It may come as a surprise to some to learn that that the term ‘carbon footprint’ is an invention of the fossil fuel industry. While Canadian ecologist William Reese coined the term ‘ecological footprint’ in the early 90s, an advertising company hired by oil giant BP, came up with the term ‘carbon footprint’ for a heavily promoted advertising campaign.
The purpose? To deflect responsibility for the damage they cause onto the rest of us. They wanted us to focus on our carbon footprint so that we didn’t look at theirs. This from a company which earns billions in profit each year, while it happily reaps the rewards of government tax benefits (taxpayers money) around the world, to extract and sell resources.
According to The Australia Institute, tax incentives allowed BP Regional Australian Holdings to reduce its total income from $17.4bn to zero taxable income in 2020-21. Similarly Ampol Ltd shrunk its registered total income from $20.06bn to a taxable income of zero. Exxon Mobile reduced its total income from $11.1bn to $645,312 and also paid no tax. While Chevron paid a whopping $30 in tax after reducing its total income from $9.16bn to $113.06m.
This impossible expectation for individuals to take responsibility for corporate greed is happening more and more, not just in the corporate domain, but governments too. The Victorian government is demanding that taxpayers contribute a levy to fund the essential emergency services desperately needed to respond to climate emergencies which are being turbocharged by fossil fuel companies.
I’m not suggesting that emergency services don’t need funding. Of course they do. And they’re going to need a heck of a lot more than what the emergency services levy will provide. But the climate catastrophes we’ve seen in recent years are not normal.
They are the direct result of too much carbon being spewed into the atmosphere. The CSIRO’s State of the Climate Report from 2024 confirms this. For too long the fossil fuel industry has been given carte blanche to f$ck up our environment and get paid handsomely while they do it.
Regional Victorians are angry with the Victorian Government over the essential services levy, and they have a right to be. Pauline Hanson is now cosying up with Australia’s richest person, iron ore mining magnate Gina Rinehart, an enthusiastic fan of MAGA and US President Donald “drill baby drill” Trump. So it’s unlikely to see an appetite for calling fossil fuel companies into account from that quarter.*
This failure to call fossil fuel companies to account for climate change is a monumental injustice. It’s time to make all companies pay for all of the environmental damage they do. Make fossil fuel companies pay for the emergency services needed to respond to the climate disasters they’re causing. Yes, they already contribute some funds for these purposes but in comparison to their profits it’s chicken feed. They should pay for the bloody lot! And get them to clean up their plastic mess that’s choking the planet while we’re at it.
The ecological enshittification we are in has been caused by the greed of a small group of obscenely rich humans. But guess what? Humans can solve it. For decades we’ve had the technology and solutions for just about every problem you can mention. What we lack are politicians with the guts to implement them.
* An earlier version of this editorial discussed the legacy of asbestos mining in Wittenoom which was kickstarted by Ms Rinehart’s father Lang Hancock. The Westsider does not suggest that Ms Rinehart has profited in any way from large scale asbestos mining. You can read this history of mining at Wittenoom.
Here is a full statement from Hancock Mining:
In this article, you describe Mrs Gina Rinehart as: “Australia’s richest person whose fortune was kickstarted by wealth her father (sic) made mining asbestos in Western Australia’s Wittenoom Gorge.”
In reference to Wittenoom, you then go on to say: “The environmental legacy of that mining disaster is the southern hemisphere’s largest contaminated site which has been left to the Banjima Traditional Owners to deal with.”
It is plainly incorrect to say that Mrs Rinehart’s wealth was “kickstarted by her father”. When Mrs Rinehart took over as Chair in 1992, Hancock Prospecting was a very small mining company that was in significant financial difficulty. It only had temporary title to the Hope Downs tenements, which at the time were under legal claim from another party, and did not have the more financially significant Roy Hill tenements, which have since gone on to be one of Australia’s biggest ever mining operations.
Lang Hancock had sold his shares in Hancock Prospecting, in two batches, before his passing and Mrs Rinehart did not inherit Lang’s shares. These were sold to a foundation that had liquidity problems after paying millions for these shares, given it paid many millions over value.
It was solely Mrs Rinehart’s tireless work over decades which grew the then very small Hancock Prospecting into the company it is today – Australia’s largest and most successful private company.
In relation to Wittenoom, the way you have phrased your piece would lead any fair-minded reader to be under the impression that Hancock is directly responsible for the environmental clean-up. Again, this is incorrect. Lang Hancock and partner E.A. (Peter) Wright operated a very small mine further up the gorge — often mistaken for the much larger Wittenoom mine owned and operated by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company Ltd (CSR). The small mine operated by Mr Hancock and Mr Wright was in a more remote area far from the town and public access.
When they were unable to finance their share of further development, Hancock and Wright sold their interest to CSR.
At the time, asbestos was considered an essential material, particularly during the Second World War, and was widely used in brake linings, building insulation, naval defence applications and more.
Total production under Hancock and Wright’s control is estimated at just 50 tonnes — a tiny fraction of CSR’s total Wittenoom output. CSR, which owned and managed the large Wittenoom mine over the long term, extracted around 161,000 tonnes of asbestos between 1943 and 1966, when it ceased operations.
Hancock and Wright’s contribution represents less than 0.04% of total production, with Mr Hancock’s personal share amounting to less than 0.02%.
Importantly, Hancock did not mine the asbestos that created the tailings site near CSR’s former mine and processing plant. Hancock and Wright had no equity in CSR’s expanded operations. The unrehabilitated tailings in and around Wittenoom are not connected to Hancock’s earlier activities — they are the result of actions by other organisations, including the local Shire.
It is also on public record that through the 1950s and into the mid-1960s crocidolite tailings from the tailings site at CSR’s Wittenoom mine were spread throughout Wittenoom as a cheap gravel substitute. CSR used tailings around its own buildings in Wittenoom. Residents also spread tailings around homes and businesses as did the Shire of Ashburton, the Public Works Department and the Main Roads Department in the course of public works. Hancock did not do this and had no mining operations in the Wittenoom area during these decades, or since.
As the company responsible for the large-scale mining and processing operations, CSR holds primary responsibility for funding and undertaking any remediation of its former mine and associated tailings. While Hancock Prospecting has no legal or operational connection to CSR’s tailings, it is supportive of any government initiative to remediate the Wittenoom area.
This historical clarification underscores the very limited scale and short duration of Hancock and Wright’s involvement, which ended long before the large-scale industrial operations that produced the tailings stockpiles and environmental legacy associated with Wittenoom.
Your article also talks about mining companies contributing “some funds” to emergency services and the like. This is a highly misleading claim. Hancock Prospecting is the single biggest private corporate taxpayer in Australia, having paid almost $15 billion in taxes in the last four Financial Years alone. More broadly, Australia’s mining industry pays more in taxes and royalties than all other industries in the country combined. These are simple matters of fact and all easily verifiable on the public record.
