Thursday, 11 April 2019
Climate change, what’s climate change?
Because the majority of rightwing members of the Australian Parliament refuse to accept the realities of climate change the nation ended up with legislation like this on 3 April 2019.
Unfortunately in this they were aided and abetted by Labor senators even though these senators had reservations about unintended consequences
Medium.com, 3 April 2019:
In the final sitting day
before the election Senators passed a bill to greatly increase the powers and
funding of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (Efic).
Under the guise of
Australia’s ‘step-up’ in the Pacific, the Senate has turned this obscure agency
into a larger ‘development bank’ for infrastructure oversea.
The changes were
strongly criticised by Australia’s development community, and as Australia Institute
research has warned,
risk fast-tracking taxpayer funding towards fossil fuel projects in the region,
undermining the climate action on which the safety of the Pacific depends.
What the Efic?
Efic is a lending agency
whose core job is lending to support Australian exporters, ostensibly small and
medium sized enterprises.
In recent years the
government has used Efic to administer the Northern Australia Infrastructure
Facility (NAIF) — the agency that wanted to lend Adani $1 billion dollars for
its railway line — and the government’s multi-billion dollar Defence
Exports Facility.
By passing the Export Finance and
Insurance Corporation Amendment (Support for Infrastructure Financing) Bill
2019, the
Senate gives Efic nearly unfettered scope to fund any sort of infrastructure,
and access to an extra billion dollars, increasing six-fold its ‘callable
capital’ to draw on to back up even larger loans.
Despite the stated
purpose of supporting development, under the changes Efic is required only to
maximise ‘Australian benefits’. There is no mention at all of the development
needs and challenges of countries where Efic would invest.
Instead, Efic can now
lend simply to benefit “a person carrying on business or other activities in
Australia”, which the government states will empower Efic to promote fossil
fuel “energy” exports from Australia.
Taxpayers Funding
Fossil Fuels
Efic has a long and
sorry history of funding fossil fuel projects, both overseas and in Australia.
Half of its current portfolio is in the fossil fuel and mining sectors.
Despite being a
Commonwealth agency, Efic explicitly states it is no constrained by the goals
of the Paris Agreement and it has refused to disclose how it considers climate
risk.
The biggest thing Efic
has ever done was backing the PNG LNG project, a massive gas project in Papua
New Guinea. Efic was warned in advance it would likely lead to civil conflict
and economic disruption. And it did, sparking conflict verging on
civil war.
Right now, under current
rules, Efic is thinking about lending money to Woodside to develop an oil and gas field in Senegal in Africa. Efic has
previously been in talks with Adani about its coal mine……..
Labels:
climate change,
fossil fuels,
greenhouse gases,
pollution
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