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Wealth And Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Earth Wise

September 28, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study led by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found that the wealthiest 10% of Americans are responsible for a staggering 40% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The study, which was recently published in the journal PLOS Climate, is the first to link income, especially income derived from financial investments, to the emissions used in generating that income.

The research team suggests that policymakers adopt taxation strategies focused on shareholders and the carbon intensity of investment incomes in order to meet the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Historically, environmental policies have focused on regulating consumption, but the researchers argue that this approach misses something important: carbon pollution generates income, but when that income is reinvested into stocks, rather than spent on necessities, it isn’t subject to a consumption-based carbon tax. Rather than focus on how emissions enable consumption, they argue that the focus should be on how emissions create income.

After analyzing 30 years of data, the researchers found that not only are the top 10% of earners in the United States responsible for 40% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions, but that the top 1% alone account for 15-17% of the emissions. Emissions tended to peak in the 45-54 age group before declining.

The researchers highlight the need for an income and shareholder-based taxation strategy to incentivize climate action among high-income earners and industries, which could expedite decarbonization efforts and create tax revenue to support other climate initiatives.

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America’s Wealthiest 10% Responsible for 40% of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Photo, posted June 29, 2015, courtesy of Pictures of Money (via Flickr).

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Are Companies Really Reducing Emissions? | Earth Wise

December 21, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Many companies around the world are declaring tremendous progress in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Sometimes these claims are the result of actions that really do reduce emissions but other times they are the result of something called “market-based accounting”. Businesses buy credits from clean energy providers that allows them to say they are running on green power when they actually are not.

The market analysis firm Bloomberg Green analyzed almost 6,000 climate reports filed by corporations last year and found that over 1,300 of them employed market-based accounting to erase over 120 million tons of emissions from their records.

Some clean energy contracts do have major climate benefits. For example, companies like Amazon, Nestle, and Target have signed long-term power purchase agreements that ultimately help renewable developers finance new energy projects.

On the other hand, renewable energy credits are often short-term transactions with existing facilities and do little to stimulate investment or otherwise lead to greater use of green power. They simply shift around ownership of existing renewable energy without doing anything new for the climate.

Some companies have made meaningful cuts to their pollution by putting solar panels on their roofs, upgrading their lighting and air conditioning equipment, and so on. But many are reluctant to spend their capital in this way, even if it eventually saves money through lower electric bills.

Customers and shareholders want to see corporations do their part in reducing emissions. But too many are making grandiose claims enabled by market-based accounting while doing far too little to help the environment. Dubious claims of climate progress are not harmless; it is essential for the world’s companies to really do their share.

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What Really Happens When Emissions Vanish

Photo, posted July 16, 2014, courtesy of Mike Mozart via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Tough Day For Big Oil | Earth Wise

June 24, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

May 26th was a difficult day for big oil. Three major setbacks for the industry occurred on the same day.

A Dutch court ruled in a case against Shell, ordering the company to cut emissions by 2030 in accordance with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The case was brought by climate activists, ultimately comprising 17,000 co-plaintiffs. The ruling will probably be appealed but it does represent a major precedent for holding polluters accountable for their actions.

That same day, shareholders of ExxonMobil replaced at least two of the company’s board members with candidates dedicated to decarbonizing the company. Having two board seats filled by climate supporters is not likely to radically transform the company, but it is a powerful rebuke of Exxon’s iconic business model of “drill, baby, drill”.

Finally, Chevron’s shareholder meeting on May 26th saw 61% of shareholders voting for the company to reduce its so-called Scope 3 emissions, meaning the pollution from all the fossil fuels it sells. In addition, 48% of shareholders voted to demand a report on Chevron’s dark money lobbying. That initiative did not carry, but nevertheless, nearly half of the company’s shareholders expressed concern about how Chevron is corrupting the political process in order to achieve its ends.

These events are examples of mainstream activism where the pressure on fossil fuel companies is not just coming from the usual environmental activists but rather from shareholders, who after all actually own the companies. The fossil fuel industry still wields enormous power, but it appears increasingly possible to challenge it and even to win.

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A landmark day in the fight against fossil fuels

Photo, posted August 15, 2014, courtesy of Mike Mozart via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And The Bottom Line

July 31, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Large companies around the world are facing up to the fact that climate change could substantially affect their bottom lines within the next five years. Shareholders and regulators have been applying pressure to companies to disclose the specific financial impacts they could face as the planet warms and companies are increasingly making those disclosures.

A non-profit charity called CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project) runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions to manage their environmental impacts. In 2018, more than 7,000 companies submitted reports to CDP and, for the first time, CDP explicitly asked firms to try to calculate how a warming planet might affect them financially.

Analysis of the reports from 215 of the world’s 500 largest corporations revealed that these companies alone potentially faced roughly $1 trillion in costs related to climate change in the decades ahead unless they took proactive steps to prepare.

Climate-related risks range from extreme weather that could disrupt supply chains to stricter climate regulations that could hurt the value of coal, oil, and gas investments. Technology companies like Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Inc., face increased costs to cool energy-hungry data centers as temperatures rise.

In all, the world’s largest companies estimated that at least $250 billion of assets may need to be written off or retired early as the planet heats up. Previous studies, based on computer climate modeling, have estimated that the risks of global warming, if left unmanaged, could cost the world’s financial sector between $1.7 trillion to $24.2 trillion in net present value terms.

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Companies See Climate Change Hitting Their Bottom Lines in the Next 5 Years

Photo, posted February 29, 2016, courtesy of Ben Nuttall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Old-School Companies And Renewable Energy

April 12, 2016 By WAMC WEB

The biggest Internet companies have been embracing renewable energy for years now. The company that bought the largest amount of clean energy last year was Google, which has three times the renewable capacity of the next biggest user. Other familiar names in the top ten companies in total wind and solar capacity include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. These companies have been ahead of the pack in looking for sustainable ways to meet their substantial energy needs.