Carbon Majors: primary drivers of climate change identified

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Fifty private companies, 31 state-owned companies and nine nations have been identified as major emitters of greenhouse gases that are primary drivers of climate change.

Since 1751, these 90 entities dubbed “Carbon Majors” have produced 65 percent of the world’s total industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to a study by Richard Heede of the Climate Accountability Institute released May 2015.

“This project quantifies and traces for the first time the lion’s share of cumulative global CO2 and methane emissions since the industrial revolution began to the largest multinational and state-owned producers of crude oil, natural gas, coal and cement,” Heede said.

“These fuels, used as intended by billions of consumers, haveled to the most rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 of the last 3 million years and the highest concentration of CO2 of the last 800,000 years,” he added.

The top 10 Carbon Majors are: Chevron, Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum (BP), Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell, National Iranian Oil Company, Pemex, Coal India and ConocoPhilips.

Greenpeace Philippines on Wednesday filed a human rights complaint in the Commission on Human Rights against the 50 private owned multinational companies listed as Carbon Majors.

“Climate change interferes with the enjoyment of our fundamental rights as human beings. Hence, we demand accountability of those contributing to climate change,” the group said in the petition.

READ: Human rights complaint filed vs 50 oil, cement companies

Greenpeace said that these Carbon Majors should be held accountable for the damage they are indirectly causing by contributing to climate change.

“That is to say, nearly two-thirds of global industrial CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution can be traced to fuels and cement produced by only 90 specific entities,” Heede said.

“Significant changes to the world’s agricultural productivity, hydrology, desertification extreme weather, droughts, heat waves, species extinctions, and rising seas are already detected and attributed to human use of nature’s abundant stores of carbon fuels,” he added. TVJ

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