NSW approves largest coal project despite climate warning
A Proposal for the Orderly Customs Treatment of Weather, Respectfully Submitted to the NSW Planning Commission
The Commission is to be congratulated on its approval of the largest coal project in the history of New South Wales. It has also established a principle of accounting that deserves to be applied more widely.
The principle is this. Coal dug in the Hunter is counted in New South Wales: the royalties, the wages, the rail freight, the ribbon at the opening. Coal burnt in a furnace abroad is counted abroad, and so is the smoke it makes. The state’s ledger ends at the wharf. Mr Matt Kean, who chairs the Climate Change Authority for the Albanese government, warned that this ledger leaves out the damage the climate will do to the state’s own economy. His objection is sincere, and it misreads the method. The Commission did not forget the damage. It found the damage to be foreign.
The strongest case for the approval should be stated fairly. A state cannot be held responsible for every chimney in Asia. If New South Wales declines to sell, someone in Queensland or Indonesia will sell instead, the atmosphere will notice no difference, and the Treasury will notice a great deal. All of this is reasonable, and I accept every word of it. I only ask that we accept it consistently.
If the emissions belong to the buyer the moment the ship clears the heads, then whatever those emissions return as also belongs to the buyer. The flood that lifts a house off its stumps in the Northern Rivers is no local event. It is an import. It arrives without a manifest, it pays no duty, and the state has so far absorbed its cost in the old-fashioned way, as though it were a domestic matter. I therefore propose that the Australian Border Force extend its inspection regime to weather. Each bushfire and each flood should be assessed at the border for its share of foreign combustion and invoiced to the jurisdiction that did the burning. The revenue would be held in trust and offset against royalties. The state’s accounts would then balance in exactly the way the Commission has already assumed they do.
The proposal requires no new science. It requires only that the logic used to approve the mine be used to pay for it.
The forms are drafted. They are short, as forms for disaster victims ought to be. In Lismore, a woman on her roof at three in the morning, with the brown water at her gutters, may complete one by torchlight. Under “Country of Origin,” she should write the name of the buyer. Under “Declared Value,” she should write everything she owns.