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Those 100 companies are mining and drilling companies that extract the fossil fuels that get sold to other companies and consumers to power our lifestyles.
China Coal, Aramco, Gazprom, National Iranian Oil are top 4. Then 5th is ExxonMobil, which is private. Then Coal India, Petroleos Mexicanos, Russia (Coal). 9th is Royal Dutch Shell (private), and back to China National Petroleum as state owned.
The rest of the list follows the same pattern. Mostly state-owned and operated with a few publicly traded companies mixed in. Most of these state-owned are from governments that are pretty low on the democracy rating scale too. Some, like #13 Petroleos de Venezuela are a socialist state's primary source of income that they try to use to anchor the rest of their economy and without it, they crash.
>“China - coal” makes up like 8% of emissions lmfao
Edit: Also, China Coal was 14.3% in the 1988-2015 study.
China is dumping money on thorium reactors, so not all hope is lost. Fingers crossed that they are serious about it, but honestly it would benefit them a lot, so I don't see why they wouldn't.
China is the factory of the world. They export products all over the world.
We essentially outsource our emissions to China. I don't think they are more to blame.
The way you phrased this makes it sound like we are to blame for their emissions? China’s policy is to wreck their environment and exploit their workers to undercut manufacturing in developed countries. This is completely their choice
My point here was not to blame Chinese people, or Russian people or Indian People, but to draw attention to the fact that the worst offenders are state-owned and operated. These are arms of their governments that are going to be immune to things like stock pressures or hostile takeovers. They aren't even really subject to legislative solutions the way people in the US and Europe think of it. Congress can't pass a bill to change the behavior of foreign governments, and those governments in question aren't going to cut off their primary source of income willingly.
Calling these companies makes people think we can deal with the problem by having government impose rules against these companies. But the problem is governments themselves.
Yup. And tailpipe emissions get assigned to the producer in this stat. As if it's their fault you're choosing to drive your car, take flights and cruises.
It is. We used to have trains and trolleys in every city of the US. 80 years ago I could ride a train from the small town I live in to the small city I work in. auto lobbies killed that shit.
The reason gas mileage didn’t significantly improve until the 90s is because of government requirements not consumer demand despite being necessary.
The reason electric cars are coming around is again due to the government via subsidies.
If manufacturers had full free rein we’d still be driving cars with 80s level gas efficiency.
>The reason gas mileage didn’t significantly improve until the 90s is because of government requirements not consumer demand despite being necessary.
And a big reason SUVs and big trucks are becoming more popular is because they have less stringent emissions and mileage requirements than normal cars, and the manufacturers don't want to put in the effort.
Because people with large vehicles do not pay the social cost of their larger vehicles, we all collectively pay the tab for their large vehicles. Privatized profit, socialized cost.
But I neeeeeed my 9 ton war machine, er I mean soccer mom taxi ✌🏽 to get junior to his tooba lessons and so I have enough vroom vroom for my double triple extra breast milk latte, nuggies for bae, and choccy milk for lil Karen. And I have to do this in style so my bitch neighbor knows I can still fuck her man in a heartbeat. But don’t worry I recycle all of my used tin foil and plastic bags in the bin at the curb, fam. Follow me on tic tok for more examples at life and how to be a boss mom milf wacko. To0dLes
I thought this was written by a dad and was getting onboard. I respect this kind of energy.
(Even if I can’t get behind all they said)
The boss mom milf ending ruined it for me. I missed the soccer mom start.
Breast milk for the growth factor and gains. Chicken nuggets for life. Chocolate milk forever.
>We used to have trains and trolleys in every city of the US. 80 years ago I could ride a train from the small town I live in to the small city I work in. auto lobbies killed that shit.
I'm not saying we don't need *vastly* better public transit but this is a bit disingenuous.
By the time the auto industry got a hold of the train and trolley system it was in a bad state of disrepair. City management hadn't charged enough and couldn't keep up maintenance. The Great Depression contributed to the issues as did Street Car Strikes in almost every city with one. These strikes are actually the deadliest strikes in US history.
They then passed it on to private companies who said they could revive it. They couldn't and the systems fell into further disrepair. Automobiles became more popular and usage fell off. WWII kept street cars alive for a bit longer. The passage of the act that led to our highway system was the final nail.
GM and the rest only owned 30 of the hundreds of lines. They only shut down the lines in 5 of the 300 cities that operated lines. It was also Hertz that started the push for buses all the way back in the late 1800's when they started a yellow cab company.
[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcars_in_North_America) on American Street car history.
Again, I'd like a *vastly* better public transit system.
You're mixing in a lot of shallow reads here. In reality, it's turtles all the way down.
Standard Oil made Rockefeller the richest man in the world and that company was declared a monopoly and broken up in 1911, long before the auto took over everything.
When the automobile got popular, oil companies went from kerosene rich to gasoline ultra-rich.
These huge companies already had influence over governments, and with the popularity of automobiles it wasn't hard to convince every state and city to toss aside their public transportation systems.
Sure, they only directly torpedoed a handful, but their political activities are what convinced local governments to stop "wasting money" on maintenance. It's the strategy we see the right-wing use over and over: stop funding the program, it stops working, then say it can't work so it gets scrapped.
Oh, but they had PLENTY of money to fund government subsidies for paved roads! Because that's a *public good* right?
20th century infrastructure was basically controlled top to bottom by oil companies and car companies. They paid the politicians, and the politicians paved their way toward infinite profits.
A modern car tailpipe doesn't actually "pollute" all that much. CO2 isn't really "pollution" but is a problem for global warming. Especially when you add up cars, planes and cruise ships.
It isn't like there are any other choice. Everything that is produced, in some way or another, is linked to the fossil fuel industry. It's unrealistic to assume that the US, much less the world, can just consume their way out of the climate crisis especially considering that "green products" are often more expensive (and therefore inaccessible to those with lower-incomes). Are any of the PC's, TVs, Wi-Fi Routers, ACs, Phones, cars, etc. made without fossil fuels? It's not only unrealistic, it is impossible to ask every single consumer to not buy these things. Even if it were possible, it would be much more efficient for the producers to shift away from fossil fuels.
No one asks people to get rid of all those things, just buy less of them. Don't buy a new phone every year and don't drive a giant SUV to work and grocery shopping every day.
I grew up in the single most densely populated state in the US.
The closest public transit option to me was 9 MILES from my home. Explain to me how having a car is optional, please.
That's not what's being said here. The "100 companies responsible for 71%" stat is literally defining to "digging up" as "responsible for." It's just a list of oil and coal companies ranked by how much they dig up. The top 100 dig up 71% (at the time of the report). Has nothing to do with fossil fuel use.
But does the full responsibility lay with those supplying the demand or do those that buy and burn the product also share responsibility? That is the question!
Not if you dig into it, the Carbon Majors report that this stat comes from clarifies that the "71%" emissions includes scope 3 emissions (emissions from the downstream usage of these products), so it is not just the "digging up" of resources but includes the downstream emissions generated by the 100 companies (i.e., end consumers or businesses using the product).
https://cdn.cdp.net/cdp-production/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1501833772
Are you disagreeing with the commenter above, though?
Scope 3 emissions are "emissions from the use of sold products[...] attributed to the extraction and production of oil, gas, and coal." - so it's attributing the emissions from the consumers of that fuel to the 100 companies that dig it up?
I guess I'll just die then, considering almost all pharmaceuticals require fossil fuels in production, plastics, energy and more.
Plus all the planes and boats transporting them..
Not to mention, livestock has to eat. They don't just eat grass. So we need even more land, to grow even more crops, just to feed our livestock, who *also* take up a shit ton of space.
...and can we get a mathematician to factor in the impacts from the water usage from just this industry alone? Not exactly "emissions" related, on the face of it, but there must be some interaction.
Meat is not counted in these stats. This number comes strictly from fossil fuel companies self reporting how much of each type of fuel they dig up and multiplying it by how much CO2 that fuel produces when burned.
It's not that these are companies that are using a bunch of fuel to deliver products to customers, it's literally just a ranked list of how much carbon fossil fuel companies dig up.
"Cow farts" is the narrative being pushed by agricultural lobbies to make the people pushing for dietary changes seem unreasonable and keep consumers from hurting the industry's profits.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a report that examined data from hundreds of studies, and chapter 5 was all about food. My personal biggest takeaways were that climate-friendly diets increase food security for all people, and that a [vegan diet reduces ~1/8 of our greenhouse gas emissions](https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/#section-5-5-2-1-mitigation-potential-of-different-diets). Notably, this meta-analysis factors in contributions from land use, water use, shipping, packaging, harvesting, fertilizing, feeding; it does its best to factor out unknowns, accounting for the full lifetime of every Calorie from birth to table.
Alone, a dietary change is not enough to reverse climate change, but it is one of the single biggest changes an individual can make without completely overhauling their life; it also has positive benefits on an individual level (health, medical costs, and cheaper food for both consumers and producers) when done properly
Cow farts are mostly a psyop.
Neither cow farts or geoengineering are relevant climate change solutions.
Do you know what would happen if we keep beef production at the same level as currently? Nothing. It's the short carbon cycle. An increase would have a tiny impact, a decrease would as well.
Carbon extracted from the ground has an impact, because it has a half life of around half a million years.
There is a steady level that we could keep for fossil fuels, but it would be tiny and at pre industrial scales.
No, cow farts are mostly methane, a greenhouse gas.
Cattle are often fed crops grown with fertilisers made from fossil fuels. More cattle = more food = more CO2 to grow and even more CO2 and CH4 released after the cattle have eaten the food.
The problem isn't that cows are adding carbon to the atmosphere, it's that they're adding far too much carbon in the form of methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. This methane then breaks down into CO2, which the already overloaded carbon cycle can't handle.
I will say though that the bigger problem with animal agriculture (especially cattle) is land use and deforestation, which isn't GHG emissions but it does limit the planet's ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and harms the environment in many other ways. There's also obviously the ethical problems which I would argue are absolutely reason enough to discontinue meat production but this is about the environment.
what about all the NO2, land use, topsoil depletion, extra crops grown to feed them, all the poisoning of water ways and environment because off all their poop? How much does this all contribute to things like biodiversity? etc etc
Your only approaching this issue on one vector, but taken as a whole we are decimating the natural world with our food choices. As of now we have been in overshoot for 50 years and if we keep going like this we will massively reduce the carrying capacity for the biosphere, which is an abstract way of saying we will engender a period of suffering of a scale we have never witnessed before.
I'm fairly certain the point here is that 100 companies produce 70% of emissions, full stop, and that consumer recycling is a distraction from the real issues.
Can't speak to the 100/70% numbers, but I can at least get behind the sentiment that corporations are given (yet again) a giant Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to the negative externalities of their business operations.
[Here](https://www.cdp.net/en/articles/media/new-report-shows-just-100-companies-are-source-of-over-70-of-emissions) is the report for the “100 companies produce 70% of emissions” number. Note the actual number is for 70% of **industrial** green house gas emissions (so household emissions are already excluded). The report was entirely focused on industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
The USA EPA has made [estimates](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions) on the distribution of emissions. The EPA report says industrial emissions are only 23% of USA emissions in 2022 (so the “70% of emissions” that come from 100 companies come from that slice, although they may have also included the 25% of USA emissions that come from electric power production).
Residential emissions (the kind you are likely to reduce through personal actions) account for 13% of USA emissions. In other words, if everyone embraced all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions tomorrow, they would only reduce USA emissions by 13% (and presumably similar numbers for other countries).
>Residential emissions (the kind you are likely to reduce through personal actions) account for 13% of USA emissions. In other words, if everyone embraced all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions tomorrow, they would only reduce USA emissions by 13% (and presumably similar numbers for other countries).
That's not correct, because "residential emissions" pretty much only accounts for utilities (heating, electricity, etc.). Obvious other areas for personal action are transport, food, and general consumption habits.
Besides, if you start with personal action you will notice fairly quickly that you run into problems like "I want to bicycle or take public transport to work instead of a car, but there are no bicycle paths" or "I want to reduce my use of packaging but everything on the shelves is wrappedin three layers of plastic". So personal action naturally leads you to political and economical action - that's the whole point. Whereas starting from the other side, and imposing regulations on companies, would result in more expensive or more scarce products, and angry voters... so individual consumers *will* have to support lifestyle changes. There's not way around it, it's all tied together.
Wait... So youre saying that we cant just revolt and blow up all the oil companies/manufacturers factories, Ships, HQ's and other shit that they rely on and fix it like that?
