Choices

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.

Okay, brass in the us military can line up for the guillotine alongside the c suites at Exxon mobile and royal dutch shell

And maybe we can have a long hard conversation about concrete.
- Looking at the numbers you should maybe include Chinas Coal Industry in there, since it is responsible for about 25 % of global emissions alone, according to the up to date report.
  
  And the people at Gazprom also deserve a prominent spot in that line.
Wow, talk about a failure of journalism from a decent source
- I mean it's the guardian. It hardly qualifies as 'journalism'
Yes and no. The Carbon Majors Report provides two ways of looking at global emissions: Cumulative and Annual. The table you showed reflects the Cumulative Emissions Since Industrial Revolution (1751-2022)

While not reported in the Guardian article, the same 2017 report stated 72% (p5) of global industrial GHGs in 2015 came from 224 companies, with the sample breakdown in the 2017 report, Appendix II (p15). As you can see, pretty much all of those producers are private/state-owned companies and much closer to the current picture of annual emissions. I'm not sure what counts as "industrial", but crunching the raw numbers of 30565/46073 Mt (Global Emissions, statcan) it works out to about 66% of global emissions in 2015.
- Why are you using data from the 2017 report?
  
  You are referring to page 15, which shows emissions in 2015. In the up to date 2024 report this has been replaced with emissions after the Paris climate agreement, so 2016 till 2022.
  
  As you can see, the same picture emerges as I stated in my first post: the top actors are Nations or state owned producers. The contribution to global Co2 emissions is listet, but still only refers to fossil fuel and cement Co 2 emissions.

If only we had recycled harder

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.

It's a multifaceted issue, but don't kid yourself

http://amp.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change.

China weighs in at 14.5% for coal. Another 1-point-some-odd for their Petro Chem. The issue is that there are a lot of companies that make up the remainder.

Demand definitely plays a role in all of this, but I don't think pushing green initiatives is a bad thing from the consumers and one of the only ways we can encourage these companies to do their part
- https://mander.xyz/comment/15166141
  
  I'll refer to this comment where I showed why the article quoted here is very missleading.
- It’s possible there’s a very specific tinge of racism and/or jingoism present in the comment previous to yours.
  
  Multinational companies are to blame, not just India and China.
Power companies in Georgia, US are building more coal power plants. Consumers in Georgia, US don't have a lot of choice in how the electricity they can buy is produced.
- What kind of politicians are people voting for at the state level in GA? Separately, they're also blowing ass loads of money on nuclear.
Why are the people not on the hook for electricity usage but they are for cheap crap? The corporations reselling the cheap crap are far more culpable. The problem is still capitalism.
- Okay, we've identified the problem is capitalism. Now what? Are you not at fault when you buy cheap crap from China you don't need or take your car somewhere you could have walked, because the problem is capitalism?
  
  When crops are failing due to drought and kids are starving to death is pointing the finger at capitalism going to save them?
I agree so very much.
People around me fly on holidays by plane like two, three times a year, still eat meat, shower twice a day and buy shit they don't need from Amazon, because they can. This needs to stop! Will it save us? Of course not, but who else is going to stop the global suicide machine? Trump? The fossil destroyers? Do you want to protest another 70 years or go blow up a pipeline?
We are billions, we have the power of "No, thanks, I don't want that" every fucking day but the endless consumption of stuff is too tempting. Instead, we sit at home, comfortably warm, well fed and lonely, in front of our seethrough plexiglas RGB LED computers and point fingers at corporations that are exactly as greedy, selfish and irresponsible as every single one of us.
NO THANKS! This could be the easiest global movement, no violence, no riots, yet corporations would be powerless. But you'd need to change, and you don't want that.

Edit: If you downvote, please tell me where I'm wrong and what's your counter-proposal in this actual situation right now.
- Where you are wrong is that the majority of humans don't have access to those luxuries of choice since around 50% of the world is still below the extreme poverty level. Where else you're wrong is people like me that have solar panels, and electric transportation and access to mass transit that I use regularly. We also don't have much of a choice, because we don't make the markets those companies do.
  
  Those companies are the only ones that have a choice because they control so much market share that no one else has enough power to make a change.
  
  I already eliminated my carbon footprint, and it hasn't done shit, because Starbucks has their own private jet that the CEO is using 3 times a week to fly between San Francisco and Seattle, because fuck the plebes.
  
  The only solution I see at this point is mass protest and starting to assassinate CEOs, shareholders, and boards of directors, in self defense.
I hate the narrative too. Just people avoiding responsibility and complaining instead of doing what they can and should.

Obviously our individual actions matter.
- Obviously they should and do, but pretending the average human creates anything compared to oil and gas companies, coal plants, big tech, etc is boot-lickingly ludicrous
- My mate whinge all day about bad companies ruining the planet and drinks that Danone smart water bullshit.
So all those companies are just lower generation. So it's not like they can just stop, people need the electricity.

