Targeting
the Climate Culprits
By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest
The
new U.S. National Climate Assessment makes
for sobering reading. In a document of more than 800 pages, it shows that
climate change is not some possibility in the distant future but rather a
crisis we are already beginning to experience. Extreme weather events linked to
climate change, it states, are “disrupting people’s lives and damaging some
sectors of our economy.”
Although
it is forthright in stating the scientific evidence, the report, as an official
government document, avoids assigning blame for the run-up in greenhouse gas
emissions to specific parties, and it does not make specific proposals for
mitigating the problem.
In
a painstaking analysis, principal investigator Richard Heede has reconstructed
the corporate lineage of the major fossil fuel and cement corporations,
assembled data on their historical output and estimated the greenhouse gas
emissions caused by that output. In the case of Chevron, for example, the
analysis goes back to 1912 and includes predecessor entities such as Standard
Oil of California, Gulf Oil, Texaco, Getty and Unocal. The report also covers
state-owned oil companies, which Heede notes have not done a good job of
providing production statistics.
In
all, Heede documents more than 900 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide
equivalents and links them to 90 of the world’s largest oil, gas, coal and
cement-producing entities. If contributing to the climate crisis can be
considered an offense against the planet, these 90 entities are the biggest
climate culprits.
So
who are they? Table 11 of Heede’s report shows
that the companies with the largest cumulative emissions are the following:
- Chevron: 51.1 billion metric tons
- Exxon Mobil: 46.7 billion metric tons
- Saudi Aramco: 46 billion metric tons
- BP: 35.8 billion metric tons
- Gazprom: 32.1 billion metric tons
- Royal Dutch Shell: 30.8 billion metric tons
- National Iranian Oil Company: 29.1 billion metric tons
- Pemex: 20 billion metric tons
- ConocoPhillips: 16.9 billion metric tons
- Petroleos de Venezuela: 16.2 billion metric tons
Pressuring
these companies through a divestment campaign of the type that is beginning to
take hold among U.S. universities (Stanford has just announced it
will purge its portfolio of coal stocks) is a good start, but it will probably
not be enough.
Other
approaches are also being pursued. In an article in The
Nation, Dan Zegart reports on efforts by environmental lawyers to mount a
legal assault on fossil fuel companies like that used against Big Tobacco. It
turns out that these lawyers are studying Heede’s research closely and are
trying to figure out ways to use it in their suits.
Putting
the industry on the defensive in the courts as well as in the streets is
important, because the Carbon Majors will increasingly depict themselves as
leaders of the effort to overcome the climate crisis rather than their true
identity as key culprits in causing it to happen. I’m sure that Chevron is
preparing a new version of its “Will You Join Us?” ad campaign of a few years
ago, in which it painted a false picture of itself as part of the clean-energy
vanguard.
The
recent agreement by Exxon Mobil to insert warnings in its financial reports
about the risks to its fossil fuel assets from possible stricter limits on
carbon emissions is being hailed by environmentalists as a major transparency
advance, but it could also be used by the company as a way of limiting future
legal liability.
Another
troubling sign of potential corporate maneuvering can be found in the National
Climate Assessment itself. It is surprising to open Chapter 4 on Energy Supply
and Use and find that one of the lead authors is Jan Dell of ConocoPhillips,
one of Heede’s top-ten Carbon Majors. I, for one, would prefer not to see oil
company representatives playing a role preparing key analyses of the climate
crisis. The fossil fuel industry is a big part of that problem (to the tune of
900 million metric tons), not part of the solution.