{"id":206,"date":"2011-03-31T16:33:55","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T05:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/?p=206"},"modified":"2020-10-21T11:57:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T00:57:44","slug":"ross-garnaut-the-gold-standard-of-environmentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatereview.net\/ChewTheFat\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Ross Garnaut \u2013 the \u201cgold\u201d standard of environmentalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nRoss Garnaut is Australia\u2019s economic champion who\u2019s devising the Carbon Tax<\/a> to help stop Global Warming.  He, however, has personally made millions from gold mining that has flagrantly polluted Papua New Guinea.  You have to admire the man for his nerves of steel (or is that gold) to still repeatedly<\/a> get up on his soap box and preach to the nation about environmentalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ross Garnaut is a financial heavy weight and whizz.   The past 2 Australian Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd and now Julia Gillard, have employed<\/a> him to design our Emissions Trading Scheme.  A hypothetical scheme that could likely soon be a reality.  This is a bold, sweeping economic policy that will revolutionise tax policy in this country.  The plan goes as follows.  Tax heavily any industry that relies on fossil fuelled energy (that\u2019s pretty much everything then) and then, perhaps, rebate it to the People via lower, personal, income tax.  This taxation will be the incentive required to make businesses invest in Renewables and thus prevent catastrophic, Global Warming due to Carbon Dioxide.  This sounds like an impressive proposition.  However, if you\u2019re going to be a \u201cChampion of the Green movement\u201d shouldn\u2019t you be at least Green?<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t go as far as some people believe, that Ross Garnaut is a British sponsored, economic hitman<\/a> just because he belongs to the Trilateral Commission<\/a>.  He wouldn\u2019t be “That Man” who purposefully gains influence in economic, policy-making circles then, through a process of restructuring that economy, lays it open for foreign investor takeover?  Surely, the way he personally<\/a> deregulated and \u201cmodernised\u201d the economy of Papua New Guinea in 1975 wasn\u2019t just a ploy to open up the vast mineral resources to the global mining giants?  That would surely be ludicrous and is a major slander on the Australian government\u2019s, leading, climate change economist?  In addition, how would this exploitation of a developing nation be of any personal benefit to him.  In his early career, Garnaut was Prime Minister Hawke\u2019s principal economic adviser from 1983-1985.  This can be demonstrated by a quote from senior, cabinet aid, Ed Visbord<\/a>: “Hawke never took my advice on a single economic issue unless it coincided with that of Ross Garnaut.”  Hawke, a Labour man, turned against his party\u2019s, socialist principles to deregulate and privatise Australia\u2019s banks.  He floated the currency, removed trade barriers, and liberalised banking regulations.  Most of these are deemed admirable to free-trade promoting economists, but perhaps not so to anti-globalisation ideologists (I discuss more here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

However, disregarding whether you believe in the \u201cfree enterprise\u201d model or not, let\u2019s just say that Ross Garnaut is firmly established within the Establishment<\/a>.  This may seem at odds to his intense desire for a Carbon Tax that would hamper and constrain the business industry.  Well, would it really adversely affect business?  Not really, because the extra costs are just passed onto us the consumer.  The corporations don\u2019t cover the cost themselves, it\u2019s just another huge tax burden for the working and middle classes to cover in an already over-taxed, Western world.<\/p>\n

Ross Garnaut is the darling of the Australian, Labour government (Rudd now Gillard).  He is their heavy weight, both as an economics\u2019 professor and as an international businessman, in devising a \u201csuitable\u201d climate change, economic plan.  He\u2019s the Climate Taxman.  He is their man to Carbon Tax the country into economic submission.  Yes, the tax is not a minor, fiscal blip, but will be significantly lifestyle cramping.  This man is the champion of mitigating and fighting air pollution.  Whether you believe in the largely unsubstantiated claim (my movie<\/a> here) that CO2<\/sub> leads to catastrophic Global Warming, is largely irrelevant in this situation.  This man is continually on his soap box crying fowl for the damage Man is doing to the environment.  Meanwhile, he is making \u201csuper profits\u201d (A$142.5 million<\/a> for the half year) out of destroying the Papua New Guinean environment by dumping heavy metals into its rivers.  Ross Garnaut is the founding chairman of Lihir Gold (a top 100 ASX company), which owns one of the world’s largest gold mines, in Papua New Guinea.  His mining operation contravenes all Western environmental protection laws.  He doesn\u2019t care.  He could make slightly less profits, but still considerable, and not debased his operation with such devastating dumping.  But he doesn\u2019t.  Does this make him a suitable evangelist and viable preacher to preach to us tax-payer to pay more?<\/p>\n

In 1995, Garnaut told<\/a> the ABC\u2019s Karen Snowdon that the environmental impacts had been “very carefully studied, and the studies have concluded that there won\u2019t be detrimental effects on fish life. It\u2019s highly technical stuff, and I myself have to rely on expert opinion on that. But the expert opinion is reassuring.”  But what Garnaut didn\u2019t tell ABC listeners was that PNG\u2019s environmental standards were far lower than those expected of an Australian mine. This issue was graphically demonstrated soon afterwards at BHP\u2019s Ok Tedi Mining Limited mine (at which Garnaut is also a director).  This mine, with similar standards to Lihir\u2019s, at Fly River was so environmentally damaged that BHP had to go into damage control and sell off their share .  In fact<\/a>, the Ok Tedi mess is considered the worst environmental disaster in the Southern Hemisphere, where over 20 years, 80,000 tonnes of mine waste has been dumped into the Ok Tedi and Fly rivers, every day.  Ok Tedi affects 50,000 people and 120 villages and will take an estimated half a century to clean up.  At Lihir mine itself, tailings containing cyanide and heavy metals were loaded on barges and dumped on the nearby ocean floor while mine processing waste was being discharged via a pipeline, 1.5 kilometres out to sea.  In June 2000 there was a serious cyanide<\/a> spill at Garnaut\u2019s mine. (for more, see here<\/a>, here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it somewhat ironic that the \u201cGreen champion\u201d professor was the very same man that played a pivotal role in one of the most polluting, industrial disasters on earth?  Whilst Lihir Gold was polluting the coral reefs and ocean floor around Lihir Island, back in Australia, Garnaut, Kevin Rudd\u2019s climate change guru, was trying to guilt us into huge new pollution-reduction taxes \u2013 Carbon Taxes.<\/p>\n

“The failure of our generation will haunt humanity ’til the end of time” Ross Garnaut – ABC T.V. 30th Sep 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

So, there is perhaps an air of hypocrisy around Ross Garnaut\u2019s position as \u201cChampion of the Green movement\u201d?  His hands are covered in muck, and we\u2019re not talking about him pottering around his cabbage patch on a Sunday here.  The muck that he\u2019s knee deep in is phenomenally toxic and, in classic colonial style, polluting jolly foreigner\u2019s island whilst he\u2019s reaping massive<\/a> rewards.  He deregulated Papua New Guinea in the 70s and, since then, is now profiteering massively from their gold resources.  He really sets the \u201cGold\u201d standard when it comes to environmentalism.<\/p>\n

Evil, exploitative capitalism I can handle, but lashings of hypocrisy, well, that just gets my goat.<\/p>\n

ABC report on Ross Garnaut’s environmental head-aches:<\/strong>
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