I don't know about you guys but Id rather have a habitable planet with breathable air than electricity.

It sickens me how convenience is valued over everything else.
- People in hospitals will die without that electricity. You can be all sickened and uppity on your electronic device if you want, but the only realistic solution is replacing infrastructure.

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

If only it was that simple. We still have to eat, drink, clothe ourselves, get around...
- I mean, we were not born into the universe having stuff
We give them the ammo, they pull the trigger. We basically just choose the type of ammo. Buying from Nestle? That's a .50 BMG. Beyond Burgers? .22 LR

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

Humans are so naturally stupid that they almost make AI seem intelligent.
- Certainly that goes a long way to explain why so many think LLMs are actually intelligent.

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.

The problem isn't methodology. There are plenty of ways to predict, detect and measure pollution, its origins, and ways to prevent it. The problem is systemic: capitalism simply doesn't account for pollution, and the ruling class which it generates actually fights against regulations. The result is what we see. To solve climate change, we need systemic change
- Yes. I would go even further, and say that pollution is the necessary result of capitalism. Capitalism is the mistaken belief that exponential growth can continue forever in a finite ecosystem. My country targets 2-3% growth annually - this implies a doubling of the economy every 30 years or so. It has already been almost 2 doubling periods since human consumption began to exceed the Earth's sustainable capacity. Even the fucking shithead most responsible, Jeff Bezos, acknowledges the problem. Does anyone really think going to space is just a 'hobby' for that sick fuck?

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.

This is why we must lower the standard of everyone who isn't poor.
This may sound naive, but I think that most people are good and would favour sound environmental policy if they could count on getting food, shelter, and healthcare without destroying the planet. It is no coincidence that republicans are pro-business and anti-healthcare. Oligarchs want people to remain so desperate that they can never act on their conscience.

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.

Those 100 companies have made it so it's incredibly difficult not to buy from them.

Groceries? There's like 10 companies that own all of the food supply. Good luck figuring out which one's have child labor, and a horrendous environmental impact. They've very purposely masked that image.

Oh wow, everything is recyclable! No, those companies just slapped that logo on all of their products so we can ignorantly wish-cycle their garbage. Most of it ends up in the landfill.

Don't want a car? Our cities are very deliberately designed to require cars. There is a very strong private agenda against good public transportation.

Then there's the pollution. These companies pollute so much more than we know. Whether that's dumping forever chemicals into our water, or taking private jets everywhere. It's not like the label on your T-shirt tells you that.

Finally find a good company? They'll buy it up, lobby against it, or coerce them out of business. Just look how many companies Luxottica has destroyed.

There's layer after layer of obfuscation to hide what these companies are doing. It's not just a matter of picking Product A over Product B. We rarely have much choice, or the information to make better choices.
I'll GLADLY buy the alternative that doesn't do those things. When it exists. One day.
- I think the idea was "reduce consumption". As a society we buy tons of stuff, way more than 50 or 100 years ago.
- You seem like you have a consumption problem. Outside of a car, heating, and cooling nobody is forcing anything down your throat.
  
  You choose and desire to buy whatever product you're talking about.
Have you somehow missed just how car-centric just about everything is? I mean, most public space out there is taken by roads and public transport is generally insufficient.

Granted, there are much better countries in this than others.

Ditto on other things imposed on people such as planed obsolence: Can you still buy a fridge that will last you a lifetime? Does your 15 year old original iPhone still work well? How many of the electronics out there are not repairable?

Then there's all the pressure to make people consume, using techniques from Psychology (you can go read all about how the nephew of Freud introduced into Marketing techniques from Psychology back in the 50s). Absolutelly, people should be stronger and wiser than that, but most are not and just claiming that "it's people's fault" when others take adavantage of natural human weaknesses is just victim blaming.

Absolutelly, Consumerism is a big part of the problem and it's a lot down to individuals to do less of it, but lets not deceive ourselves that the environment we're all in not only promotes it massivelly and relentlessly, but plenty of decisions which were taken for us by others mean individuals often don't even have a choice not to buy new junk or ride a personal-polution-device, and in Capitalism those decisions were taken mainly by large Companies directly or by the politicians they bought.
- As you said, plenty of countries are better in terms of public transportation, but most people still insist on driving cars even in places with good public transportation coverage.
  
  And the biggest counter to the "it's not a personal issue, it's companies who don't give options" is diet: eating meat is far worse for the environment as well as more expensive than a plant based diet; but people hate the idea of eating less meat and they love to mock vegans.
The average person spends most of their time at work where they don't control how environmentally friendly they are.
Except you're wrong. In case your next reach is "It's not the billionaires fault." These companies could be easily be made more efficient if the billionaire class were forced to change but the government is too weak and corrupt to allow that to happen. We have wealth disparity that has surpassed American's last gilded age. The billionaires don't care about climate change because they already won they're richer then us who cares if humanity goes extinct, they beat us.
You're unfortunately about to get ratio'ed for the reasonable take.

