By Bob Hill – member of Bathurst Community Climate Action Network.
The recent summer in the northern hemisphere with its record bushfires, droughts and heat-waves found many countries unprepared for extreme weather. In Nepal and also in Switzerland villages have been wiped out by landslides & flooding caused by glaciers melting. Repairing the damage caused will cost untold billions.
Communities across Australia are increasingly worried about who pays the heavy cost of climate change. We remember the ‘once in a century’ floods in Lismore in 2017, 2022 & 2023 which resulted in whole communities having to be re-located away from the flood plains. In the Central West, Eugowra is only just returning to a normal life after the fatal flooding of November 2022.
Residents of Bathurst will remember how close the town came to running out of water between 2017 & 2019. Even researching the solutions to these climate-induced emergencies is expensive. For example, the research for the business case for a Bathurst Water Harvesting Stage 2 proposal cost $1.4m. Avoiding the type of flooding events predicted by climate change scientists for Bathurst and mapped in the recent Bathurst Flood Study: Draft Final Report will cost millions to design and implement.
Delivering projects aimed at achieving water security during a changing climate is beyond the financial resources of most local councils. Tax-payers are increasingly frustrated by the increased levies and charges that State & Federal governments require to meet the costs forced upon them by a changing climate.
That’s why an increasing number of local councils have been calling upon the Federal government to establish a Climate Compensation Fund to help councils meet the increasing costs of actions like insuring local infrastructure against fires & floods, heat-proofing shopping precincts, increasing water conservation and flood controls. They are calling on the government to follow the user-pays principle, ‘you break it, you fix it’ by requiring the major carbon emitters, the wealthy global fossil fuel companies, to finance the fund through a levy on gas, coal and oil exports.
Last month Bathurst Regional Council voted against endorsing this policy. Some councillors argued that it isn’t the council’s job to lobby the Federal government. However, other councils, like Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle & Parramatta have signed the petition to the Federal government. They argued that the fossil fuel companies responsible the emissions should also be responsible for meeting the costs resulting from those emissions.
In Bathurst at Green Drinks which will be held at the Greens on William on Thursday 24th September at 5.30 for 6pm residents will be given the chance to express their views pm supporting the Climate Compensation Fund.
We can expect the motion will again be raised at a later council meeting. The campaign is gaining momentum and other councils in the region may also be asked by their citizens to support the campaign for a Climate Compensation Fund funded by a fossil fuel industry levy.
You can find out more and sign a petition supporting getting big polluters to pay for the climate change they have caused, at makebigpolluterspay.org.au or at the Greenpeace or 350 Australia websites.
