Just 90 Companies Caused Two-Thirds of Man-Made Global Warming Emissions
Mother Jones
This story first appeared on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.
The companies range from investor-owned firms—household names such as Chevron, Exxon, and BP—to state-owned and government-run firms.
The analysis, which was welcomed by the former Vice President Al Gore as a “crucial step forward” found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas, or coal, found the analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Climactic Change.
“There are thousands of oil, gas, and coal producers in the world,” climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado said. “But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two.”
Click here to explore the Guardian‘s interactive roster of the companies behind climate change. via The Guardian
Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years—well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing dangerous climate change.
Many of the same companies are also sitting on substantial reserves of fossil fuel, which—if they are burned—put the world at even greater risk of dangerous climate change.
Climate change experts said the data set was the most ambitious effort so far to hold individual carbon producers, rather than governments, to account.
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Just 90 Companies Caused Two-Thirds of Man-Made Global Warming Emissions