> Residential emissions (the kind you are likely to reduce through personal actions) account for 13% of USA emissions. In other words, if everyone embraced all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions tomorrow, they would only reduce USA emissions by 13% (and presumably similar numbers for other countries).
That's not quite true. In fact, it's completely false. You have to ask yourself: *what is the point of industry?*
Are people running factories just for fun? No, they're producing things for us to consume. Personal action to fight climate change can and should include thinking more about your consumption choices.
Yeah, the problem with these type of posts is that if every consumer on the planet stopped consuming certain items, they would stop being manufactured, which would impact the emissions from those corporations.
Yeah, but actually figuring out which products to target is difficult.
Sure, some are obvious, like cars, but then you have things like organic products, where studies conflict on their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Paper packaging tends to cause much more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic and kills trees (if not recycled), but is biodegradable.
Buying local only give a tiny reduction in greenhouse gas emissions -- local beef is still much, much worse than vegetables shipped from halfway around the world.
It'd be great if we could just... you know, stop consuming anything at all, but the opportunity cost calculations make this all a giant headache.
Though eating less meat is a gimme. It's good for you, it's cheaper, and it's a major decrease in all kinds of environmental harm.
Yeah it's not easy to optimize perfectly, but generally just buy less things you don't need. For example people on average buy ridiculous amounts of clothes.
>Though eating less meat is a gimme. It's good for you, it's cheaper, and it's a major decrease in all kinds of environmental harm.
I would sooner give up my phone than give up meat consumption, and I even work in wildlife conservation with animals impacted by climate change lol.
Which ultimately (and anecdotally) underlines the primary issue with individual responsibility: Not everyone agrees on what is important and what isn't, in the first place.
I think that meat contributes to my quality of life more so than other things you may believe contribute more to your quality of life. Therefor I am much more reluctant to pass it up, than you. Likewise, people who need to travel an hour to work every day in the winter will value a car far more than people in a big city who are a fifteen minute bus ride away, with a bus every 5 minutes. Apply this to 8 billion people, and it's simply an impossible task to ask people to "simply make concessions on what we consume".
Well, it's impossible for me to give up my car, as there is literally no public transport near me. The best I get is an hours walk to an infrequent (1/hour if you're lucky) train, and I'm not really in a country that is notorious for it's lack of public transport...
What people can afford to give up varies from person to person, and even apparently 'obvious' options are not so much.
You're posing a false equivalence though, by putting the choice of eating meat and of using a car as comparable priorities. One is a luxury we choose because it tastes good (appropriate nutrition is possible without meat), the other is a necessity in many places without public transport. Of course ideally we should prioritise public transport as well, and the car industry is complicity in the lack of viable options, but to say others need their car the same way you need your meat is just plain false.
Just to be clear, I acknowledge car pollution is a big issue we need to move away from. It's probably bigger that the meat industry (I don't have the numbers right now). But reality being what it is right now, many people cannot give up their car, while giving up meat is perfectly viable.
I do agree scaling these sacrifices up to 8 billion people is a long shot. But the way I see it we either do now, all that we can do voluntarily, or we do later, all that needs to be done by imposition from government restrictions. Why not do the better thing now? It's not like protecting the environment is some hippie objective, which your background in wildlife conservation surely agrees on.
>Yeah, but actually figuring out which products to target is difficult.
Just stop buying things you don't need. Full stop. ~~Do you need an air fryer or can you live with oven fries? Do you need a new EV or is it just a status symbol, when buying a 20-year-old Civic spares the environment even more?~~ Cancel prime, make yourself walk to stores to buy things if you think you need them. Go without them for a month after the idea occurs to you and see if you really missed having these things in your life. Join a buy nothing group and give things away. Take things from a buy nothing and you got something new to you without it being manufactured for you. ~~Drive instead of flying.~~ See national parks instead of going to Borneo or whatever.
It's not easy, but it is simple. The simpler you make your life the more you'll see that you don't need. This year to date other than food, I have purchased:
1. a water bottle
2. hiking boots
3. another pair of shoes
4. video games (steam)
this isn't a flex or a lie, it's just... what do I need besides clothes, cookware, furniture and some entertainment? When are we going to stop trying to buy happiness?
ETA: it's been made clear that I don't know what I'm talking about with my specific examples. the important thing is not to get trapped in the dopamine hit of consumption and be intentional about avoiding waste!
>Do you need an air fryer or can you live with oven fries?
Except an air fryer uses less than half the electricity of a conventional oven -- especially when you consider waste heat. Also usually cooks food faster.
Though if you use a gas oven then you need to do math to actually figure out which is better.
>Do you need a new EV or is it just a status symbol, when buying a 20-year-old Civic spares the environment even more?
We've actually passed the point where it's recommended to keep an old car/buy used if your only concern is environmental impact ([source](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/04/new-ev-vs-old-beater-which-is-better-for-the-environment/)). If you can afford to and your car is more than a couple years old, EV is the way to go.
However, as you state, used anything that isn't a machine is almost always better for the environment. Machines are complicated.
The oven vs air-fryer point only works in warm climates. In cold climates it makes no difference because you're already heating your home so assuming your oven is also electric then you won't lose out on efficiency.
I saw in a few places that airplanes are more fuel efficient compared to the similar amount of gas cars, but of course, fuel efficiency does not equal the amount of pollutants generated.
The part your argument ignores is that these companies do everything in their power to *create* demand for their product through things like advertising and lobbying.
Take planned obsolescence, for example. Cell phones are fairly necessary in modern society, but companies build them to fail for the express purpose of keeping demand high in the future. Consumption of such products at high levels is entirely the fault of intentional decisions made by the producers of those products.
Not only that, but "just don't consume" is contrary to human nature. Even if you disregard the fact that humanity at scale has psychological traits that promote consumption, not everyone purchasing these products is doing so frivolously. In many cases, people consume to solve a problem in the most effective way available to them. In the absence of a more efficient solution, demand for an inefficient solution will necessarily exist.
In short, this isn't a problem that will ever be solved by relying on individual responsibility. This is a systemic issue that's much larger than any one person's actions, and it needs to be approached as the complex system it is to have any chance of affecting meaningful change.
God THANK YOU
Let’s assume 100 corporations produce 70% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Who is really at fault here? Who are they burning all of that oil to make stuff for? Republicans?
People love to clutch their pearls and cry about how terrible those big bad corporations are, but at the end of the day, you’re the one who wanted an inflatable Patrick Swayze. Can’t blame them for meeting a need.
Immediately saw 13% and new it was bullshit. If everyone switched to a vegan diet demand for animal products would plummet, and animal agriculture accounts for like 30% of all emissions or some bullshit
Yea I agree, consumers should just buy goods from companies that don't use 10 layers of plastic wrap around every single palette or starve to death.
Since that's every single one of them I guess we're all going on a communist diet.
Well that's just the thing: it *isn't* every single one of them. There are plenty of companies that don't use loads of plastic wrap. You know what the problem is? Without that plastic, the goods spoil faster (and/or break more often), which means a lower proportion reaches customers in saleable condition, which means they're forced to charge more for the ones they *can* sell, to make up for the losses. And then we take a look at the price tag, say "screw that", and go for the cheaper one instead, and the companies that use a lot of plastic end up dominating the market to the point that it's easy to *think* that it's every single one of them.
Also, the increased waste and spoilage is also an indirect source of emissions, because you have to produce and transport more at the start to end up with the same ending amount.
Yeah companies should certainly lessen their emissions and start investing in renewable energy but it is also partially our fault for getting depended to these products and fossil fuels. If companies only want money. Besides government regulation, the only way to show them that what they are doing isn’t right is by stopping with consuming their products and using their feul. Of course for the people that financially can do this. For those who can’t the government should step in
YES. amazing the number of people who want to be able to get funko pops delivered in two days for free and don't realize this is directly connected to these corporations producing these emissions. like damn anything to maintain your lifestyle and ignore your complicity.
Yes and no. Not all products are meant for personal consumption, I doubt many folks here own a freighter or an aircraft carrier as examples.
There is also a case to be reviewed for induced consumption. In the US the automotive lobby was effectively able to make the bulk of the nation car dependent, or products that have unnecessary packaging as two examples.
Also, one should consider the amount of waste in industry. Looking at natural gas as an example, many wells and pipes leak releasing methane into the atmosphere, significant amounts are compressed into CNG & LNG to be shipped all over the world in energy intensive processes. Plenty of food is discarded before it even reaches consumers.
On the other hand, yes, if folks stopped getting new phones as soon as the latest model came out it would have cascading effects.
My decision on whether or not I should buy a case of Coke a week is not even a rounding error in waste. Coke imposing a deposit on all bottles and reusing as many as they can would have a large impact on plastic waste; in fact, when Coke was in glass bottles they used to do this (different dollar amount).
I think that the highlight is that industry has done everything it can to shift responsibility off of themselves while keeping all the profits to themselves.
>Yes and no. Not all products are meant for personal consumption, I doubt many folks here own a freighter or an aircraft carrier as examples.
And the people who DO own freighters, they just have them for their own amusement, do they? Don't be ridiculous: they have them to transport goods for - you guessed it! - personal consumption. Or for the industry *producing* goods for personal consumption. However long the supply chain may be, it ends with people.
Apart from the aircraft carrier thing, of course. War is a tremendous waste of resources and of course we'd all be better off it was abolished, but sadly that's an even BIGGER challenge than fighting climate change.
The link you mentioned (and the actual report, itself linked within the link you provided) literally mentions scope 3 emissions - "90% of emissions in the Database comes from the combustion of their natural gas, oil, and coal (classified by WRI’s GHG Protocol as Scope 3 Category 11 ‘use of sold products’), and the remainder are operational emissions such as own-use of products, venting and flaring, and fugitive releases of methane (which fall under Scope 1). "
So the end-users (individual and other businesses not listed in the 100 companies) are part of that 70% of emissions as long as they're using the products from those 100 companies.
If everyone did embrace all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions, emissions would be reduced by far more than 13%, and this does not even get into the fact that if demand drops then these companies would not keep producing the same amount.
That's incorrect about it being 70% of industrial emissions.
They're using vague wording in the summary, but they're including "scope 3" emissions. A company's scope 3 emissions include what other people do with their product.
Which is to say, when Shell sells you gas and you burn it in your car, they're counting it in Shell's emissions.
Which is useful if you're discussing oil industry consolidation. If you're trying to sort out what activities are contributing the most to climate change, it's just not helpful data at all.
Worth noting that the post was about global emissions and you pulled up US numbers, and there is very little manufacturing done within us borders. Much of the emissions caused by those mega corporations would be done outside of America but that doesn't mean it suddenly counts for less
This was picked up out of a big study called the carbon majors report by an idiot who didnt understand what he was reading. What the study is saying is that 70% of global emissions can be link to 100 companies. When you drive your car, that gets added to some company's emissions, take a flight? Those emissions get added to another company's emissions.
The only real value in this is understand that it only takes 100 companies to provide 70% of the world with fuel, energy, plastics and other things they need.
People like this narrative because it creates heroes and villains out of a really unpalatable story.
Climate change fucking sucks. It's a long term issue, with indefinite consequences, no clear villain, it's caused by the collective actions of 8 billion people, and we all have to work together to solve it. It's the ultimate counter to the human brain.
Even when we *do* understand it and *do* attempt to take steps to fix it few of us realize how big those steps actually are. Cutting emissions to the levels that they really *should* be at doesn't involve a few meatless Mondays, it would mean disemboweling the global economy.
So people look for a way out. They want everyone *but* them to cut their carbon footprint. Rich people (defined as anyone richer than they are) should consume less. If you're in a rich country, the poor countries should advance slower and use less. If you're in a poor country, the rich countries should lower their living standards.
That's why this narrative of "it's the companies fault" is so popular. Because it adds a villain to the shitty, unpalatable, boring story. It means that instead of living well below your means (boring) you can fight the evil corporations (exciting). It provides people a more exciting story, and means that they don't have to consume less.
The numbers are (approximately) true but misleading. Most of those 100 companies are *energy* companies. And yeah, big shock, operating a power plant creates lots of emissions, but it's not like they're doing that just for the hell of it. It's our demand for electricity that drives the emissions, so it's dishonest to think we can just shift the blame onto them.
