A new report says Australian mining giant BHP Billiton alone accounts for more than half of one per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
German think tank the Heinrich Boell Foundation, ranks BHP Billiton number 20 on its list of 81 major carbon emitters in its annual Carbon Majors Funding, Loss and Damage report.
AAP Newsagency reports the think tank calls on fossil fuel companies to take their share of the burden and pay into a fund for the victims of global warming.
BHP Billiton accounts for 0.52 per cent of emissions, which is far behind the number one emitter Chevron Texaco at 3.51 per cent.
“The big oil and gas companies can no longer dodge their legal and moral responsibility to pay for climate change loss and damage their products have caused,” Heinrich Boll Foundation president Barbara Unmuessig said.
“Top international companies, such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco, BP, Gazprom and Shell have made huge profits with fossil fuels while the victims of climate change, often in the poorest regions of the world, are faced with ruin.”
AAP reports co-authors Julie-Anne Richards and Keely Boom of the Climate Justice Program propose a levy on fossil fuel extraction.
“It could start at approximately $2 a tonne of CO2, which would raise $50 billion a year initially,” Ms Richards said.
The levy would be calculated against a company’s historic emissions and projected future extractions of coal, oil and gas.
Over time, it could be increased by five to 10 per cent each year, the report said.
AAP reports the money raised would be allocated to the world’s poorest communities and to those who have experienced the greatest effects of climate change.
The foundation’s report came as Australia’s conservative Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott faced criticism from the United States and the European Union for not including climate change on the G20 leader’s agenda at November’s meeting in Brisbane.
Mr Abbott aims to repeal the former Labor government’s carbon price laws in July and replace it with a taxpayer-funded “Direct Action” policy.
Earlier in the week, the annual Lowy Institute Poll showed public concern over climate change has risen to 45 per cent of the population, after five years of steady decline.
