In Australia, 2022 has been marked by a series of violent and destructive floods. 22 people were killed in Queensland between February and April while Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales were devastated this month.

Fortunately a solution is at hand - a cuddly multinational financial conglomerate. Commonwealth Bank of Australia has introduced a new feature which tells customers how many trees they’ve had chopped down with their monthly spending, as well as offering them the opportunity to pay a fee to offset their carbon footprint.

Mark Latham, an MP who believes in stopping immigration from Islamic countries and who endorsed a no vote in the nation’s referendum on gay marriage, predictably called the move “woke stupidity and hypocrisy”.

If we can instantly dismiss the first two words, we may have to concede the point on the second.

The issue of climate change is often framed, even by well-meaning people, as an individual responsibility. There is, of course, more we can all do to protect the environment but re-using carrier bags ain’t gonna cut it.

The Herald: Power stations emit far more carbon than individualsPower stations emit far more carbon than individuals (Image: Pixabay)

A report from the Carbon Disclosure Project found that, since 1988, 71% of global emissions had been produced by just 100 fossil fuel companies. A Climate Watch report the year before found a further 18.4% came from agriculture, forestry and land use and 5.2% from industry. A relatively meagre 3.2% stemmed from waste with under 2% from landfills.

The point is that the vast majority of emissions are produced not by individuals, but by state and corporate entities. Indeed, a 2015 study found that Commonwealth Bank was the single biggest lender to fossil fuel projects within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area from 2008 to 2014.

Long before the discovery of the greenhouse effect, Karl Marx wrote that capitalist production “disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth”. In his analysis, the necessity of moving large groups of people into big cities required food to be imported from the country. The resultant human waste meant building sewers, and the mess being pumped out to sea rather than returned to the soil. This, in turn, led to islands off Peru being annexed to provide nitrogen-rich bird guano to fertilise the fields, leading to the suppression of indigenous peoples and the destruction of the very habitats providing the fertiliser.

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You don’t have to be a Marxist to see similar today. From 1850 to 2011 nearly 80 per cent of global emissions had come from developed countries, which make up around 18 per cent of the world’s population. Now those same nations ask developing countries, disproportionally impacted by climate change, to commit to global ‘carbon budgets’.

While it’s true that countries such as the UK and the U.S have cut emissions much of this has, like the Peruvian bird poo of the 1850s, been achieved by ‘exporting’ to developing countries. Since 2000 the carbon produced by China has risen three-fold, India by 2.7 times and Indonesia by 4.7 times, but much of what they produce is imported by the west.

If we’re to be serious about halting the climate crisis it will mean using the riches of developed nations to help poorer countries to develop sustainably, rather than exploiting their resources then pointing the finger. What it certainly won’t take is Joe Public being shamed by their banking app for buying a chai latte.