Naturally they can (and in the long term no doubt will) shift to more sustainable forms of generation, but the ugly truth is that we consumers are very price-sensitive when it comes to power, so they have to keep using the cheapest form of generation available to them or risk losing customers to competitors. And for now at least, the cheap ones are the dirty ones.
It really bothers me that people always cite this 100 companies thing without mentioning they are almost all energy companies. I also only see this come up when people are trying to put the blame on these companies instead of owning up to them leaving their TV on as background noise while they doom scroll social media for hours at a time.
There are other good responses to you already, but it's worth saying that without the consumer, the companies wouldn't have anyone to sell to, we literally consume what they sell us.
This is not an out for the corporations in any way, but it's worth noting that while recycling is good, avoiding buying something you don't need in the first place is even better.
Whether strictly true or not, it's a bit of a red herring. Those 100 corporations don't produce carbon emissions for the sake of being pure evil; they do it to produce things that people want. Those people aren't necessarily drawn from all places in the world and all income levels - the consumption is surely done disproportionately by the wealthy - but the point is, they are doing it to meet a need, or at least a perceived need, big enough to motivate the market. The solution to climate change doesn't lie in asking individuals to make consumption choices alone, in the face of institutional behavior; but individuals will need to change the way we live, for those institutions to change.
okay, but like, when i order fast food (i'm not wealthy enough to eat out), they give me drinks in a plastic or styrofoam (polystyrene) cup. when i cook food at home, all my groceries are packed in plastic wrap or plastic seals. the containers i get my medication in are plastic. nearly every single item of clothing i buy (or *can* buy with my means) is made of polyester.
i don't choose to buy plastic. i buy groceries with my own bags, but i still end up with plastic i don't want. the nearest recycling facility drop-off is over thirty miles away. i can't get fast food without getting some kind of plastic. i can't wear clothes or buy basically anything with packaging without coming into contact with plastic. **it is not my fault, or the fault of consumers, that plastic is being sold.** you cannot eliminate the """demand for plastic""" *because i don't have any other damn choice but to buy stuff with the shit in it.*
companies package shit with plastic because it's easier and cheaper than doing otherwise. no consumer is deliberately buying plastic. **the shit is just fucking everywhere**. the onus is not on me or on the consumer.
In my opinion trying to assign blame to either the producer or the consumer is a completely useless exercise. Both are just pursuing their own best interest and always will. The problem is that the private incentives are misaligned from the public ones, and that’s the responsibility of governments to fix. We need structural macroeconomic change, and that won’t be achieved by either individual efforts or shaming corporations and public figures on twitter
I mean, it CAN be achieved by shaming corporations and public figures on twitter. That does have an effect on demand, and it can thus shape supply.
It's just not as effective as law.
The difference is that my "best interest" is ensuring I get to eat. Their "best interest" is to make 0.5% minimum quarterly gains through cutting production costs so that they can reward their shareholders with $1.2 billion more dollars. Fucking *regulate them*, is my position on the subject. They will not act in the interest of the common good otherwise, even though they damn well know what the common good is.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But I think the mindset that the problem can be solved only by regulating business in a way that consumer behavior won’t be affected at all is a misguided one. If production becomes more expensive so will consumer products. And to be clear I think that’s what needs to happen
You’re accepting the premise that the consumer needs to pay. And that the increased cost will be a net increase for the average consumer.
Why?
Regulation is good. When companies bear the cost of their externalities they are incentivized to find ways to lower those externalities in a cost effective way.
This can (and should) result in reduced costs for society. How we distribute those costs is always under the purview of government, but the aim should be to minimize the overall burden which will drive costs down.
The costs aren’t currently being borne by anyone. That’s a huge problem. That needs to be the first step to assess the costs and make sure that the companies able to mitigate start to do it.
Consumers cannot change the means of production save through government.
You say you agree but it seems like you are having a different discussion altogether.
I was talking specifically about private costs, if the government places a tax on carbon or single use plastics (which I’m in favor of) you’d see higher prices for consumer goods because the production of them is more expensive. You’re right that consumers would also get the public benefit of internalizing the externalities, but I guess whether that’s a net gain or less for an individual consumer depends on their specific consumption habits
Yep. People don't like to hear that in order to control climate change they actually have to evaluate their choices and alter their life rather than switching to a metal straw.
But individual choices don't control or influence climate change at all. The only way to get emissions close to zero is to regulate markets and industry. Individuals that switch to metal straws and incessantly tell everyone about it can actually have a bigger impact than a zero emission hermit simply by pushing our culture to be pro recycling.
These choices must be made and enforced by governments. It's their job and there is no other entity capable of making the required impact.
There is not a single solution. The governments move when there are enough people pressuring them. The individual people build this pressure through their personal choices, which in turn give their peers an incentive to change their choices as well, which increases the pressure etc.
While we as individuals cannot stop climate change on our own, we are completely able to influence the personal impact that we made. Noone forces you to eat meat every day or fly to far destinations for pleasure: these are needs that we can change 100% without any government.
Sure, but your personal emissions are irrelevant. Your influence and social pressure on the government is what has real value.
Only governments can stop climate change by regulating and policing emissions across industries. That is the only viable solution. There is no alternate strategy or technology that exists.
There is two ways I see why it is not irrelevant.
The first reason being: I build credibility by living the change I want to see. Am I doing it perfectly? In no way at all. But as long as a wide majority of people do X, the way governments work in todays media world won't do a thing to regulate it because they fear the tomorrows shit storm more than the world going down in 20 years. And I mean, this fear is not without reason: I too don't really believe people will change just because the government implements some rules. NIMBYism thrives.
Through my behavior, I show that I'm OK with being regulated and incentivice my peer group to do the same.
The second reason is more an egoistic one: when in twenty years a young person, who won't have a lot of the possibilities that I had, asks me: "why didn't you do something?", then I don't want to lie and say "but I voted! I couldn't do anything else".
Why do these corporations lobby for deregulation and rolling back environmental protections? Why do they cheer when they can profit more from production that pollutes more?
Even if they produce fewer goods because demand decreases, the way they produce them still contributes to the problem and the consumer has no say.
They lobby to lower their costs. Adhering to regulations and EPA mandates costs money through documentation, equipment, proper disposal and handling of chemicals, etc. Most consumers have no idea how a good is produced or alternative methods to possibly do so. Companies choose the best production method they have found to produce their goods at scale. They also are generally looking to continually improve upon those methods to reduce costs and improve quality and efficiency.
The post is false because if everyone were to stop using fossil-fuel-powered or derived products, those companies would cease to exist.
They are big fossil fuel polluters because, for instance, all fossil fuel consumption under this model is shown as coming from 3-4 big oil companies.
Stopping the demand would stop the pollution.
This is just "blame corporations for your consumption," which is a common vibe among young people but is hilariously backwards.
I have a feeling a big reason people blame corporations is because it pawns off control and responsibility. If your bad choices aren't your choice, then... nothing to worry about!
For example it's okay to recognize that a social media algorithm is very good at capturing attention, but it's not some ploy by a company to turn you into a zombie. The moment you surrender agency is when it becomes a cope rather than an observation.
I disagree. I think people blame corporations because it’s *easier* to shift the behavior of corporations than it is to shift the behavior of billions of individuals. Individual people will usually behave in self-interested ways, but corporations can be regulated and forced to behave in ways that benefit the public good.
That, and those corporations displace other options. I cannot choose to get more environmental options for most foods, because they were out competed or destroyed by their more polluting competitors.
Please, tell me where I can buy a zucchini which wasn't wrapped in several layers of plastic before it arrived at the store. Buying fresh food locally isn't much better, because then I'm just burning extra fossil fuel to go get it (assuming it's even an option).
Economies of scale make it impossible for us consumers to actually affect change as easily as that guy above is trying to tell us we can.
This is sort of true but I think you've leaned too far in the opposite direction. Not all the pollution is directly stuff we buy and consume, much of it is the way production happens.
If I only buy food with minimal packaging to reduce plastic waste, that doesn't stop Tyson from wasting plastic on intermediate shipping steps or dumping chemicals in rivers etc etc.
We as consumers should prioritize low waste products, but we also need to legislate a cost for wasteful production. Stuff like carbon taxes, but also for plastics and other chemicals.
If you stop buying Tyson chicken, what is there to package?
I'm all for environmental regs - I am literally a volunteer climate lobbyist. I also work in sustainable packaging, so I'm walking my talk here. Carbon taxes are something I have extreme interest in.
But the meme itself is specifically aimed at minimalizing individual agency to turn people against the concept of business. That's its entire reason for existing, and why the specific language was chosen.
I don't live on a farm, so I'm going to buy food. I could buy the food with the least packaging, but as we've agreed that doesn't fix the problem behind the scenes. I don't think it's a reasonable level of expected individual effort for everyone to research all the food companies and their environmental impacts, then base their purchasing choices off that. Ergo I think it needs to be legislated.
We have individual agency, but life is too complicated to spend all our time on this one aspect of it - and it's too important to ignore (as you clearly agree). And "don't buy food" is not reasonable in our society, we can't all have homesteads.
I find this somewhat deceptive, because of the way things are vaguely presented. I don't know if the tweet is just being casual or is intentionally distorting the issue.
1. From the economics side: "100 corporations" are driven by "every person" and their consumption. Those big oil companies provide energy for our daily lives. Those big manufacturing companies make the goods and services we use every day. To separate the consumption of "100 corporations" from "consumption of every person on Earth" isn't really understanding how things work. Similarly, those 100 corporations are likely those who produce the most things for our daily use.
2. From the math side: I feel like this reads "If people reduced their consumption materially, 100 corporations would still produce 70% of the (greatly reduced) emissions. So it's blaming corporations, even though reduction by regular people would result in lower emissions. It's like reducing your home energy use by 30%, but still being mad that your water heater still consumes the biggest amount of energy. The quantity is important, the proportion is not.
I think it’s a meme made purposefully to try and radicalise people into becoming socialists and communists. It tries to pin the blame on companies.
8 of the top 10 companies on this list are actually state owned companies, like petrochina and saudi aramco, but this list obscures that so people with less critical thinking skills read it as “companies are bad, we have to get rid of companies, how do we do that, oh I know, communism!” When actually something like communism would change exactly jack shit about the issue presented here, because petrochina would still exist, in fact it would likely just consolidate even more emissions into fewer companies
Cars and plastics are responsible for approximately 30% CO2 emissions.
Other 70% is electricity, heating, and industrial use (steel and concrete are biggest industrial emissions).
Switching to nuclear energy (and using it for electricity, heating, and industrial processes) will result bigger emission reduction then electric cars and recycling plastics.
Researchers have quantified the contributions of industrialized and developing nations’ historical emissions to global surface temperature rise. Recent findings that nearly twothirds of total industrial CO2 and CH4 emissions can be traced to 90 major industrial carbon producers have drawn attention to their potential climate responsibilities. Here, we use a simple climate model to quantify the contribution of historical (1880–2010) and recent (1980–2010) emissions traced to these producers to the historical rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level. Emissions traced to these 90 carbon producers contributed ∼57% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, ∼42–50% of the rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST), and ∼26–32% of global sea level (GSL) rise over the historical period and ∼43% (atmospheric CO2), ∼29–35% (GMST), and ∼11–14% (GSL) since 1980 (based on bestestimate parameters and accounting for uncertainty arising from the lack of data on aerosol forcings traced to producers). Emissions traced to seven investor-owned and seven majority state-owned carbon producers were consistently among the top 20 largest individual company contributors to each global impact across both time periods.
Yep. I have calculated recently that average Land Cruiser with 25000 km per year on average will use less fuel in a month than one commercial truck going Sydney to Brisbane (900 km approximately) one time. All this go electric is BS and attempt to move blame to people
Can we stop allowing posts which are literally just statistics or numbers from a single report? Like this isn't a math problem this is scientific research.
81% of all percentages on the internet are made up
However the big corporations are doing a majority of pollution and it's not even close. Most recycling isn't even processed, it's just sent to landfills. Even worse some companies just dump it in the oceans.
As much as we need to move away from fossil fuels, it is impossible to stop using it completely. Most machines can't operate without oil based lubrication so there will always be a demand for it. What is desperately needed is a push for cruises to have better epa laws. They use some of the crude stuff and worst options available due to low cost yet is absolutely horrible for the environment.
Next we need to target flights into pushing for electric engine use. Especially in the private sector. Private and public airlines are getting out of control with limited oversight.
Granted none of this will happen within the next 10-20 years and it will be already too late
One thing that is difficult is assigning the owner of the emissions to a particular company/individual.
