By Celine Lai
Ketan Joshi from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) explains that climate anxiety is manifesting among the bosses of high emitters, in an article titled “Welcome to the beginning of the fossil fuel endgame.”
The following information is extracted from Ketan’s article.
“BHP is planning to merge the oil and gas extraction part of its business with Australia’s biggest oil and gas company, Woodside.
What we’re seeing is a type of climate anxiety manifesting among the bosses of high emitters. Carbon musical chairs is a game they’ve been playing for some time, but they can hear the song’s denouement approaching, and some of them are terrified.
That’s for two reasons. The first is the growing backlash against the people, processes and companies that are causing climate disasters, including the rising prospect of litigation against the people who’ve knowingly caused serious and immediate harm to humanity. The second is the massive clean-up cost associated with shutting down fossil extraction projects.”
Ketan’s article asks, regarding the Scarborough gas project
How can Woodside claim to be reducing its emissions, despite the fact that it’s planning to massively grow its business?
Woodside’s tiny emissions reductions pale in comparison to the worsening of emissions through the growth of its massive West-Australian gas projects.
“The Western Australian government approved Woodside’s ‘greenhouse gas abatement plan’ using a dodgy baseline year that allows for an increase in emissions, and that plan only addresses scope 1 and 2 emissions, and excludes scope 3.
But offsets are no substitute for reducing emissions.”
Woodside’s ‘greenhouse gas abatement plan” is a mini version of Woodside’s grand greenwashing project, and it helped get their project approved.
Emissions do not go down during a panicked, frantic game of asset swapping.
They go down when demand for fossil fuels is eradicated through policy, activism and behavioural change.
But that first step is stifled until suppliers of fossil fuels stop trying to grow their activities and dedicate themselves to winding them down (it’s hard to give up that drug when your supplier keeps texting you, telling you that you need it).
Instead of a controlled wind down, companies with flashes of panic in their eyes are hurling their fossil fuel projects to others totally unbothered by planetary destruction.
It’s a bad situation. But we’re seeing the heads of fossil fuel companies finally hear the music coming to an end. We can say with confidence that this moment marks the beginning of the endgame for the most dangerous industry our species has ever created.
Now, we need to figure out how to make it go faster.”
In his article, Ketan Joshi also reports that the Australian Financial Review’s Tony Boyd wrote an article in “The Chanticleer”, comparing Woodside to AGL:
“The AGL coal-fired plants and Woodside’s reserves of LNG and its newly acquired oil and gas reserves from BHP are going to have to be shut down if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for the global economy, environment and biodiversity.”
You can read Ketan Joshi’s full article here.
YOU and others can get involved in speeding up the end-game, by joining the “No Need for Scarborough Gas” project. Click on the link below.
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