Upper House Greens MP Ian Cohen has heard the Kiribati President’s request for relocation of his entire nation as predictions strengthen that his country will be uninhabitable due to climate change in 50 years.
“Given the volumes of coal that NSW peddles to the world and the clearly established contribution that those carbon atoms make to global climate change, it is our ethical duty to offer to relocate the entire 90,000 people of the Kiribati nation to NSW,” said Upper House Greens MP Ian Cohen.
“In the six months from July to December last year, 31,413 people settled in NSW, of these 2,016 arrived under the Humanitarian Program. These figures demonstrate that our state has the capacity to welcome the people of Kiribati to our shores.
“I believe that this could be accomplished over a 50 year period without a net increase in immigration. What would be required is simply a change in the overall mix of migrants that increased the humanitarian intake and adjusted the percentage of people that enter the country under other programs.
“This is basically a call to change the weighting of immigration policy from favouring those who can pay their way, to helping those most in need. In this case, that means those affected by high carbon emitting (per-capita) first world lifestyles like our own.
“Last week’s Queensland budget lifted coal industry taxes by 10% which boosted revenue in that state by more than a billion dollars. Treasurer Costa should have followed the lead of his Queensland colleagues and increased coal royalties.
“NSW earned $416 million in coal royalties last year. If the Treasurer had raised these royalties from 6-7% to 10% he could have raised extra millions to fund community and environment programs for coal affected communities in our own Hunter region as well as our neighbours overseas in Kiribati.
“These additional funds could be laying the foundation for a fully costed offer of relocation assistance to our Pacific Island neighbours and future climate refugees – the people of Kiribati.
“Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, is an environmental policy approach in which a producer's responsibility, physical and/or financial, for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product's life cycle.
“The post-consumer stage of coal’s life cycle means massive amounts of greenhouse pollution are released into the atmosphere.
“The principle of EPR applied to coal, means that it’s time for the coal industry to take some responsibility for the damage that their product is causing. World Environment Day is a good time for this to start,” said Mr Cohen.
Further Information: Ian Cohen: 0409 989 466 or Nic Clyde on 0417 742 754
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