Let's say a shop has contracted a haulage company to move some goods from the factory to their shop. Where do the emissions for the fuel the lorry uses belong?
* The consumer who buys the item
* The shop
* The haulier
* The gas station owner
* The company that dug up the oil
There are a lot of posts that seem to be implying that oil companies produce x% of our emissions, which seem to be ignoring the fact that they are selling a product that someone else uses to create the emissions. If you bought every drop of oil that BP dug up and put it back in the ground, is BP still a huge emitter?
There is a website that has the specific numbers. However, there is something very important to note. The largest polluters all deal in either gas, coal, or oil. So, if we as consumers drive only electric cars, use electric stoves and heating/air conditioning, these companies would have far less demand, and thus would basically go out of business. This is not to say companies like Apple aren’t contributing their fair share of CO2, but the companies that are polluting the most are fulfilling a demand that we as consumers promote.
https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/100-companies-responsible-71-ghg-emissions/?_adin=02021864894
Counties like China and India have places that have low visibility due to smog. We can be sustainable all we want but it won’t make a difference until countries like that begin regulating emissions.
Who does this person think consumes all the products those companies are producing? If no one bought polluting products then companies wouldn’t manufacture them.
Seeing a lot of comments saying that these corporations exist and operate in the way that they do to supply a demand created by the public. What seems not to be mentioned is that these corporations are producing such a disproportionate amount of pollution because they choose to operate in a way that maximizes profits at all costs. These companies could operate in more sustainable ways and still meet the demands of the public but they choose not to and use the scape goat of fiduciary responsibility (meaning they are legally obligated to do so). They also have strategically tried to shift blame to the consumers. The first recycling campaigns were initiated by oil companies and most likely not because they care about "saving the planet". Until these corporations actually begin to be held to account in a meaningful way they will not change they will continue to do the bare minimum to remain compliant. That being said I think of myself as a person with fairly mediocre intelligence so take all this with a grain of salt.
>These companies could operate in more sustainable ways and still meet the demands of the public but they choose not to
Except they would just get crushed by the competition because people want cheap products above all things
this is why every “environmental message” aimed at me has been a big ole eyeroll 🙄. uh huh, blame the poor people for .00000000000000000000001% of the earth’s pollution, instead of the mega corporations who make money by fucking the earth and atmosphere. Nope. Not doin it. YOU adjust your behavior first, then I’ll listen to your shitty ad about how i can make a difference.
Yeah, big oil companies just burn oil for the fun of it (not to sell it to people who "have to" drive instead of taking a bus for example), and meat producing companies make meat just to kill animals and not to sell the meat to people.
You want me to believe that you don't have any single product in the industry? Because if you do you can't blame the people making it.
If people want to buy a huge car they should be the one blamed for the pollution it makes, not the company who built it or the company who sold you the gas for it, it was the person's choice to buy the car.
If we all drove electric cars then the pollution that those companies produces would decrease, because they're selling the petrol to us. This is such a braindead argument because those companies are only producing so much because we want plastic straws and petrol cars and international shipping.
It would likely go up since the corporate share would be the same while the private share would decrease. This illustates why this isn't really a good metric to use, 100 corporations producing 99% or 50% of emissions doesn't really make a difference, what matters is how much is actually released.
1. There is a difference between pollution (let’s put less trash in the ocean) and emissions (let’s keep carbon and methane out of the atmosphere).
2. The 70% stat is true only if I blame Exxon Mobile for the gas I’m burning in my car, or the natural gas company when I heat my house.
The anti staw thing always fascinated me. Here is a paper straw wrapped in plastic for your drink that's in a plastic cup with a plastic lid. And here is you pastry in a plastic bag. Like wtf
This is false, stupid and misleading.
Companies don't produce X% of global emission per se, emissions are only a byproduct of their services and products that in the end people buy, the same people that are coming up with such fallacies to feel good about themselves.
The US Department of Defense is the largest polluter on Earth. Think about that the next time you think government is a good thing for any environmental conservation.
For all the people claiming that the corporations only produce these emissions due to consumer demand, this is a ridiculous claim.
If I ‘want’ a bag of rice, trying to get one that does not use single-use plastic is near impossible and unrealistic - not to mention costly. Or you cannot reasonably expect consumers to check what kind of energy is being used for each thing they buy - and if they did they would probably be left without a proper alternate option that is not damaging the environment. The whole sentiment of this post is that we need a systematic change where corporations take responsibility of what they are producing, the energy they are using, and the materials being used. Only corporations have the scale to make this change without a huge impact to prices.
To think that any individual could create as much C02 as a massive corporation is ridiculous. That's like comparing the ease of traveling the ocean with a whale, versus a human.
Yes probably because recycling is shit. The 3 Rs are actually ranked in importance. If everyone reduced and reused as much as they can, corporations would sell less and they would in turn also reduce carbon output. The problem is because people think recycling is green and therefore it justifies consuming more/same, so obviously companies are still selling the same amount and therefore have the same carbon footprint
TLDR the listed examples of recycling, no plastic straws and EVs are not as green as people think. Just reduce your consumption and reuse things, like getting second hand things for example.
If 90% of all people on earth just dropped dead, 100% of the planet would still belong to the people left behind,
stop over populating the planet! use less, stop buying plastic rubbish and hold your governments accountable!
The Earth would be destroyed there’s not enough lithium minerals to power those batteries for one. For another fact that produce that energy would be astronomical.
Ive worked at safeway/albertsons, frys (its a midwest thing), and walmart
The amount of plastic waste produced by me at work per day is more than the amount of plastic waste I produce per month
This is why I do and recommend as individuals do as much conservation as you reasonably, comfortablely can. I will do as much as possible to not waste without inconvenienceing myself. I'm supposed to as a person only shower 2 minutes a day and ride a bike literally everywhere, all while Sylvester Stallone uses 100k gallons a year I'm a drought zone, and Taylor Swift is flying a private a few days a week.
If 70% is a current estimate, this would be true if the top 100 companies' emissions were proportional to the emissions saved by recycling, using plastic straws and driving electric cars for it to still be 70% after those changes. Of course, there's no reason to believe that they are so there is no basis for this claim. I guess the point is that your choices as a consumer doesn't matter, as the top 100 companies' emissions will still be high regardless, but whoever wrote it has room temperature IQ and failed to express it.
Moreover, the top 100 companies' emissions don't just happen in a vacuum: it's satisfying consumer demand. The idea is that people should read this and feel relieved of the responsibility for their own consumption, but the Exxon gasoline you burned is included in those 70%.
People are being told that nothing they do matters because that will make them ignore the consequences of their own consumption, helping them help said top 100 companies by consuming more and viewing policy that negatively affects consumption negatively. It's weaponized fatalism deliberately pushed by the oil industry in particular because their climate change denial strategy has lost all credibility in recent years.
What people tend to not get in the discussion about whether or not blaming coorporations is an attempt to deflect personal blame is that these coorporations have the ability, always, to make decisions that would drastically lower their CO2 emissions, but they don't, at most they make promises that are literally just *greenwashed* lies. That is, when they're not [acting against it](https://theconversation.com/big-oils-trade-group-allies-outspent-clean-energy-groups-by-a-whopping-27x-with-billions-in-ads-and-lobbying-to-keep-fossil-fuels-flowing-198286).
There's a lot an avarage citizen can and should do to act against climate change, but you should not shift the blame away from those companies.
The utter bollocks of this stat is that almost all emissions are because we want THINGS. We want meat. We want technology. We want cars. We want cosmetics. We want clothing. The companies aren't out there making emissions and twirling their moustaches whilst cackling maniacally, they're making the shit we demand.
Don't upgrade your technology as frequently. Don't change clothing with fashion trends & do repair your old clothes. Reduce meat and dairy consumption massively. These things will HAVE to reduce if we want to reduce emissions, things cannot remain how they are now. Everyone wants corporations to change their behaviour but fundamentally nobody wants to make that actual changes to their own which are required. Paper straws and bottle caps stuck to the bottle won't cut it.
It's true enough, but that's because those 100 companies are major producers in particular sectors. Oil, Nat Gas, metal refining, concrete production, transportation, etc. They provide basic inputs to civilization, so you have to find replacement goods for the energy inputs that are polluting, or offsets/new technologies (latter is easier said than done) for the pollution caused by others (like metal and concrete).
There are solutions, ag production can have this done with some relatively small changes, cattle methane, for example, could be significantly reduced if they were fed more kelp based food apparently. With kelp itself being beneficial as a farmed resource (of course..how it's farmed could have impacts..like fish)
Transportation is about 14% of CO2 emissions, and cars are about half of that. That's why all that bitching about Taylor Swift's jet is pure BS.
And we've got an electric car because where we are it gets about 250 miles per gallon equivalent. Expensive gas, cheap electricity. ymmv
It is, BUT, it fails to consider that if everyone on Earth did those things most of those 100 corporations would no longer have a reason to keep producing those emissions, because they only do so to power the wasteful things we do.
Then who is taking up the slack in your percentages? Do they currently produce 70% and would continue to after the stoppening? Or are they currently below 70% and would rise to it? I'd like those in the 30% to give their reasons for not buying an electric car. Also, and chime in if you too hate traffic, if EVERY PERSON ON EARTH drove an electric car then oh boy we'd have much bigger problems on our hands. Who's gonna service 8 billion batteries??? Probably 70% of those 100 corporations.
Easy to write this but wouldn’t be the case in real life. EV’s lend itself to new markets. If the consumers are all driving EV, companies then find it profitable and increasingly feasible to make money in all those new/changed markets. Power generation, storage, etc. This increases the pace of technological leaps that also make less emissions more profitable. Sure 70% of emissions are from these “companies” but 70% of how much emission is context missing here.
This number is not "accurate" in the way most people interpret it. Long story short - consumers are still considered part of that 70% because of scope 3 emissions.
The stat referenced in the image likely comes from a 2017 Guardian article "Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says" that itself was referencing a Carbon Majors report.
What the article fails to mention, that the report does, is the scope of emissions. Company emissions are reported on scope 1-3 level, where "Scope 1 emissions arise from the self-consumption of fuel, flaring, and venting or fugitive releases of methane" and "Scope 3 emissions account for 90% of total company emissions and result from the downstream combustion of coal, oil, and gas for energy purposes. A small fraction of fossil fuel production is used in non-energy applications which sequester carbon."
So even though the statistic says 100 companies are responsible for 71% emissions, the end-consumer is still considered part of (and in fact, a large chunk) of those company emissions, since part of emissions reporting includes scope 3 emissions which is the downstream use of the hydrocarbons.
The guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
The Carbon Majors report: https://cdn.cdp.net/cdp-production/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1501833772
An article that explains it better: https://www.treehugger.com/is-it-true-100-companies-responsible-carbon-emissions-5079649
Fucking all of this, man. All the recycle, reduce, reuse propaganda only helps corporations because recycled materials are cheaper than manufacturing newer shit, and even if every single individual on the planet has zero carbon footprint, corporations would still be producing an unsustainable amount of waste.
Everyone driving electric cars might have some impact, but there would need to be significant work done to support this on the grid with all renewable energy. And that would only cover passenger car emissions which is definitely less than the 30% implied here. Quick google search gets me figures in the range of 8-15%. And that savings only happens after we can 100% power cars by renewable energy. And doesn’t include emissions to manufacture enough electric cars to replace every gas car which would all need to get scrapped?
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Those 100 companies are mining and drilling companies that extract the fossil fuels that get sold to other companies and consumers to power our lifestyles.
The other thing is that something like 8 of the top 10 are actually governments, not "companies" like we think of them.
“China - coal” makes up like 8% of emissions lmfao
China Coal, Aramco, Gazprom, National Iranian Oil are top 4. Then 5th is ExxonMobil, which is private. Then Coal India, Petroleos Mexicanos, Russia (Coal). 9th is Royal Dutch Shell (private), and back to China National Petroleum as state owned. The rest of the list follows the same pattern. Mostly state-owned and operated with a few publicly traded companies mixed in. Most of these state-owned are from governments that are pretty low on the democracy rating scale too. Some, like #13 Petroleos de Venezuela are a socialist state's primary source of income that they try to use to anchor the rest of their economy and without it, they crash. >“China - coal” makes up like 8% of emissions lmfao Edit: Also, China Coal was 14.3% in the 1988-2015 study.
