to generate the funds needed to compensate communities with cost increases and to recover floods, storms, bushfires, sea-level rise and other climate change impacts.
Headline
Destructive weather fueled by climate change is causing an increase floods, fires, and historic famines that are devastating lives all over the world. Whilst climate change affects us all, it hurts some people more than others and many communities are struggling to survive.
Women, young people, First Peoples, and those already experiencing poverty or inequality are at greatest risk.
The climate crisis and the system that created it are the biggest contributors to global poverty and inequality today. Years of reckless climate policy has allowed fossil fuel giants to get rich by mining and burning coal, oil and gas like there’s no tomorrow while those who contributed least to the crisis are plunged deeper into poverty. It is estimated that climate change could drive a further 122 million people into extreme poverty by 2030.