A scientist has warned that the planet is inexorably choking itself and drifting steadily to self-destruction, all because 90 companies, from multinationals to state oil companies, coal quarries and cement producers, are irresponsibly emitting large volumes of carbon dioxide.
Richard Heede traced the start of massive carbon-dioxide emissions to 1854, when large factories started churning out various commodities and oil exploration and extraction intensified.
Heede recently wrote the paper, “Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854-2010,” which was peer reviewed this year and published in the journal Climatic Change. Heede, who heads Climate Accountability Institute, debunked the claim by other climate scientists that reducing carbon emissions now would make the planet a better place to live in, saying 63 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions came from the 90 entities.
Speaking at a news briefing organized by Greenpeace Philippines at a restaurant in Quezon City the recently, Heede said his analysis took into consideration data from Westmoreland Coal in 1854 and other bits of information for the 90 corporations.
He compared them with the records of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center of the US Department of Energy for fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2), flaring and cement production dating back to 1851.
He said the 90 carbon major entities (CMEs) were responsible for the 914 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent of cumulative world emissions of industrial CO2 and methane between 1854 and 2010.
Heede explained that this figure translates to 63 percent of the estimated global industrial emissions of CO2 and methane.
The 90 CMEs, he disclosed, are comprised of 83 fossil-fuel producers and seven cement manufacturers.
Of this number, 21 companies are headquartered in the US, 17 in Europe, six in Canada, two in Russia and one each in Australia, Japan, Mexico and South Africa.
Of the 17 in Europe, five are in the United Kingdom, three in Germany, two in France, Italy and Switzerland, and one each in the Netherlands, Spain and Austria.
Oil companies are responsible for 24 percent of cumulative emissions of CO2 and methane between 1751 and 2010, with the five biggest investor-owned companies accounting for 12.5 percent of such emissions from 1751 to 2010.
Greenpeace and other climate advocates said Heede’s study is significant because it is the first that the biggest contributors to greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions have been named.
“These entities must now be called upon to admit their contribution to climate change and the impacts we are now experiencing.
The biggest polluters have a responsibility to respect the rights of the Filipino people,” Greenpeace said.
“Greenpeace supports initiatives by the most vulnerable communities to protect their right to a healthy and safe ecology, and to hold the fossil-fuel industry accountable for the climate crisis that has impacted the nation,” it added. Heede’s study will be presented at the upcoming Human Rights and Climate Change Forum jointly organized by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and Greenpeace Philippines.
Even as Heede warned of the grave consequences of global warming, a team of US scientists said the global CO2 emission level is actually 17 percent lower than estimated.
In an article that appeared on October 14, 2014, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists Ying Sun, Lianhong Gu, Robert E. Dickinson, Richard J. Norby, Stephen Pallardy and Forrest M. Hoffmann said climate models have been issuing estimates on the carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere without taking into consideration the efficiency of agricultural crops in taking in gases and consuming them.
This team found out that from the period 1901 to 2010, the estimates on CO2 levels were 17 percent lower than they really were, in effect staunching fears that anthropogenic global warming would consume the planet in no time.
The team measured the absorption rates of plants and discovered that they consume more CO2 than was thought in standard climate models used by scientists.
Moreover, the research showed that the higher the CO2 level in the atmosphere, the more efficient crops are in sequestering the gas and using it for them to grow bigger and for other plants to expand.
In effect, Ying’s team said that the more crops there are, the higher the chances of CO2 sequestration.
This finding would have to stimulate the planting of more crops since plants are the natural control agents for CO2.
With the results of the Ying research, doubts would be raised on claims that agriculture and the livestock industry contribute 30 percent of global CO2 emissions.
Unwieldy use of inorganic fertilizer for rice has been tagged as the culprit for much of the CO2 emissions that lurk in the atmosphere.
The latest scientific finding puts some doubt on the argument for global warming as promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Ying and Dickinson are with the Department of Geological Sciences of the University of Texas at Austin, while Lianhong Gu and Norby work with the Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Hoffman is with the Climate Change Science Institute and Computational Earth Sciences Group at Oak Ridge, while Pallardy is with the Department of Forestry of the University of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri.