The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Just Five Oil Giants Set to Blow an Eighth of the World’s Carbon Budget by 2050
Dear Diary. As most of my readers and followers know, I’ve been naming U.S. heatwaves for big oil companies this year. Today we will emphasize why oil companies need to be skewered through a Common Dreams article. These companies should be bending over backwards or proverbially following all over themselves to use their resources to transition to green renewables, working with automobile companies to make transportation via electric vehicles work such that it is affordable for everyone.
Instead, all oil companies I know of are trying to squeeze ever drop of profit out of the ground, and our society is letting them get away from it. Here is more:
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Just Five Oil Giants Set to Blow an Eighth of the World’s Carbon Budget by 2050: Analysis
“This puts the world on a dangerous trajectory of significantly overshooting climate targets.”
By JAKE JOHNSON
Aug 15, 2023
Just five fossil fuel giants—BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and TotalEnergies—are set to use nearly an eighth of the world’s dwindling carbon budget by 2050 as they continue to increase oil and gas production, driving up planet-warming emissions that are fueling catastrophic extreme weather worldwide.
According to an analysis released Tuesday by Global Witness, those five corporations are forecast to produce oil and gas that—when burned—will emit roughly 47 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
“This is equivalent to almost one-eighth of the remaining global carbon budget for staying below 1.5°C,” the group noted, referring to the warming target set by the Paris climate accord.
Scientists have estimated that rich nations must completely cut off oil and gas production by 2034 to give the world a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century.
Citing data from the energy business intelligence agency Rystad, Global Witness noted that “in 2050 alone, these five major private western oil and gas companies are estimated to still produce oil and gas, which when burnt, equates to nearly 900 million tonnes of CO2.”
“To balance out some of their emissions, many of these companies claim they will use methods designed to reduce emissions, such as carbon capture and storage technologies, according to Net Zero Tracker,” the group added. “However, carbon capture and storage remains unproven at scale and highly controversial. This puts the world on a dangerous trajectory of significantly overshooting climate targets.”
Global greenhouse gas emissions are currently at an all-time high as world leaders take little concrete action to rein in the primary source of those emissions—fossil fuels.
The new analysis by Global Witness comes as world leaders are preparing to convene for COP28 at the end of November, a summit that will follow months of devastating heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, and other fossil fuel-driven extreme weather across the planet.
“This analysis shows that the world’s top five private oil and gas companies, which already bear a huge responsibility for climate change, are not doing enough to cut emissions now or in the future,” Global Witness said Tuesday. “Instead, they are on a dangerous path of foregoing drastic action now and continuing with climate-wrecking emissions.”
In recent months, Shell and BP—both of which knew about the connection between fossil fuels and climate change long before they publicly acknowledged it—have walked back pledges to curb oil and gas production and weakened their emission-reduction goals.
Meanwhile, both companies have continued rewarding investors with dividend hikes and stock buybacks.
“It’s time to bring in a permanent polluters’ tax to hold BP and other fossil fuel companies to account for the damage they continue to wreak,” Dorothy Guerrero, head of policy and advocacy at the U.K.-based group Global Justice Now, said earlier this month after BP reported $2.6 billion in second-quarter profits and announced another $1.5 billion in share buybacks.
“Leaving this industry with the power to profit without consequence is not only morally abhorrent—it’s plainly ludicrous in the face of a climate catastrophe that threatens us all,” Guerrero added.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Here are some “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is more climate and weather news from Wednesday.
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)