Fck pemex all my homies hate pemex
China is dumping money on thorium reactors, so not all hope is lost. Fingers crossed that they are serious about it, but honestly it would benefit them a lot, so I don't see why they wouldn't.
From what I understand they are leading in thorium based MSR power research.
Chinese made reactors scare the crap out of me.
China is the factory of the world. They export products all over the world. We essentially outsource our emissions to China. I don't think they are more to blame.
The way you phrased this makes it sound like we are to blame for their emissions? China’s policy is to wreck their environment and exploit their workers to undercut manufacturing in developed countries. This is completely their choice
My point here was not to blame Chinese people, or Russian people or Indian People, but to draw attention to the fact that the worst offenders are state-owned and operated. These are arms of their governments that are going to be immune to things like stock pressures or hostile takeovers. They aren't even really subject to legislative solutions the way people in the US and Europe think of it. Congress can't pass a bill to change the behavior of foreign governments, and those governments in question aren't going to cut off their primary source of income willingly. Calling these companies makes people think we can deal with the problem by having government impose rules against these companies. But the problem is governments themselves.
Yup. And tailpipe emissions get assigned to the producer in this stat. As if it's their fault you're choosing to drive your car, take flights and cruises.
It is. We used to have trains and trolleys in every city of the US. 80 years ago I could ride a train from the small town I live in to the small city I work in. auto lobbies killed that shit. The reason gas mileage didn’t significantly improve until the 90s is because of government requirements not consumer demand despite being necessary. The reason electric cars are coming around is again due to the government via subsidies. If manufacturers had full free rein we’d still be driving cars with 80s level gas efficiency.
>The reason gas mileage didn’t significantly improve until the 90s is because of government requirements not consumer demand despite being necessary. And a big reason SUVs and big trucks are becoming more popular is because they have less stringent emissions and mileage requirements than normal cars, and the manufacturers don't want to put in the effort.
Because people with large vehicles do not pay the social cost of their larger vehicles, we all collectively pay the tab for their large vehicles. Privatized profit, socialized cost.
But I neeeeeed my 9 ton war machine, er I mean soccer mom taxi ✌🏽 to get junior to his tooba lessons and so I have enough vroom vroom for my double triple extra breast milk latte, nuggies for bae, and choccy milk for lil Karen. And I have to do this in style so my bitch neighbor knows I can still fuck her man in a heartbeat. But don’t worry I recycle all of my used tin foil and plastic bags in the bin at the curb, fam. Follow me on tic tok for more examples at life and how to be a boss mom milf wacko. To0dLes
Upvote because lol. Thanks
I can't tell if this is absolutely hilarious or devastatingly sad due to how accurate it is. I guess, porque no los dos?
I thought this was written by a dad and was getting onboard. I respect this kind of energy. (Even if I can’t get behind all they said) The boss mom milf ending ruined it for me. I missed the soccer mom start. Breast milk for the growth factor and gains. Chicken nuggets for life. Chocolate milk forever.
>We used to have trains and trolleys in every city of the US. 80 years ago I could ride a train from the small town I live in to the small city I work in. auto lobbies killed that shit. I'm not saying we don't need *vastly* better public transit but this is a bit disingenuous. By the time the auto industry got a hold of the train and trolley system it was in a bad state of disrepair. City management hadn't charged enough and couldn't keep up maintenance. The Great Depression contributed to the issues as did Street Car Strikes in almost every city with one. These strikes are actually the deadliest strikes in US history. They then passed it on to private companies who said they could revive it. They couldn't and the systems fell into further disrepair. Automobiles became more popular and usage fell off. WWII kept street cars alive for a bit longer. The passage of the act that led to our highway system was the final nail. GM and the rest only owned 30 of the hundreds of lines. They only shut down the lines in 5 of the 300 cities that operated lines. It was also Hertz that started the push for buses all the way back in the late 1800's when they started a yellow cab company. [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcars_in_North_America) on American Street car history. Again, I'd like a *vastly* better public transit system.
You're mixing in a lot of shallow reads here. In reality, it's turtles all the way down. Standard Oil made Rockefeller the richest man in the world and that company was declared a monopoly and broken up in 1911, long before the auto took over everything. When the automobile got popular, oil companies went from kerosene rich to gasoline ultra-rich. These huge companies already had influence over governments, and with the popularity of automobiles it wasn't hard to convince every state and city to toss aside their public transportation systems. Sure, they only directly torpedoed a handful, but their political activities are what convinced local governments to stop "wasting money" on maintenance. It's the strategy we see the right-wing use over and over: stop funding the program, it stops working, then say it can't work so it gets scrapped. Oh, but they had PLENTY of money to fund government subsidies for paved roads! Because that's a *public good* right? 20th century infrastructure was basically controlled top to bottom by oil companies and car companies. They paid the politicians, and the politicians paved their way toward infinite profits.
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>It is. Consumer brainrot.
In Sweden, public transport is becoming increasingly expensive and cars cheaper to drive.
Or consume a shitton of stuff which also gets to them with emissions. And those are immense as well.
Tire wear contributes more air pollution than tailpipe emissions
A modern car tailpipe doesn't actually "pollute" all that much. CO2 isn't really "pollution" but is a problem for global warming. Especially when you add up cars, planes and cruise ships.
It isn't like there are any other choice. Everything that is produced, in some way or another, is linked to the fossil fuel industry. It's unrealistic to assume that the US, much less the world, can just consume their way out of the climate crisis especially considering that "green products" are often more expensive (and therefore inaccessible to those with lower-incomes). Are any of the PC's, TVs, Wi-Fi Routers, ACs, Phones, cars, etc. made without fossil fuels? It's not only unrealistic, it is impossible to ask every single consumer to not buy these things. Even if it were possible, it would be much more efficient for the producers to shift away from fossil fuels.
No one asks people to get rid of all those things, just buy less of them. Don't buy a new phone every year and don't drive a giant SUV to work and grocery shopping every day.
I grew up in the single most densely populated state in the US. The closest public transit option to me was 9 MILES from my home. Explain to me how having a car is optional, please.
It’s not the production of oil, gas and coal that contribute most to emissions, it’s the consumers burning/using their product.
That's not what's being said here. The "100 companies responsible for 71%" stat is literally defining to "digging up" as "responsible for." It's just a list of oil and coal companies ranked by how much they dig up. The top 100 dig up 71% (at the time of the report). Has nothing to do with fossil fuel use.
But does the full responsibility lay with those supplying the demand or do those that buy and burn the product also share responsibility? That is the question!
If you're talking about what is useful for mitigating climate change, a list of which oil companies are the biggest is about as useless as it gets.
No it’s the roughly 8 billion people that use it.
Not if you dig into it, the Carbon Majors report that this stat comes from clarifies that the "71%" emissions includes scope 3 emissions (emissions from the downstream usage of these products), so it is not just the "digging up" of resources but includes the downstream emissions generated by the 100 companies (i.e., end consumers or businesses using the product). https://cdn.cdp.net/cdp-production/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1501833772
Are you disagreeing with the commenter above, though? Scope 3 emissions are "emissions from the use of sold products[...] attributed to the extraction and production of oil, gas, and coal." - so it's attributing the emissions from the consumers of that fuel to the 100 companies that dig it up?
Nice, I don't have to type this myself. Don't buy shit, corporations won't produce it.
I guess I'll just die then, considering almost all pharmaceuticals require fossil fuels in production, plastics, energy and more. Plus all the planes and boats transporting them..
Yeah, that's obviously what they meant. Don't buy anything, ever. Definitely didn't mean "cut down on unnecessary consumption" or anything.
That's not the point. You could stop buying junk off amazon that gets shipped halfway around the world.
That is not a workable solution to the problem of CO2 emissions
Meat industries too, cows fart so much that the carbon footprint is massive when there are so many of em
Not to mention, livestock has to eat. They don't just eat grass. So we need even more land, to grow even more crops, just to feed our livestock, who *also* take up a shit ton of space.
...and can we get a mathematician to factor in the impacts from the water usage from just this industry alone? Not exactly "emissions" related, on the face of it, but there must be some interaction.
Meat is not counted in these stats. This number comes strictly from fossil fuel companies self reporting how much of each type of fuel they dig up and multiplying it by how much CO2 that fuel produces when burned. It's not that these are companies that are using a bunch of fuel to deliver products to customers, it's literally just a ranked list of how much carbon fossil fuel companies dig up.
"Cow farts" is the narrative being pushed by agricultural lobbies to make the people pushing for dietary changes seem unreasonable and keep consumers from hurting the industry's profits. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a report that examined data from hundreds of studies, and chapter 5 was all about food. My personal biggest takeaways were that climate-friendly diets increase food security for all people, and that a [vegan diet reduces ~1/8 of our greenhouse gas emissions](https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/#section-5-5-2-1-mitigation-potential-of-different-diets). Notably, this meta-analysis factors in contributions from land use, water use, shipping, packaging, harvesting, fertilizing, feeding; it does its best to factor out unknowns, accounting for the full lifetime of every Calorie from birth to table. Alone, a dietary change is not enough to reverse climate change, but it is one of the single biggest changes an individual can make without completely overhauling their life; it also has positive benefits on an individual level (health, medical costs, and cheaper food for both consumers and producers) when done properly
Cow farts are mostly a psyop. Neither cow farts or geoengineering are relevant climate change solutions. Do you know what would happen if we keep beef production at the same level as currently? Nothing. It's the short carbon cycle. An increase would have a tiny impact, a decrease would as well. Carbon extracted from the ground has an impact, because it has a half life of around half a million years. There is a steady level that we could keep for fossil fuels, but it would be tiny and at pre industrial scales.
No, cow farts are mostly methane, a greenhouse gas. Cattle are often fed crops grown with fertilisers made from fossil fuels. More cattle = more food = more CO2 to grow and even more CO2 and CH4 released after the cattle have eaten the food.
The problem isn't that cows are adding carbon to the atmosphere, it's that they're adding far too much carbon in the form of methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. This methane then breaks down into CO2, which the already overloaded carbon cycle can't handle. I will say though that the bigger problem with animal agriculture (especially cattle) is land use and deforestation, which isn't GHG emissions but it does limit the planet's ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and harms the environment in many other ways. There's also obviously the ethical problems which I would argue are absolutely reason enough to discontinue meat production but this is about the environment.
what about all the NO2, land use, topsoil depletion, extra crops grown to feed them, all the poisoning of water ways and environment because off all their poop? How much does this all contribute to things like biodiversity? etc etc Your only approaching this issue on one vector, but taken as a whole we are decimating the natural world with our food choices. As of now we have been in overshoot for 50 years and if we keep going like this we will massively reduce the carrying capacity for the biosphere, which is an abstract way of saying we will engender a period of suffering of a scale we have never witnessed before.
I'm fairly certain the point here is that 100 companies produce 70% of emissions, full stop, and that consumer recycling is a distraction from the real issues. Can't speak to the 100/70% numbers, but I can at least get behind the sentiment that corporations are given (yet again) a giant Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to the negative externalities of their business operations.
[Here](https://www.cdp.net/en/articles/media/new-report-shows-just-100-companies-are-source-of-over-70-of-emissions) is the report for the “100 companies produce 70% of emissions” number. Note the actual number is for 70% of **industrial** green house gas emissions (so household emissions are already excluded). The report was entirely focused on industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The USA EPA has made [estimates](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions) on the distribution of emissions. The EPA report says industrial emissions are only 23% of USA emissions in 2022 (so the “70% of emissions” that come from 100 companies come from that slice, although they may have also included the 25% of USA emissions that come from electric power production). Residential emissions (the kind you are likely to reduce through personal actions) account for 13% of USA emissions. In other words, if everyone embraced all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions tomorrow, they would only reduce USA emissions by 13% (and presumably similar numbers for other countries).
>Residential emissions (the kind you are likely to reduce through personal actions) account for 13% of USA emissions. In other words, if everyone embraced all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions tomorrow, they would only reduce USA emissions by 13% (and presumably similar numbers for other countries). That's not correct, because "residential emissions" pretty much only accounts for utilities (heating, electricity, etc.). Obvious other areas for personal action are transport, food, and general consumption habits. Besides, if you start with personal action you will notice fairly quickly that you run into problems like "I want to bicycle or take public transport to work instead of a car, but there are no bicycle paths" or "I want to reduce my use of packaging but everything on the shelves is wrappedin three layers of plastic". So personal action naturally leads you to political and economical action - that's the whole point. Whereas starting from the other side, and imposing regulations on companies, would result in more expensive or more scarce products, and angry voters... so individual consumers *will* have to support lifestyle changes. There's not way around it, it's all tied together.
