Perth Voice Interactive

ARTISTS have stepped up where Extinction Rebellion were once the tour de force, taking on WA’s fossil fuel companies over their CO2 emissions.

Last week art group PVI Collective delivered giant “invoices” to five of WA’s biggest energy companies under the guise of satirical debt collectors The Social Licence Watchdogs.

They took the name from former Obama administration chief economist Michael Greenstone, who described the social cost of carbon (the extra society should pay to avert future climate chaos) as “the most important figure you’ve never heard of”.

PVI co-founder and artist Kelli McCluskey said it was the collective’s most “perilously” important work in its 25-year history.

“While the watchdogs as a ‘regulator’ may be our invention, the social cost of carbon is very real,” McCluskey said.

“Despite the majority of Australians’ concerns for the fossil-fuelled climate emergency, the world’s biggest contributors to it, some of which have huge WA operations, are largely continuing business-as-usual or even expanding their exploits with seemingly little or no credible plans to decarbonise.”

PVI sent BHP and its coal subsidiary an invoice for $194 billion, but it got off lightly compared to fellow coal diggers Glencore, which has $241 billion to pay – though there is a handy 21-day payment plan to help them through.

Glendora has been valued at $50 billion.

PVI Collective’s satire follows some more serious artistic attacks on fossil fuel companies, with Fringe Festival dropping main sponsor Woodside earlier this year (“Fossil free,” Voice, Saturday January 3, 2024) and Perth Festival dropping Chevron a year earlier.