World’s wealthiest companies to start paying for climate damages, pollution
Saudi Arabian-based oil company Saudi Aramco, accounting for Sh265.43 trillion in economic losses from worsening extreme heat worldwide, tops the list of the offenders. Others are British Petroleum (BP), Shell, ExxonMobil, British Coal Corporation and Coal India.
What you need to know:
- Globally, at least 68 lawsuits on climate change damages have been filed, with over half of these cases from the US.
For years, low and middle-income countries countries—including Kenya—have borne the brunt of climate disasters (floods, droughts and extreme weather) while wealthy multinational corporations, largely responsible for carbon emissions, evade accountability for the harm they cause. But a new study linking the real cost of the climate crisis to specific culprits could finally shift the balance, enabling Global South nations to sue polluters for climate-related destruction.
In a critical point analysis, scientists have demonstrated how nations have coughed out trillions in climate change because of only 111 companies since the 1990s.
The trillion-dollar firms, over half of them from America, cost the world a whopping Sh3.62 quadrillions between 1991-2020 in the form of crop damage and extreme weather events such as floods, storms and wildfires, according to the study published last week in the Nature Journal.
Interestingly, high-income countries including the United States, Europe and India where these climate offenders originate from, experience “milder cost from extreme heat” than low-income countries in Africa, South America and South East Asia.
In the analysis, scientists linked specific climate change-related damages to emissions from multinational fossil fuel corporations.
Saudi Arabian-based oil company Saudi Aramco, accounting for Sh265.43 trillion in economic losses from worsening extreme heat worldwide, tops the list of the offenders, according to scientists at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College.
Others include Gazprom energy company in Russia (Sh258.7 trillion in losses), and Chevron oil and gas firm in America (Sh256.36 in losses).
Other climate offenders
British Petroleum (BP), Shell, ExxonMobil, British Coal Corporation, Coal India, National Iranian Oil Company, and Pemex are also in the top 10 list of climate offenders.
Experts say catastrophes would not be happening if these companies were not in exisistence.
Energy companies like BP, Saudi Aramco, Chevron ExxonMobil and Gazprom extract fossil fuels such as gas and oil from the Earth, explain the scientists led by the study author Justin Mankin.
Fossil fuels release monumental amounts of methane and carbon dioxide gases that warm the planet during combustion to harvest energy from them; and the resultant global warming has costly financial ramifications.
Advances in climate attribution science methodologies, scientific modeling that allows real-time tracking of climate change effects and increased availability of socioeconomic and climate data, made it possible to arrive at the findings.
The world economy has suffered enormous economic losses caused by extreme temperatures from methane and carbon dioxide gases released by mega-corporations.
The top five companies in emissions, Saudi Aramco, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Gazprom accounted for a third of the total financial losses to the tune of 1.17 quadrillion, the study shows.
Chevron, the highest emitting data company, contributed to Sh465.66 trillion in climate change damages over the period, raising global warming by 0.025 Degrees Celsius.
Since 1990, every one per cent greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere has cost nations Sh64.997 trillion in damages from heat alone, excluding costs from other extreme weather events like floods, droughts and hurricanes, according to the study.
The scientists have expressed optimism that it could be possible to successfully sue big companies for climate damage.
National and local governments have already directly asked for compensation from fossil fuel firms for climate change damage although the majority of such cases have been slowed in courts or challenged. A key hurdle has largely been establishing a direct causal link between a company's greenhouse gas emissions and a specific climate impact. This means demonstrating that the climate event wouldn't have occurred or would have been far less severe without the company's emissions
Globally, at least 68 lawsuits on climate change damages have been filed, with over half of these cases from the US, as estimated by Zero Carbon Analytics.
Also read: UN climate talks: A haven for lobbyists
Experts opine that fossil fuel companies should not be absolved from the damages they have caused based on the prosperity generated by their products; just like pharmaceutical companies would not be excused from the negative effects of a drug because of the benefits of the said drug.
The study provides answers to a question first asked in 2003 about the possibility of science ever linking climate change to emissions from an individual company.
“Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate?” the study read in part.
“Twenty years after this question was first posed, we argue that the scientific case for climate liability is closed,” stated Makin, the research lead and Dartmouth College Climate Researcher.
According to experts, the recent framework could provide a solid basis for attributing climate damages at the corporate scale.
“This will help courts to better evaluate claims on liability for human-induced climate change disruptions and losses.”
A section of scientists believe the actual financial cost is way higher and that the estimates of the real climate damage caused by the companies, explaining that several other climate variables were not accounted for.