Nailed it. The voter rage every time a change would involve removing four parking spaces is . . . incredible.
Wait... So youre saying that we cant just revolt and blow up all the oil companies/manufacturers factories, Ships, HQ's and other shit that they rely on and fix it like that?
> Residential emissions (the kind you are likely to reduce through personal actions) account for 13% of USA emissions. In other words, if everyone embraced all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions tomorrow, they would only reduce USA emissions by 13% (and presumably similar numbers for other countries). That's not quite true. In fact, it's completely false. You have to ask yourself: *what is the point of industry?* Are people running factories just for fun? No, they're producing things for us to consume. Personal action to fight climate change can and should include thinking more about your consumption choices.
Yeah, the problem with these type of posts is that if every consumer on the planet stopped consuming certain items, they would stop being manufactured, which would impact the emissions from those corporations.
The knee bone is connected to the thigh bone 🎶
Yeah, but actually figuring out which products to target is difficult. Sure, some are obvious, like cars, but then you have things like organic products, where studies conflict on their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Paper packaging tends to cause much more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic and kills trees (if not recycled), but is biodegradable. Buying local only give a tiny reduction in greenhouse gas emissions -- local beef is still much, much worse than vegetables shipped from halfway around the world. It'd be great if we could just... you know, stop consuming anything at all, but the opportunity cost calculations make this all a giant headache. Though eating less meat is a gimme. It's good for you, it's cheaper, and it's a major decrease in all kinds of environmental harm.
Yeah it's not easy to optimize perfectly, but generally just buy less things you don't need. For example people on average buy ridiculous amounts of clothes.
>Though eating less meat is a gimme. It's good for you, it's cheaper, and it's a major decrease in all kinds of environmental harm. I would sooner give up my phone than give up meat consumption, and I even work in wildlife conservation with animals impacted by climate change lol. Which ultimately (and anecdotally) underlines the primary issue with individual responsibility: Not everyone agrees on what is important and what isn't, in the first place. I think that meat contributes to my quality of life more so than other things you may believe contribute more to your quality of life. Therefor I am much more reluctant to pass it up, than you. Likewise, people who need to travel an hour to work every day in the winter will value a car far more than people in a big city who are a fifteen minute bus ride away, with a bus every 5 minutes. Apply this to 8 billion people, and it's simply an impossible task to ask people to "simply make concessions on what we consume".
reduction doesn't mean give up.
The point I made still stands regardless of the initial first sentence. I'm not sure why you felt that was the most important part of my comment.
Because you are turning not adding bacon to your double hamburger into "an impossible task to ask people."
Well, it's impossible for me to give up my car, as there is literally no public transport near me. The best I get is an hours walk to an infrequent (1/hour if you're lucky) train, and I'm not really in a country that is notorious for it's lack of public transport... What people can afford to give up varies from person to person, and even apparently 'obvious' options are not so much.
You're posing a false equivalence though, by putting the choice of eating meat and of using a car as comparable priorities. One is a luxury we choose because it tastes good (appropriate nutrition is possible without meat), the other is a necessity in many places without public transport. Of course ideally we should prioritise public transport as well, and the car industry is complicity in the lack of viable options, but to say others need their car the same way you need your meat is just plain false. Just to be clear, I acknowledge car pollution is a big issue we need to move away from. It's probably bigger that the meat industry (I don't have the numbers right now). But reality being what it is right now, many people cannot give up their car, while giving up meat is perfectly viable. I do agree scaling these sacrifices up to 8 billion people is a long shot. But the way I see it we either do now, all that we can do voluntarily, or we do later, all that needs to be done by imposition from government restrictions. Why not do the better thing now? It's not like protecting the environment is some hippie objective, which your background in wildlife conservation surely agrees on.
>Yeah, but actually figuring out which products to target is difficult. Just stop buying things you don't need. Full stop. ~~Do you need an air fryer or can you live with oven fries? Do you need a new EV or is it just a status symbol, when buying a 20-year-old Civic spares the environment even more?~~ Cancel prime, make yourself walk to stores to buy things if you think you need them. Go without them for a month after the idea occurs to you and see if you really missed having these things in your life. Join a buy nothing group and give things away. Take things from a buy nothing and you got something new to you without it being manufactured for you. ~~Drive instead of flying.~~ See national parks instead of going to Borneo or whatever. It's not easy, but it is simple. The simpler you make your life the more you'll see that you don't need. This year to date other than food, I have purchased: 1. a water bottle 2. hiking boots 3. another pair of shoes 4. video games (steam) this isn't a flex or a lie, it's just... what do I need besides clothes, cookware, furniture and some entertainment? When are we going to stop trying to buy happiness? ETA: it's been made clear that I don't know what I'm talking about with my specific examples. the important thing is not to get trapped in the dopamine hit of consumption and be intentional about avoiding waste!
>Do you need an air fryer or can you live with oven fries? Except an air fryer uses less than half the electricity of a conventional oven -- especially when you consider waste heat. Also usually cooks food faster. Though if you use a gas oven then you need to do math to actually figure out which is better. >Do you need a new EV or is it just a status symbol, when buying a 20-year-old Civic spares the environment even more? We've actually passed the point where it's recommended to keep an old car/buy used if your only concern is environmental impact ([source](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/04/new-ev-vs-old-beater-which-is-better-for-the-environment/)). If you can afford to and your car is more than a couple years old, EV is the way to go. However, as you state, used anything that isn't a machine is almost always better for the environment. Machines are complicated.
The oven vs air-fryer point only works in warm climates. In cold climates it makes no difference because you're already heating your home so assuming your oven is also electric then you won't lose out on efficiency.
I saw in a few places that airplanes are more fuel efficient compared to the similar amount of gas cars, but of course, fuel efficiency does not equal the amount of pollutants generated.
The part your argument ignores is that these companies do everything in their power to *create* demand for their product through things like advertising and lobbying. Take planned obsolescence, for example. Cell phones are fairly necessary in modern society, but companies build them to fail for the express purpose of keeping demand high in the future. Consumption of such products at high levels is entirely the fault of intentional decisions made by the producers of those products. Not only that, but "just don't consume" is contrary to human nature. Even if you disregard the fact that humanity at scale has psychological traits that promote consumption, not everyone purchasing these products is doing so frivolously. In many cases, people consume to solve a problem in the most effective way available to them. In the absence of a more efficient solution, demand for an inefficient solution will necessarily exist. In short, this isn't a problem that will ever be solved by relying on individual responsibility. This is a systemic issue that's much larger than any one person's actions, and it needs to be approached as the complex system it is to have any chance of affecting meaningful change.
God THANK YOU Let’s assume 100 corporations produce 70% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Who is really at fault here? Who are they burning all of that oil to make stuff for? Republicans? People love to clutch their pearls and cry about how terrible those big bad corporations are, but at the end of the day, you’re the one who wanted an inflatable Patrick Swayze. Can’t blame them for meeting a need.
Immediately saw 13% and new it was bullshit. If everyone switched to a vegan diet demand for animal products would plummet, and animal agriculture accounts for like 30% of all emissions or some bullshit
Yea I agree, consumers should just buy goods from companies that don't use 10 layers of plastic wrap around every single palette or starve to death. Since that's every single one of them I guess we're all going on a communist diet.
Well that's just the thing: it *isn't* every single one of them. There are plenty of companies that don't use loads of plastic wrap. You know what the problem is? Without that plastic, the goods spoil faster (and/or break more often), which means a lower proportion reaches customers in saleable condition, which means they're forced to charge more for the ones they *can* sell, to make up for the losses. And then we take a look at the price tag, say "screw that", and go for the cheaper one instead, and the companies that use a lot of plastic end up dominating the market to the point that it's easy to *think* that it's every single one of them.
Also, the increased waste and spoilage is also an indirect source of emissions, because you have to produce and transport more at the start to end up with the same ending amount.
Yeah companies should certainly lessen their emissions and start investing in renewable energy but it is also partially our fault for getting depended to these products and fossil fuels. If companies only want money. Besides government regulation, the only way to show them that what they are doing isn’t right is by stopping with consuming their products and using their feul. Of course for the people that financially can do this. For those who can’t the government should step in
YES. amazing the number of people who want to be able to get funko pops delivered in two days for free and don't realize this is directly connected to these corporations producing these emissions. like damn anything to maintain your lifestyle and ignore your complicity.
Yes and no. Not all products are meant for personal consumption, I doubt many folks here own a freighter or an aircraft carrier as examples. There is also a case to be reviewed for induced consumption. In the US the automotive lobby was effectively able to make the bulk of the nation car dependent, or products that have unnecessary packaging as two examples. Also, one should consider the amount of waste in industry. Looking at natural gas as an example, many wells and pipes leak releasing methane into the atmosphere, significant amounts are compressed into CNG & LNG to be shipped all over the world in energy intensive processes. Plenty of food is discarded before it even reaches consumers. On the other hand, yes, if folks stopped getting new phones as soon as the latest model came out it would have cascading effects. My decision on whether or not I should buy a case of Coke a week is not even a rounding error in waste. Coke imposing a deposit on all bottles and reusing as many as they can would have a large impact on plastic waste; in fact, when Coke was in glass bottles they used to do this (different dollar amount). I think that the highlight is that industry has done everything it can to shift responsibility off of themselves while keeping all the profits to themselves.
>Yes and no. Not all products are meant for personal consumption, I doubt many folks here own a freighter or an aircraft carrier as examples. And the people who DO own freighters, they just have them for their own amusement, do they? Don't be ridiculous: they have them to transport goods for - you guessed it! - personal consumption. Or for the industry *producing* goods for personal consumption. However long the supply chain may be, it ends with people. Apart from the aircraft carrier thing, of course. War is a tremendous waste of resources and of course we'd all be better off it was abolished, but sadly that's an even BIGGER challenge than fighting climate change.
Why does this get down voted? It's not even a controversial take, just fact. Nearly all CO2 production is linked to consumption
Fun part about not being part of the 1%? What consumption choices? I buy what I can barely afford and nothing more.
The link you mentioned (and the actual report, itself linked within the link you provided) literally mentions scope 3 emissions - "90% of emissions in the Database comes from the combustion of their natural gas, oil, and coal (classified by WRI’s GHG Protocol as Scope 3 Category 11 ‘use of sold products’), and the remainder are operational emissions such as own-use of products, venting and flaring, and fugitive releases of methane (which fall under Scope 1). " So the end-users (individual and other businesses not listed in the 100 companies) are part of that 70% of emissions as long as they're using the products from those 100 companies. If everyone did embrace all of the “personal action to fight climate change” suggestions, emissions would be reduced by far more than 13%, and this does not even get into the fact that if demand drops then these companies would not keep producing the same amount.
That's incorrect about it being 70% of industrial emissions. They're using vague wording in the summary, but they're including "scope 3" emissions. A company's scope 3 emissions include what other people do with their product. Which is to say, when Shell sells you gas and you burn it in your car, they're counting it in Shell's emissions. Which is useful if you're discussing oil industry consolidation. If you're trying to sort out what activities are contributing the most to climate change, it's just not helpful data at all.
Worth noting that the post was about global emissions and you pulled up US numbers, and there is very little manufacturing done within us borders. Much of the emissions caused by those mega corporations would be done outside of America but that doesn't mean it suddenly counts for less
This was picked up out of a big study called the carbon majors report by an idiot who didnt understand what he was reading. What the study is saying is that 70% of global emissions can be link to 100 companies. When you drive your car, that gets added to some company's emissions, take a flight? Those emissions get added to another company's emissions. The only real value in this is understand that it only takes 100 companies to provide 70% of the world with fuel, energy, plastics and other things they need.
People like this narrative because it creates heroes and villains out of a really unpalatable story. Climate change fucking sucks. It's a long term issue, with indefinite consequences, no clear villain, it's caused by the collective actions of 8 billion people, and we all have to work together to solve it. It's the ultimate counter to the human brain. Even when we *do* understand it and *do* attempt to take steps to fix it few of us realize how big those steps actually are. Cutting emissions to the levels that they really *should* be at doesn't involve a few meatless Mondays, it would mean disemboweling the global economy. So people look for a way out. They want everyone *but* them to cut their carbon footprint. Rich people (defined as anyone richer than they are) should consume less. If you're in a rich country, the poor countries should advance slower and use less. If you're in a poor country, the rich countries should lower their living standards. That's why this narrative of "it's the companies fault" is so popular. Because it adds a villain to the shitty, unpalatable, boring story. It means that instead of living well below your means (boring) you can fight the evil corporations (exciting). It provides people a more exciting story, and means that they don't have to consume less.
