Naming Names: On Climate Change, some are more equal than others

We know that our world is suffering: people across Africa, Asia and Latin America live with disease, famine and poverty. Global warming and its consequent pollution, have affected people across Asia, Africa and Europe.

We have been told that some people leave “bigger footprints” than others. They see a distinction between the citizens of the North of the world who live in European and North American countries, and the South, which includes the continents, Africa, Asia and Latin America. So those in the North of the world are consuming too much, leaving very little resources for people in the South and destroying the planet in the process.

We are not denying that this is our responsibility. We should help, we should do everything we can to help, but this can obscure who the real villains are. It is obvious that the largest footprints come from the multinationals. In terms of the ecological damage they cause, a worker in Asia could leave a footprint the size of a baby’s shoe. A worker in Britain would have a footprint as large as a size ten shoe. A company boss’s footprint would cover an area as big as a lorry, a medium sized corporation the size of a housing estate, a multinational the size of a big city.

In 2017 The Carbon Majors Report identified that just 100 companies were responsible for 71% of global emissions. And it’s not getting better.

So, while changing lightbulbs, becoming vegetarian and switching to electric cars does make a difference, it doesn’t have as great an impact as stopping these people and corporations would:

The Koch Brothers: own a US oil company which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines and includes many other interest. In 2010 A Greenpeace report identified Koch Industries giving $73m to climate sceptic groups 'spreading inaccurate and misleading information'. The environmental campaign group accused Kansas-based Koch Industries of funding conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators to spread misinformation about climate science. This led to a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels which stopped the US from addressing the issue and backing out of the Paris accord.

Saudi Aramco: currently contribute to more than 5% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions just by themselves. Aramco announced in 2021 that the company intended to increase crude capacity from 12m barrels a day to 13m barrels by 2027. They have no plans to diversify into alternative sources of energy.

Peter Thiel: multi-billionaire and Co-Founder of Paypal, has continuously and repeatedly questioned climate change publicly. He has funded a science publication questioning evolution and climate change, and in late 2016, having donated at least $1.25 million to support Trump, he recommended two climate change deniers to Trump to hire as his science adviser. In a recent speech, in November 2021, Thiel made a disparaging comment about climate change: “When you have to call things science, you know they aren’t. Like climate science or political science.”

Chevron: one of the leading oil and gas providers in the US, Chevron is active in approximately 180 countries worldwide. Reports from the Climate Change Accountability Institute state that since 1965, the company has been responsible for adding more than 43 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. Perhaps even worse than this, they are also champions at ‘greenwashing’, or the act of using misleading information to make the company seem more ‘green’ than it actually is. Their TV campaign pledges ‘ever cleaner energy’, while in reality, only 0.2% of its expenditure is allocated to the cause.

Mark Zuckerberg: now, this name might be a surprise. Admittedly, Facebook itself is not in the same league as the behemoths above: they have actually committed to a target of reaching net zero by 2030, and the man himself recently donated $50 million to study the effect of climate change on the ocean. He makes the list for a different reason, and that is his company’s social impact. As we know, the most powerful tool we have against climate change is unification against the threat, and Facebook severely endangers that by allowing the spread of factually incorrect and damaging viewpoints. Researchers recently labelled Facebook as being “among the world’s biggest purveyors of climate disinformation” and a report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate shows Facebook not only fails to stop erroneous posts, but also profits from their spread. So: worthy of a place on the list? You decide.