With their unlimited funds that somehow keep replenishing themselves. MAGIC!

Can we stop buying from them please?

That's the best part! You can't!

Thanks to the consolidation and vertical integration of the largest multinationals, as long as you choose to live — no matter how careful and conscious your purchases — a significant proportion of it will still funnel to most of these corporations.
- Meat is one of the bigger polutters. Meat industry is subsidized by the state. Plant based diets are still cheaper. The vast majority of people still choose to eat meat and actively mock vegans. Just go look at beef (worse meat for the environment) consumption stats in the US.
  
  That's just one example.
  
  People say they want change but won't take it where they can, because deep down it's a lie and they just want someone to fix the problem without them having to do anything.
- Outside or raw materials, a cell phone, and maybe a car where are you forced to support corporations?
You could buy from other company. But if you are buying the same product the pollution fingerprint would be similar on most cases.

You could just not buy the products. But if you buy things is to improve your quality of life.

So the best course of action is not to make people have less quality of life. Instead push for less people on the planet so they can afford more pollution per person.

Well clearly it's the fault of everyone noticing the problems because like 100 years ago no one noticed the problems and so clearly they weren't happening because no one noticed and if they were happening someone would have noticed so if people just hadn't noticed they never would have happened and then no one would have noticed them which of course then means they double wouldn't have happened

It's just common sense if you think about it from that perspective

Rugged individualism strikes again.

I love this narrative of EVERYONE in Lemmy being so smart to not fall into the clutches and delusions of capitalism and at the exact same time, claiming to be a powerless entity, without any intellect, swayed away by the world, having no responsibility whatsoever in the decisions they make daily

It's truly fascinating

And I find it fascinating that you'd unironically treat Lemmy as some weird hivemind and then criticize it for wanting collective action.

People having 6 children that pollute their whole lives on a overpopulated earth.

"How could insert external factor to avoid personal responsibility do this to me?"

The most polluting thing a human could do is having children.

For the average person, yes, but that's nothing compared to what a single stroke of a CEO's pen can do.
- Companies supply products to people.
  
  If there were not 8 billion people buying shit and going places the stroke of that CEO won't do as much damage.
  
  Also if 8 billion people want a car to go on vacation to the beach... it doesn't matter if the pen of the car manufacturing company belong to a CEO or a People's Delegate, world is going to shit regardless.
Even the homeless are polluting above sustainable levels. More humans just makes it happen faster. Until we make a sustainable lifestyle possible, you're directing your anger exactly where big oil wants you to.
- You are making my point.
  
  People pollute.
  
  That sustainable level that you talk about is primitivism or utopia. I don't want either.
  
  Only solution is LESS people.
  
  Why people have such a hard time understanding that we cannot grow infinitely (in numbers) in a world of limited resources?
  
  I know, that the core of this is the dogma. The left removed the overpopulation problem of their dogma decades ago to gain support on certain communities and now we are paying with lots of people actively supporting the destruction of our planet and our quality of life just to squeeze a few more votes
  
  But I don't buy dogmas. I think by myself. And I see that with that many people there's not any economical system that could work to provide a good life to every human on earth, it's impossible, there are not enough resources.
  
  Edit: big oil wants people to feel guilty for wanting to live good. That is what people who supports uncontrolled overbreeding are, consciously or not, defending. I support that people should be able to live good, and consume without feeling guilt. Again, only way to do that is if we had less people around.
The most polluting thing to do is to allow capitalism to exist, yet I don't see you on the streets.
- You haven't been looking then.
  
  I've spent quite a lot of time of my live trying to end capitalism.
Overpopulation isn't defined by how much people there are, but by the total amount of sustainably produced goods and services divided by the total population. Fewer people producing unsustainably would also be overpopulation. We need to transition to sustainability regardless of amount of people, reducing population only leads to slower decline, not to a stop of it.
- We need both.
  
  Sustainability is defined by the amount of resources that a population can take from the environment without permanently destroying it. For a bigger population that amount of resources that can be used before reaching that threshold is smaller by person.
  
  Just imagine a tribe living of a fruit tree that gives 10 apples a year. Maybe a tribe of 10 individuals can live of that tree but a tribe. But what happen when the tribe grows and suddenly there's 100 individuals trying to live of a 10 apple tree? It's illogical to take population out of the equation, because it's one of the biggest factors, the second biggest factor is quality of life (how many apples we eat a year), and the only factor that you are considering relevant is the one with the smallest impact that is how efficiently we recollect our apples. That last factor is the one with the smallest impact in the whole equation, and it's the only you seem to consider to solve our problem. We, of course, need to be efficient because it cost nothing, but efficiency by itself is not solving the whole problem.
  
  Your own equation and your own logic is supporting my argument that we NEED to reduce population.
  
  The only thing left against it is the dogma.