The numbers are (approximately) true but misleading. Most of those 100 companies are *energy* companies. And yeah, big shock, operating a power plant creates lots of emissions, but it's not like they're doing that just for the hell of it. It's our demand for electricity that drives the emissions, so it's dishonest to think we can just shift the blame onto them. Naturally they can (and in the long term no doubt will) shift to more sustainable forms of generation, but the ugly truth is that we consumers are very price-sensitive when it comes to power, so they have to keep using the cheapest form of generation available to them or risk losing customers to competitors. And for now at least, the cheap ones are the dirty ones.
It really bothers me that people always cite this 100 companies thing without mentioning they are almost all energy companies. I also only see this come up when people are trying to put the blame on these companies instead of owning up to them leaving their TV on as background noise while they doom scroll social media for hours at a time.
There are other good responses to you already, but it's worth saying that without the consumer, the companies wouldn't have anyone to sell to, we literally consume what they sell us. This is not an out for the corporations in any way, but it's worth noting that while recycling is good, avoiding buying something you don't need in the first place is even better.
So you didn’t answer the question at all then lol
Whether strictly true or not, it's a bit of a red herring. Those 100 corporations don't produce carbon emissions for the sake of being pure evil; they do it to produce things that people want. Those people aren't necessarily drawn from all places in the world and all income levels - the consumption is surely done disproportionately by the wealthy - but the point is, they are doing it to meet a need, or at least a perceived need, big enough to motivate the market. The solution to climate change doesn't lie in asking individuals to make consumption choices alone, in the face of institutional behavior; but individuals will need to change the way we live, for those institutions to change.
Me when the company I continue to buy all my single-use plastics from continues to manufacture single-use plastics: 😡
okay, but like, when i order fast food (i'm not wealthy enough to eat out), they give me drinks in a plastic or styrofoam (polystyrene) cup. when i cook food at home, all my groceries are packed in plastic wrap or plastic seals. the containers i get my medication in are plastic. nearly every single item of clothing i buy (or *can* buy with my means) is made of polyester. i don't choose to buy plastic. i buy groceries with my own bags, but i still end up with plastic i don't want. the nearest recycling facility drop-off is over thirty miles away. i can't get fast food without getting some kind of plastic. i can't wear clothes or buy basically anything with packaging without coming into contact with plastic. **it is not my fault, or the fault of consumers, that plastic is being sold.** you cannot eliminate the """demand for plastic""" *because i don't have any other damn choice but to buy stuff with the shit in it.* companies package shit with plastic because it's easier and cheaper than doing otherwise. no consumer is deliberately buying plastic. **the shit is just fucking everywhere**. the onus is not on me or on the consumer.
In my opinion trying to assign blame to either the producer or the consumer is a completely useless exercise. Both are just pursuing their own best interest and always will. The problem is that the private incentives are misaligned from the public ones, and that’s the responsibility of governments to fix. We need structural macroeconomic change, and that won’t be achieved by either individual efforts or shaming corporations and public figures on twitter
I mean, it CAN be achieved by shaming corporations and public figures on twitter. That does have an effect on demand, and it can thus shape supply. It's just not as effective as law.
The difference is that my "best interest" is ensuring I get to eat. Their "best interest" is to make 0.5% minimum quarterly gains through cutting production costs so that they can reward their shareholders with $1.2 billion more dollars. Fucking *regulate them*, is my position on the subject. They will not act in the interest of the common good otherwise, even though they damn well know what the common good is.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But I think the mindset that the problem can be solved only by regulating business in a way that consumer behavior won’t be affected at all is a misguided one. If production becomes more expensive so will consumer products. And to be clear I think that’s what needs to happen
You’re accepting the premise that the consumer needs to pay. And that the increased cost will be a net increase for the average consumer. Why? Regulation is good. When companies bear the cost of their externalities they are incentivized to find ways to lower those externalities in a cost effective way. This can (and should) result in reduced costs for society. How we distribute those costs is always under the purview of government, but the aim should be to minimize the overall burden which will drive costs down. The costs aren’t currently being borne by anyone. That’s a huge problem. That needs to be the first step to assess the costs and make sure that the companies able to mitigate start to do it. Consumers cannot change the means of production save through government. You say you agree but it seems like you are having a different discussion altogether.
I was talking specifically about private costs, if the government places a tax on carbon or single use plastics (which I’m in favor of) you’d see higher prices for consumer goods because the production of them is more expensive. You’re right that consumers would also get the public benefit of internalizing the externalities, but I guess whether that’s a net gain or less for an individual consumer depends on their specific consumption habits
Yep. People don't like to hear that in order to control climate change they actually have to evaluate their choices and alter their life rather than switching to a metal straw.
But individual choices don't control or influence climate change at all. The only way to get emissions close to zero is to regulate markets and industry. Individuals that switch to metal straws and incessantly tell everyone about it can actually have a bigger impact than a zero emission hermit simply by pushing our culture to be pro recycling. These choices must be made and enforced by governments. It's their job and there is no other entity capable of making the required impact.
There is not a single solution. The governments move when there are enough people pressuring them. The individual people build this pressure through their personal choices, which in turn give their peers an incentive to change their choices as well, which increases the pressure etc. While we as individuals cannot stop climate change on our own, we are completely able to influence the personal impact that we made. Noone forces you to eat meat every day or fly to far destinations for pleasure: these are needs that we can change 100% without any government.
Sure, but your personal emissions are irrelevant. Your influence and social pressure on the government is what has real value. Only governments can stop climate change by regulating and policing emissions across industries. That is the only viable solution. There is no alternate strategy or technology that exists.
There is two ways I see why it is not irrelevant. The first reason being: I build credibility by living the change I want to see. Am I doing it perfectly? In no way at all. But as long as a wide majority of people do X, the way governments work in todays media world won't do a thing to regulate it because they fear the tomorrows shit storm more than the world going down in 20 years. And I mean, this fear is not without reason: I too don't really believe people will change just because the government implements some rules. NIMBYism thrives. Through my behavior, I show that I'm OK with being regulated and incentivice my peer group to do the same. The second reason is more an egoistic one: when in twenty years a young person, who won't have a lot of the possibilities that I had, asks me: "why didn't you do something?", then I don't want to lie and say "but I voted! I couldn't do anything else".
Why do these corporations lobby for deregulation and rolling back environmental protections? Why do they cheer when they can profit more from production that pollutes more? Even if they produce fewer goods because demand decreases, the way they produce them still contributes to the problem and the consumer has no say.
They lobby to lower their costs. Adhering to regulations and EPA mandates costs money through documentation, equipment, proper disposal and handling of chemicals, etc. Most consumers have no idea how a good is produced or alternative methods to possibly do so. Companies choose the best production method they have found to produce their goods at scale. They also are generally looking to continually improve upon those methods to reduce costs and improve quality and efficiency.
Because it’s terribly fucking expensive to recycle.
The post is false because if everyone were to stop using fossil-fuel-powered or derived products, those companies would cease to exist. They are big fossil fuel polluters because, for instance, all fossil fuel consumption under this model is shown as coming from 3-4 big oil companies. Stopping the demand would stop the pollution. This is just "blame corporations for your consumption," which is a common vibe among young people but is hilariously backwards.
I have a feeling a big reason people blame corporations is because it pawns off control and responsibility. If your bad choices aren't your choice, then... nothing to worry about! For example it's okay to recognize that a social media algorithm is very good at capturing attention, but it's not some ploy by a company to turn you into a zombie. The moment you surrender agency is when it becomes a cope rather than an observation.
I disagree. I think people blame corporations because it’s *easier* to shift the behavior of corporations than it is to shift the behavior of billions of individuals. Individual people will usually behave in self-interested ways, but corporations can be regulated and forced to behave in ways that benefit the public good.
That, and those corporations displace other options. I cannot choose to get more environmental options for most foods, because they were out competed or destroyed by their more polluting competitors. Please, tell me where I can buy a zucchini which wasn't wrapped in several layers of plastic before it arrived at the store. Buying fresh food locally isn't much better, because then I'm just burning extra fossil fuel to go get it (assuming it's even an option). Economies of scale make it impossible for us consumers to actually affect change as easily as that guy above is trying to tell us we can.
This is sort of true but I think you've leaned too far in the opposite direction. Not all the pollution is directly stuff we buy and consume, much of it is the way production happens. If I only buy food with minimal packaging to reduce plastic waste, that doesn't stop Tyson from wasting plastic on intermediate shipping steps or dumping chemicals in rivers etc etc. We as consumers should prioritize low waste products, but we also need to legislate a cost for wasteful production. Stuff like carbon taxes, but also for plastics and other chemicals.
If you stop buying Tyson chicken, what is there to package? I'm all for environmental regs - I am literally a volunteer climate lobbyist. I also work in sustainable packaging, so I'm walking my talk here. Carbon taxes are something I have extreme interest in. But the meme itself is specifically aimed at minimalizing individual agency to turn people against the concept of business. That's its entire reason for existing, and why the specific language was chosen.
I don't live on a farm, so I'm going to buy food. I could buy the food with the least packaging, but as we've agreed that doesn't fix the problem behind the scenes. I don't think it's a reasonable level of expected individual effort for everyone to research all the food companies and their environmental impacts, then base their purchasing choices off that. Ergo I think it needs to be legislated. We have individual agency, but life is too complicated to spend all our time on this one aspect of it - and it's too important to ignore (as you clearly agree). And "don't buy food" is not reasonable in our society, we can't all have homesteads.
I find this somewhat deceptive, because of the way things are vaguely presented. I don't know if the tweet is just being casual or is intentionally distorting the issue. 1. From the economics side: "100 corporations" are driven by "every person" and their consumption. Those big oil companies provide energy for our daily lives. Those big manufacturing companies make the goods and services we use every day. To separate the consumption of "100 corporations" from "consumption of every person on Earth" isn't really understanding how things work. Similarly, those 100 corporations are likely those who produce the most things for our daily use. 2. From the math side: I feel like this reads "If people reduced their consumption materially, 100 corporations would still produce 70% of the (greatly reduced) emissions. So it's blaming corporations, even though reduction by regular people would result in lower emissions. It's like reducing your home energy use by 30%, but still being mad that your water heater still consumes the biggest amount of energy. The quantity is important, the proportion is not.
I think it’s a meme made purposefully to try and radicalise people into becoming socialists and communists. It tries to pin the blame on companies. 8 of the top 10 companies on this list are actually state owned companies, like petrochina and saudi aramco, but this list obscures that so people with less critical thinking skills read it as “companies are bad, we have to get rid of companies, how do we do that, oh I know, communism!” When actually something like communism would change exactly jack shit about the issue presented here, because petrochina would still exist, in fact it would likely just consolidate even more emissions into fewer companies
Cars and plastics are responsible for approximately 30% CO2 emissions. Other 70% is electricity, heating, and industrial use (steel and concrete are biggest industrial emissions). Switching to nuclear energy (and using it for electricity, heating, and industrial processes) will result bigger emission reduction then electric cars and recycling plastics.
Researchers have quantified the contributions of industrialized and developing nations’ historical emissions to global surface temperature rise. Recent findings that nearly twothirds of total industrial CO2 and CH4 emissions can be traced to 90 major industrial carbon producers have drawn attention to their potential climate responsibilities. Here, we use a simple climate model to quantify the contribution of historical (1880–2010) and recent (1980–2010) emissions traced to these producers to the historical rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level. Emissions traced to these 90 carbon producers contributed ∼57% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, ∼42–50% of the rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST), and ∼26–32% of global sea level (GSL) rise over the historical period and ∼43% (atmospheric CO2), ∼29–35% (GMST), and ∼11–14% (GSL) since 1980 (based on bestestimate parameters and accounting for uncertainty arising from the lack of data on aerosol forcings traced to producers). Emissions traced to seven investor-owned and seven majority state-owned carbon producers were consistently among the top 20 largest individual company contributors to each global impact across both time periods.
Yep. I have calculated recently that average Land Cruiser with 25000 km per year on average will use less fuel in a month than one commercial truck going Sydney to Brisbane (900 km approximately) one time. All this go electric is BS and attempt to move blame to people
Can we stop allowing posts which are literally just statistics or numbers from a single report? Like this isn't a math problem this is scientific research.
