If only we had recycled harder

This meme is not true and missleading. I know it fits the narrative of "companies bad". But it's not based on fact.

It's based on an article by the guardian.

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says

The article is based on the Carbon Major Report.

It describes itself like this:

Carbon Majors is a database of historical production data from 122 of the world’s largest oil, gas, coal, and cement producers. This data is used to quantify the direct operational emissions and emissions from the combustion of marketed products that can be attributed to these entities.

As you can see, they speak about "entities", not companies. Who are said entities?

75 Investor-owned Companies, 36 State-owned Companies, 11 Nation States, 82 Oil Producing Entities, 81 Gas Entities, 49 Coal Entities, 6 Cement Entities

As one might realize, only 75 are Companies. Most of them are either States, or producers of Oil, Gas, Coal and Cement.

The 71 % is not at all about global emissions. This is wrong.

72% of Global Fossil Fuel & Cement CO2 Emissions

So it's 100 entities that are responsible for 72 % of the world's fossil and cement Co2 emission.

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/05dfb9e1-ace2-4072-9fc5-7ed6f6eddfb2.png

Looking at them you can see how the top emitter are very much not companies. Also, it's historical Co2, a fact made prominent by the former Soviet union beeing the top emitter.

Let's look at some more findings:

The Carbon Majors database finds that most state- and investor-owned companies have expanded their production operations since the Paris Agreement. 58 out of the 100 companies were linked to higher emissions in the seven years after the Paris Agreement than in the same period before. This increase is most pronounced in Asia, where 13 out of 15 (87%) assessed companies are connected to higher emissions in 2016–2022 than in 2009–2015, and in the Middle East, where this number is 7 out of 10 companies (70%). In Europe, 13 of 23 companies (57%), in South America, 3 of 5 (60%) companies, and in Australia, 3 out of 4 (75%) companies were linked to increased emissions, as were 3 of 6 (50%) African companies. North America is the only region where a minority of companies, 16 of 37 (43%), were linked to rising emissions.

Here the report mixes state and private companies. The rise is most prominent in countries with state owned companies. Privote companies, as seen in Europe and North America, haven't increased that much.

So, all in all: The idea that 100 companies are responsible for the destruction of earth is plain wrong.

I know the ideas that companies are responsible and to blaim for the current state of affairs fits our world view (it fits mine!!), but please don't run into the trap of believing everything you read just because it does.

Honestly I'm starting to hate this narrative

For one, by far the most polluting companies are state owned coal companies in China and India. Then other state owned fossil fuel companies and then private fossil fuel companies.

So all those companies are just power generation. So it's not like they can just stop, people need the electricity.

And it's not like nothing is being done either. Like by far the biggest polluter is China's coal industry, making up 25% of global emissions, but China is also THE global leader on clean energy investment. They are currently building more nuclear power plants than the entire rest of the world has, they are making the biggest most powerfull wind turbines in the world, etc.

And if people would stop consuming cheap, disposable shite from China, then they wouldn't use so much electricity, so would burn less coal and also you wouldn't make a bunch of shit that's just going to end up in a landfill.

Humans self describe as intelligent. That always stuck with me.

This but sort of unironically.

Those 100 companies dig up coal, oil and gas. It's us that apparently can't break ourselves from it.

It's all very well us going out and going "oh, you little poor brown people that don't know any better: you shouldn't be using this stuff, it's killing the planet" when we've spent 150 years enriching ourselves off the back of it, and can't even stop using it ourselves. The USA's main export and import is still oil.

We're completely fucked, and it's very convenient blaming China when we've moved all our manufacturing there, but we were all responsible and we did precisely fuck all when it mattered. If a political party promised to stop using it all, they wouldn't get in. We wouldn't vote for them because we know we rely on it and costs of everything would go up in the short term.

I'm all for getting rid of fossil fuels, but I'm acutely aware that it's just so I can breathe slightly cleaner air while the planet boils. Globally we're still fucked.

We technically do. The day we don't need to buy their crap is the day we are free from our chains.

Don't let your dreams be dreams and just do it

This always gets me. They are producing stuff that we the people buy. They aren't out there just for the fun of things. Inb4 Lemmy's famous misreadings, yes it is an issue, yes we need regulation (which we will have to start again from scratch, hopefully in 4 years), yes we need renewables. But this simplistic "it's just 100 companies" is misleading AF.

I can't find the quote but don't expect poor people to want to stay poor. They will do whatever it takes to rise out of poverty. This privileged and naive attitude of 'don't do that it's bad' won't work.

The problem is GDP measurements leave out all the inconvenient but equally important stuff like sustainability, environmental concerns etc. Green GDP is the way to go but it's still a relatively new concept that needs to be spread out and adopted far and wide, but alas, only when the last fish has been caught and all the rivers poisoned will we realize we cannot eat money.

Can we stop buying from them please?