Chief of world’s biggest mining company calls for climate action

THE chief executive of the world’s largest mining company has endorsed drastic action to combat global warming, which he calls “indisputable”.

“The planet will survive. Many species may not,” BHP chief executive Andrew Mackenzie told a business breakfast in London yesterday.

“This is a confronting conclusion but as a veteran geologist once said, ‘you argue with a rock’.”

Mr Mackenzie endorsed carbon pricing but said it was not enough to combat the looming threat of mass extinctions and major sea rises.

He announced BHP was spending $A570 million to create a climate investment program to reduce emissions from its own operations as well as can’t those generated from sources.

BHP has been working to reduce its emissions since the 1990s but still directly produced 16.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions in the 2017-18 fiscal year, mostly from energy and diesel use at its operations — equivalent to the greenhouse emissions from 3.5 million cars its reor 4.2 coal-fired power stations for a year, according to a calculator on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s website.

But when one adds to the equation customers’ use of BHP’s products — most notably the processing of iron ore into coal and the burning of coal and crude oil — BHP’s indirect emissions dwarfed that, totalling 596.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for the fiscal year.

That is equivalent to the emissions produced in a year by 126 million cars or 153 coalfired power plants, according to the EPA calculator.

“Use of emissions-intensive products from the resource industry have contributed significantly to global warming,” Mr Mackenzie said, while noting that BHP’s emissions in 2017 were less than those in 2006.

BHP has a short-term goal to cap 2022 emissions at 2017 levels, and a long-term goal of achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century.

It is strengthening the link between emissions performance and executive renumeration from 2021.