The world’s biggest companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, a new study estimates

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer WASHINGTON AP The world s biggest corporations have caused trillion in surroundings damage a new evaluation estimates as part of an effort to make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable like the tobacco giants have been Related Articles of the world s coral reefs hit by worst bleaching event on record Book Review Hope Dies Last visits visionaries fighting global warming Your clothes are shedding bits of plastic Here s what people are doing about it this Earth Day Gaskin Earth Day in a drill baby drill world years after Deepwater Horizon oil spill lawsuits stall and restoration is incomplete A Dartmouth College research squad came up with the estimated toxicity caused by companies with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from fossil fuel providers Saudi Aramco Gazprom Chevron ExxonMobil BP Shell National Iranian Oil Co Pemex Coal India and the British Coal Corporation For comparison trillion is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year At the top of the list Saudi Aramco and Gazprom have each caused a bit more than trillion in heat damage over the decades the organization calculated in a assessment published in Wednesday s journal Nature The researchers figured that every of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere since has caused billion in damage from heat alone which doesn t include the costs incurred by other extreme weather such as hurricanes droughts and floods People talk about making polluters pay and sometimes even take them to court or pass laws meant to rein them in The analysis is an attempt to determine the causal linkages that underlie a large number of of these theories of accountability commented its lead author Christopher Callahan who did the work at Dartmouth but is now an Earth systems scientist at Stanford University The research firm Zero Carbon Analytics counts lawsuits filed globally about weather change damage with more than half of them in the United States Everybody s asking the same question What can we genuinely claim about who has caused this reported Dartmouth conditions scientist Justin Mankin co-author of the research And that really comes down to a thermodynamic question of can we trace weather hazards and or their damages back to particular emitters The answer is yes Callahan and Mankin mentioned The researchers started with known final emissions of the products such as gasoline or electricity from coal-fired power plants produced by the biggest carbon-oriented companies going as far back as years because that s as far back as any of the companies emissions evidence go and carbon dioxide stays in the air for much longer than that They used different computer simulations to translate those emissions into changes for Earth s global average surface temperature by comparing it to a world without that company s emissions Using this approach they determined that trash from Chevron for example has raised the Earth s temperature by degrees Fahrenheit degrees Celsius The researchers also calculated how much each company s defilement contributed to the five hottest days of the year using more computer simulations and then applying a formula that connects extreme heat intensity to changes in economic output This system is modeled on the established techniques scientists have been using for more than a decade to attribute extreme weather events such as the Pacific Northwest heat wave to circumstances change Mankin announced that in the past there was an argument of Who s to say that it s my molecule of CO that s contributed to these damages versus any other one He noted his inquiry really laid clear how the veil of plausible deniability doesn t exist anymore scientifically We can literally trace harms back to major emitters Shell declined to comment Aramco Gazprom Chevron Exxon Mobil and BP did not respond to requests for comment All methods they use are quite robust noted Imperial College London circumstances scientist Friederike Otto who heads World Weather Attribution a collection of scientists who try rapid attribution studies to see if specific extreme weather events are worsened by circumstances change and if so by how much She didn t take part in the examination It would be good in my view if this approach would be taken up more by different groups As with event attribution the more groups do it the better the science gets and the better we know what makes a difference and what does not Otto stated So far no surroundings liability lawsuit against a major carbon emitter has been fruitful but maybe showing how overwhelmingly strong the scientific evidence is can change that she mentioned In the past damage caused by individual companies were lost in the noise of facts so it couldn t be calculated Callahan revealed We have now reached a point in the weather predicament where the total damages are so immense that the contributions of a single company s product can amount to tens of billions of dollars a year explained Chris Field a Stanford University conditions scientist who didn t take part in the research This is a good exercise and proof of concept but there are so several other setting variables that the numbers that Callahan and Mankin came up with are likely a vast underestimate of the damage the companies have really caused reported Michael Mann a University of Pennsylvania weather scientist who wasn t involved in the examination Follow Seth Borenstein on X at borenbears The Associated Press surroundings and environmental coverage receives financial endorsement from multiple private foundations AP is solely responsible for all content Find AP s standards for working with philanthropies a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP org