The richest 1 percent (77 million people) were responsible for 16 percent of global consumption emissions in 2019 âmore than all car and road transport emissions. The richest 10 percent accounted for half (50 percent) of emissions.
It would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99 percent to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.
Every year, the emissions of the richest 1 percent cancel out the carbon savings coming from nearly one million wind turbines.
Since the 1990s, the richest 1 percent have used up twice as much of the carbon we have left to burn without increasing global temperatures above the safe limit of 1.5°C than the poorest half of humanity.
The carbon emissions of richest 1 percent are set to be 22 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement in 2030.
Wow, even the Wall Street Journal is calling Exxon hypocrites. You could argue a company is in its right to protect its business model, even if it's ultimately on a road to failure...but you cross the line when you "spin" the story or outright lie about even the real facts and conclusions from your own research and people. Not sure what is worse, companies/managers that do that, or fools who see no harm.
some excerpts
Inside Exxonâs Strategy to Downplay Climate Change
Internal documents show what the oil giant said publicly was very different from how it approached the issue privately in the Tillerson era
Yet behind closed doors, Exxon took a very different tack: Its executives strategized over how to diminish concerns about warming temperatures, and they sought to muddle scientific findings that might hurt its oil-and-gas business, according to internal Exxon documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with former executives.
Exxonâs public acceptance in 2006 of the risks posed by climate change was an early act of Rex Tillerson, an Exxon lifer who became CEO that year. Some viewed him as a moderating force who brought Exxon in line with the scientific consensus.
The documents reviewed by the Journal, which havenât been previously reported, cast Tillersonâs decadelong tenure in a different light. They show that Tillerson, as well as some of Exxonâs board directors and other top executives, sought to cast doubt on the severity of climate changeâs impacts. Exxon scientists supported research that questioned the findings of mainstream climate science, even after the company said it would stop funding think tanks and others that promoted climate-change denial.
Exxon is now a defendant in dozens of lawsuits around the U.S. that accuse it and other oil companies of deception over climate change and that aim to collect billions of dollars in damages. Prosecutors and attorneys involved in some of the cases are seeking some of the documents reviewed by the Journal, which were part of a previous investigation by New Yorkâs attorney general but never made public.
âThe general perception is that Tillerson was softer and stopped funding the bad guysâ that were espousing climate change denial, said Lee Wasserman, the director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a charity that partly focuses on environmental issues. âThis is the first X-ray into Tillersonâs head and shows he wanted to throw climate mitigation off the rails. Itâs obituary-changing.â
Exxonâs public shift on climate change came after the Royal Society, a British scientific academy, criticized the company for spreading âinaccurate and misleadingâ views on climate science in 2006. Exxon responded in a letter that it recognized âthe accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earthâs atmosphere poses risks that may prove significant for society and ecosystems.â
While Tillerson and others played down the risks posed by climate change, Exxonâs scientists were themselves modeling alarming increases in carbon emissions without dramatic reductions in fossil-fuel consumption.
Conservative groups have crafted a plan for demolishing the federal governmentâs efforts to counter climate change â and it wouldnât stop with President Joe Bidenâs policies.
The 920-page blueprint, whose hundreds of authors include former Trump administration officials, would go far beyond past GOP efforts to slash environmental agenciesâ budgets or oust âdeep stateâ employees.
Called Project 2025, it would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agencyâs environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Departmentâs renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting Californiaâs car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials. (...)
Yeah, I guess because averages over years are showing these increases and extreme events, etc. His tweet isn't really careless with that conflation of weather and climate, but I have seen a number of much more alarmist/sensationalist articles and headlines which are. It just seems like something people need to be very conscious of - as I said "devil's advocate".
Maybe a season is the reasonable minimum for climate.
