Only 100 Companies Are Responsible For 71 Percent of Global Emissions, Says Study (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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.

Comments

I don't think this means they're polluters

[rsilvergun]

I think it's more likely that almost everything is owned by 100 companies.

Re:I don't think this means they're polluters

[AHuxley]

Depends on how its counted.
"Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world" (19 October 2011)
https://www.newscientist.com/a...

".. revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships"
"..found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network."

Domestic brands in shops that show freedom of choice could just be local marketing by a multi national.

Re: I don't think this means they're polluters

[GreatDrok]

"Solar power produces about 5 W/m^2, which means a nation would have to cover 20% of their land in solar PV panels to achieve a standard of living like the UK."

Hmm, now if only houses had a large surface area above them where you could fit solar panels. Then we wouldn't have to cover 20% of our land in solar PV panels, we could just use the land that is already covered in houses.

Terrible misnomer

[Excelcia]

They use "linked to" in the very broadest sense. There are less than a hundred major fossil fuel producers in the world, so of course it's "linked" to them. It's not like they are burning it though. It's not like we can just change 100 companies and remove more than half the greenhouse emissions. That's like saying because 70% of the world's greenhouse emissions are produced by 20 countries that it means 70% of the world's greenhouse emissions are linked to only 20 people (the current heads of state for those countries).

They're oil companies

[Anonymous Coward]

"small set of fossil fuel producers..."

Yeh, we know, we dig up hydro-carbons and turn it into CO2. How the f*ck does that help to list the oil coal and gas companies?

If any of them stopped tomorrow, another company would fill the demand, the names would be different but it would make no change.

The DEMAND for those hydrocarbons is the problem here.

I just priced solar+storage for my house, why the f*ck am I paying for electricity? I never priced it until I read Slashdot the other day and decided to check the prices and specs for myself. The misleading marketing and political funding these companies do is the problem from these companies, not the hydrocarbons themselves.

100 Companies plus

[OrangeTide]

Plus 3-4 billion people. (taking a rough guess as to how many consumers it takes to generate 70% of the world's emissions)

Point being, the responsibility isn't wholly on corporations. But also on the nations of the world, their governments, and the people of the world.