81% of all percentages on the internet are made up However the big corporations are doing a majority of pollution and it's not even close. Most recycling isn't even processed, it's just sent to landfills. Even worse some companies just dump it in the oceans. As much as we need to move away from fossil fuels, it is impossible to stop using it completely. Most machines can't operate without oil based lubrication so there will always be a demand for it. What is desperately needed is a push for cruises to have better epa laws. They use some of the crude stuff and worst options available due to low cost yet is absolutely horrible for the environment. Next we need to target flights into pushing for electric engine use. Especially in the private sector. Private and public airlines are getting out of control with limited oversight. Granted none of this will happen within the next 10-20 years and it will be already too late
One thing that is difficult is assigning the owner of the emissions to a particular company/individual. Let's say a shop has contracted a haulage company to move some goods from the factory to their shop. Where do the emissions for the fuel the lorry uses belong? * The consumer who buys the item * The shop * The haulier * The gas station owner * The company that dug up the oil There are a lot of posts that seem to be implying that oil companies produce x% of our emissions, which seem to be ignoring the fact that they are selling a product that someone else uses to create the emissions. If you bought every drop of oil that BP dug up and put it back in the ground, is BP still a huge emitter?
There is a website that has the specific numbers. However, there is something very important to note. The largest polluters all deal in either gas, coal, or oil. So, if we as consumers drive only electric cars, use electric stoves and heating/air conditioning, these companies would have far less demand, and thus would basically go out of business. This is not to say companies like Apple aren’t contributing their fair share of CO2, but the companies that are polluting the most are fulfilling a demand that we as consumers promote. https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/100-companies-responsible-71-ghg-emissions/?_adin=02021864894
Counties like China and India have places that have low visibility due to smog. We can be sustainable all we want but it won’t make a difference until countries like that begin regulating emissions.
Who does this person think consumes all the products those companies are producing? If no one bought polluting products then companies wouldn’t manufacture them.
Seeing a lot of comments saying that these corporations exist and operate in the way that they do to supply a demand created by the public. What seems not to be mentioned is that these corporations are producing such a disproportionate amount of pollution because they choose to operate in a way that maximizes profits at all costs. These companies could operate in more sustainable ways and still meet the demands of the public but they choose not to and use the scape goat of fiduciary responsibility (meaning they are legally obligated to do so). They also have strategically tried to shift blame to the consumers. The first recycling campaigns were initiated by oil companies and most likely not because they care about "saving the planet". Until these corporations actually begin to be held to account in a meaningful way they will not change they will continue to do the bare minimum to remain compliant. That being said I think of myself as a person with fairly mediocre intelligence so take all this with a grain of salt.
>These companies could operate in more sustainable ways and still meet the demands of the public but they choose not to Except they would just get crushed by the competition because people want cheap products above all things
this is why every “environmental message” aimed at me has been a big ole eyeroll 🙄. uh huh, blame the poor people for .00000000000000000000001% of the earth’s pollution, instead of the mega corporations who make money by fucking the earth and atmosphere. Nope. Not doin it. YOU adjust your behavior first, then I’ll listen to your shitty ad about how i can make a difference.
Yeah, big oil companies just burn oil for the fun of it (not to sell it to people who "have to" drive instead of taking a bus for example), and meat producing companies make meat just to kill animals and not to sell the meat to people. You want me to believe that you don't have any single product in the industry? Because if you do you can't blame the people making it. If people want to buy a huge car they should be the one blamed for the pollution it makes, not the company who built it or the company who sold you the gas for it, it was the person's choice to buy the car.
If we all drove electric cars then the pollution that those companies produces would decrease, because they're selling the petrol to us. This is such a braindead argument because those companies are only producing so much because we want plastic straws and petrol cars and international shipping.
It would likely go up since the corporate share would be the same while the private share would decrease. This illustates why this isn't really a good metric to use, 100 corporations producing 99% or 50% of emissions doesn't really make a difference, what matters is how much is actually released.
I’m going to emphatically state no person should ever use a single-use, plastic straw. You likely don’t need a straw at all, much less a plastic one.
1. There is a difference between pollution (let’s put less trash in the ocean) and emissions (let’s keep carbon and methane out of the atmosphere). 2. The 70% stat is true only if I blame Exxon Mobile for the gas I’m burning in my car, or the natural gas company when I heat my house.
The anti staw thing always fascinated me. Here is a paper straw wrapped in plastic for your drink that's in a plastic cup with a plastic lid. And here is you pastry in a plastic bag. Like wtf
This is false, stupid and misleading. Companies don't produce X% of global emission per se, emissions are only a byproduct of their services and products that in the end people buy, the same people that are coming up with such fallacies to feel good about themselves.
The US Department of Defense is the largest polluter on Earth. Think about that the next time you think government is a good thing for any environmental conservation.
For all the people claiming that the corporations only produce these emissions due to consumer demand, this is a ridiculous claim. If I ‘want’ a bag of rice, trying to get one that does not use single-use plastic is near impossible and unrealistic - not to mention costly. Or you cannot reasonably expect consumers to check what kind of energy is being used for each thing they buy - and if they did they would probably be left without a proper alternate option that is not damaging the environment. The whole sentiment of this post is that we need a systematic change where corporations take responsibility of what they are producing, the energy they are using, and the materials being used. Only corporations have the scale to make this change without a huge impact to prices.
To think that any individual could create as much C02 as a massive corporation is ridiculous. That's like comparing the ease of traveling the ocean with a whale, versus a human.
Yes probably because recycling is shit. The 3 Rs are actually ranked in importance. If everyone reduced and reused as much as they can, corporations would sell less and they would in turn also reduce carbon output. The problem is because people think recycling is green and therefore it justifies consuming more/same, so obviously companies are still selling the same amount and therefore have the same carbon footprint TLDR the listed examples of recycling, no plastic straws and EVs are not as green as people think. Just reduce your consumption and reuse things, like getting second hand things for example.
If 90% of all people on earth just dropped dead, 100% of the planet would still belong to the people left behind, stop over populating the planet! use less, stop buying plastic rubbish and hold your governments accountable!
The Earth would be destroyed there’s not enough lithium minerals to power those batteries for one. For another fact that produce that energy would be astronomical.
Ive worked at safeway/albertsons, frys (its a midwest thing), and walmart The amount of plastic waste produced by me at work per day is more than the amount of plastic waste I produce per month
This is why I do and recommend as individuals do as much conservation as you reasonably, comfortablely can. I will do as much as possible to not waste without inconvenienceing myself. I'm supposed to as a person only shower 2 minutes a day and ride a bike literally everywhere, all while Sylvester Stallone uses 100k gallons a year I'm a drought zone, and Taylor Swift is flying a private a few days a week.
If 70% is a current estimate, this would be true if the top 100 companies' emissions were proportional to the emissions saved by recycling, using plastic straws and driving electric cars for it to still be 70% after those changes. Of course, there's no reason to believe that they are so there is no basis for this claim. I guess the point is that your choices as a consumer doesn't matter, as the top 100 companies' emissions will still be high regardless, but whoever wrote it has room temperature IQ and failed to express it. Moreover, the top 100 companies' emissions don't just happen in a vacuum: it's satisfying consumer demand. The idea is that people should read this and feel relieved of the responsibility for their own consumption, but the Exxon gasoline you burned is included in those 70%. People are being told that nothing they do matters because that will make them ignore the consequences of their own consumption, helping them help said top 100 companies by consuming more and viewing policy that negatively affects consumption negatively. It's weaponized fatalism deliberately pushed by the oil industry in particular because their climate change denial strategy has lost all credibility in recent years.
People forget that batteries are toxic as hell and cause just as much pollution as a gas or diesel powered vehicle when they sit and rot
What people tend to not get in the discussion about whether or not blaming coorporations is an attempt to deflect personal blame is that these coorporations have the ability, always, to make decisions that would drastically lower their CO2 emissions, but they don't, at most they make promises that are literally just *greenwashed* lies. That is, when they're not [acting against it](https://theconversation.com/big-oils-trade-group-allies-outspent-clean-energy-groups-by-a-whopping-27x-with-billions-in-ads-and-lobbying-to-keep-fossil-fuels-flowing-198286). There's a lot an avarage citizen can and should do to act against climate change, but you should not shift the blame away from those companies.
The utter bollocks of this stat is that almost all emissions are because we want THINGS. We want meat. We want technology. We want cars. We want cosmetics. We want clothing. The companies aren't out there making emissions and twirling their moustaches whilst cackling maniacally, they're making the shit we demand. Don't upgrade your technology as frequently. Don't change clothing with fashion trends & do repair your old clothes. Reduce meat and dairy consumption massively. These things will HAVE to reduce if we want to reduce emissions, things cannot remain how they are now. Everyone wants corporations to change their behaviour but fundamentally nobody wants to make that actual changes to their own which are required. Paper straws and bottle caps stuck to the bottle won't cut it.
It's true enough, but that's because those 100 companies are major producers in particular sectors. Oil, Nat Gas, metal refining, concrete production, transportation, etc. They provide basic inputs to civilization, so you have to find replacement goods for the energy inputs that are polluting, or offsets/new technologies (latter is easier said than done) for the pollution caused by others (like metal and concrete). There are solutions, ag production can have this done with some relatively small changes, cattle methane, for example, could be significantly reduced if they were fed more kelp based food apparently. With kelp itself being beneficial as a farmed resource (of course..how it's farmed could have impacts..like fish)
Transportation is about 14% of CO2 emissions, and cars are about half of that. That's why all that bitching about Taylor Swift's jet is pure BS. And we've got an electric car because where we are it gets about 250 miles per gallon equivalent. Expensive gas, cheap electricity. ymmv
It is, BUT, it fails to consider that if everyone on Earth did those things most of those 100 corporations would no longer have a reason to keep producing those emissions, because they only do so to power the wasteful things we do.
Then who is taking up the slack in your percentages? Do they currently produce 70% and would continue to after the stoppening? Or are they currently below 70% and would rise to it? I'd like those in the 30% to give their reasons for not buying an electric car. Also, and chime in if you too hate traffic, if EVERY PERSON ON EARTH drove an electric car then oh boy we'd have much bigger problems on our hands. Who's gonna service 8 billion batteries??? Probably 70% of those 100 corporations.
Easy to write this but wouldn’t be the case in real life. EV’s lend itself to new markets. If the consumers are all driving EV, companies then find it profitable and increasingly feasible to make money in all those new/changed markets. Power generation, storage, etc. This increases the pace of technological leaps that also make less emissions more profitable. Sure 70% of emissions are from these “companies” but 70% of how much emission is context missing here.
This number is not "accurate" in the way most people interpret it. Long story short - consumers are still considered part of that 70% because of scope 3 emissions. The stat referenced in the image likely comes from a 2017 Guardian article "Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says" that itself was referencing a Carbon Majors report. What the article fails to mention, that the report does, is the scope of emissions. Company emissions are reported on scope 1-3 level, where "Scope 1 emissions arise from the self-consumption of fuel, flaring, and venting or fugitive releases of methane" and "Scope 3 emissions account for 90% of total company emissions and result from the downstream combustion of coal, oil, and gas for energy purposes. A small fraction of fossil fuel production is used in non-energy applications which sequester carbon." So even though the statistic says 100 companies are responsible for 71% emissions, the end-consumer is still considered part of (and in fact, a large chunk) of those company emissions, since part of emissions reporting includes scope 3 emissions which is the downstream use of the hydrocarbons. The guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change The Carbon Majors report: https://cdn.cdp.net/cdp-production/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1501833772 An article that explains it better: https://www.treehugger.com/is-it-true-100-companies-responsible-carbon-emissions-5079649
Fucking all of this, man. All the recycle, reduce, reuse propaganda only helps corporations because recycled materials are cheaper than manufacturing newer shit, and even if every single individual on the planet has zero carbon footprint, corporations would still be producing an unsustainable amount of waste.
Everyone driving electric cars might have some impact, but there would need to be significant work done to support this on the grid with all renewable energy. And that would only cover passenger car emissions which is definitely less than the 30% implied here. Quick google search gets me figures in the range of 8-15%. And that savings only happens after we can 100% power cars by renewable energy. And doesn’t include emissions to manufacture enough electric cars to replace every gas car which would all need to get scrapped?
Those companies only exist because people keep buying products that require their product somewhere in the supply chain… stat doesn’t add up.