Read part one of Australia’s worst individual climate culprits here, part two here, and the full list of corporate culprits here.
Crikey‘s list of criteria for determining Australia’s worst climate culprits encompasses their role in setting climate policy, the level of emissions they’re responsible for, how much political influence their companies wield to undermine climate action and how they can influence public debate and political reactions.
The list is headed by Clive Palmer, Scott Morrison and Rupert Murdoch; yesterday, we added Barnaby Joyce, Grant King and Richard Goyder. Today, we’ve unearthed even more:
Keith Spence
As chair of Santos, fossil-fuel industry veteran Keith Spence leads Australia’s joint-worst climate culprit, a colossal greenhouse emitter dedicated to influencing politicians to deliver for his company through massive political donations and a network of former and current political staffers. When the history of how the world entered a climate catastrophe is written decades from now, it will be littered with corporate culprits like Spence and Woodside’s Richard Goyder.
Angus Taylor
While of limited political talent and prone to scandal, the climate denialist Liberal has been Morrison’s point man on his program of supporting fossil-fuel industries and delaying climate action. His latest initiative in his “No Coal Company Left Behind” program is his so-called CoalKeeper tax, which would inflate household energy bills by up to $400 a year to keep his party’s coal industry donors going. The states and territories have headed that one off for the moment, but expect Taylor to keep fighting for fossil fuels.
Gina Rinehart
While Rinehart keeps a lower profile than other mining magnates, she’s a key backer of Joyce and has extensive interests in coal via Hancock Prospecting’s joint venture with India’s GVK to export coal from the Galilee Basin in Queensland. Rinehart is an active climate denialist who funds denialist outfits like the Institute of Public Affairs, and claims to know no scientists “who believe adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change”.
Lovely to see Gina’s old school St Hilda’s in Perth has removed all of her climate denial rubbish from a speech she videoed to celebrate the school’s 125 years.
I hope they also remove her name from the Science Block.
IPA’s onshore reach into politics, with industry ties and especially its offshore links, make it central in policy development for fossil fuels, mining etc. and not supporting robust climate action.
Offshore via Koch’s Atlas Network, which includes Heartland Institute, AEI American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation (Abbott has presented), Cato etc., description from DeSmog:
‘Many of the member think tanks of the Atlas Network have supported climate science denial and have campaigned against legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions‘.
Rhinohide is proof that wealth bears no relation to intelligence.
So happy that she posted it on her own site, in full.
I’d like to think there will come a time when all these a***holes will be burned in effigy like Guy Fawkes, except that due to their bastardry the entire country will be going up with them.
Surely all these underground riches belong to the Australian people and not to individuals.Are we not a Commonwealth?
In fact they belong to the Crown, which holds them in trust, for We, the People.
Someone should really get onto that.
Not when the usual offenders can kick in 50 million dollars at short notice to keep on destroying the planet to line their already bulging pockets by keeping their puppets in charge