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[Lime]

Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.

The Carbon Majors Report (pdf) “pinpoints how a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers may hold the key to systemic change on carbon emissions,” says Pedro Faria, technical director at environmental non-profit CDP, which published the report in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute.

The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.

While companies have a huge role to play in driving climate change, says Faria, the barrier is the “absolute tension” between short-term profitability and the urgent need to reduce emissions.

But for many the sums involved and pace of change are nowhere near enough. A research paper published last year by Paul Stevens, an academic at think tank Chatham House, said international oil companies were no longer fit for purpose and warned these multinationals that they faced a “nasty, brutish and short” end within the next 10 years if they did not completely change their business models.

Investors now have a choice, according to Charlie Kronick, senior programme advisor at Greenpeace UK. “The future of the oil industry has already been written: the choice is will its decline be managed, returning capital to shareholders to be reinvested in the genuine industries of the future, or will they hold on, hoping not be the last one standing when the music stops?”

https://www.theguardian.com/sustain...-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

 

[CoolOff]

Well, I mean, isn't it their customers and customers customers who are "responsible" for it?

 

[tearsintherain]

China number one at 14.3% with coal, three times higher than the second company. Most of the top 25 are oil companies, and global ones- Saudi Oil #2, Russian oil #3, Iranian oil #4, Exxon #5, Mexico #7, etc. 25 state owned entities/corporations generate 50% of the greenhouse emissions.

It always struck me as really bizarre that there is virtually no movement to reduce oil usage and consumption - driving - which is a faster and more rapid impact on climate change than anything else. Everyone instead dances around the problem, because we don't want to tell each other to stop buying and driving cars?

Even things like electric cars are not a great solution right now, because its a TON of emissions to actually manufacture the thing, and for most of the world driving an electric car just moves the problem from the car to the electric power plant, which then generates tons of emissions to generate the fuel for your car.

 

[LinkSlayer64]

Well, I mean, isn't it their customers and customers customers who are "responsible" for it?

Well look at it this way. If these companies didn't exist, would their customers and customer's customers still be the issue?

China number one at 14.3% with coal, three times higher than the second company. Most of the top 25 are oil companies, and global ones- Saudi Oil #2, Russian oil #3, Iranian oil #4, Exxon #5, Mexico #7, etc. 25 state owned entities/corporations generate 50% of the greenhouse emissions.

It always struck me as really bizarre that there is virtually no movement to reduce oil usage and consumption - driving - which is a faster and more rapid impact on climate change than anything else. Everyone instead dances around the problem, because we don't want to tell each other to stop buying and driving cars?

Even things like electric cars are not a great solution right now, because its a TON of emissions to actually manufacture the thing, and for most of the world driving an electric car just moves the problem from the car to the electric power plant, which then generates tons of emissions to generate the fuel for your car.

I really don't know an alternative that will get me to my job in a reasonable time besides driving. I carpool, but that's still a problem.
Got any suggestions? (seriously)

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

Well look at it this way. If these companies didn't exist, would their customers and customer's customers still be the issue?



I really don't know an alternative that will get me to my job in a reasonable time besides driving. I carpool, but that's still a problem.
Got any suggestions? (seriously)

Is there no public transportation in your city?

 

[Valkyr Junkie]

Well look at it this way. If these companies didn't exist, would their customers and customer's customers still be the issue?

Yes, some other company would be filling the exact same niche.

These companies exist and pollute due to providing a service at a price point and environmental impact level that their customers agree with. They aren't Captain Planet villains that exist in a vacuum and exist to pollute for the sake of polluting.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Oil usage is going to be peaking in the next decade, and electric cars are far more efficient in terms of energy usage by getting power from a plant than having an engine burn gas, regardless of where the energy is sourced from.

 

[Nazgul_Hunter]

Well, I mean, isn't it their customers and customers customers who are "responsible" for it?

Yes and no. I'm certainly responsible for buying a big SUV, filling it with gas and driving around.

I'm NOT responsible for modern life requiring a car, air travel, etc. just to be a functioning part of society.

Then you get into these 100 companies spending millions of dollars downplaying the negative effects of their technology, suppressing or not investing enough in alternative energy etc.