Make them pay

Since I began studying environmental issues such as climate breakdown and the destruction of biodiversity, I’ve been interested in the role of business in these multiple and interlinked crises.

This is particularly important when successive governments and all opposition parties are ideologically fixed on the idea that economic growth is the only thing that’s important. They promote policies that increasingly unshackle businesses, particularly big businesses, from the restraints that have been placed upon them. In the UK, towards the end of 2025, we’re fed the line that the economy remains in crisis (a state it has occupied since the financial crash in 2008) and that, as a result, we can no longer afford vital public services or to protect nature against unconstrained development. We’re also being told that renewable energy will increase our energy bills when, deep down, we know that the opposite is the case.

This does not seem to stop the government from increasing spending on so-called “defence” to meet some arbitrary percentage of GDP to comply with demands of the US government. This too, benefits the multinational businesses that develop weapons and the means to use them.

This should not be too much of a surprise when big business has spent the last few decades co-opting government and making sure that policies are geared towards maximising business profit and the wealth of the highly paid and often unaccountable leaders.

But a tax on the super-rich and more effort to make polluters pay for the harm they’re doing could make a massive difference. That’s why Global Justice Now has joined a civil society alliance to call on governments to “Make them Pay”! In the context of this campaign, “them” means the wealthiest members of society as well as the corporations that have made vast amounts of money from exacerbating climate breakdown.

If you’re interested in joining the campaign, you can sign the Global Justice Now petition.