Half of World's CO2 Emissions Come From Just 32 Fossil Fuel Firms, Study Shows (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180634144
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/21/1913218/half-of-worlds-co2-emissions-come-from-just-32-fossil-fuel-firms-study-shows
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/21/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissions-fossil-fuel-firms-study
> Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and ExxonMobil was the largest investor-owned polluter. Critics accused the leading fossil fuel companies of "sabotaging climate action" and "being on the wrong side of history" but said the emissions data was increasingly being used to hold the companies accountable.
>
> State-owned fossil fuel producers made up 17 of the top 20 emitters in the Carbon Majors report, which the authors said underscored the political barriers to tackling global heating. All 17 are controlled by countries that opposed a proposed fossil fuel phaseout at the Cop30 UN climate summit in December, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and India. More than 80 other nations had backed the phaseout plan.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/21/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissions-fossil-fuel-firms-study
The emissions happen when the fuel is burned. (Score:4, Insightful)
Who buys burns the fuel? Their customers Will the emissions stop if the customers stop burning the fuel. Yes. Will they continue to produce the fuel if customers stop buying it? No. I know a lot of you are itching to tell me about how this is all a plot by big oil to trick people into taking responsibility for the fuel they purchase and burn. Don’t bother. The oil companies will keep selling it as long as we buy it. Emissions will happen for as long as we keep burning the fuel. And no, you don’t need to drive to Costco for the 3rd time this week.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it's not very clear if this includes the emissions from people using their product, or is just the emissions from the manufacture of their product (and leaks, I guess). It *could* be just the second which is a good deal more interesting and kind of damning.
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It is kind of hand-woven but it sounds like they are counting the carbon produced by people using the products. So kind of a pointless statistic. They are not the only ones making a profit by encouraging consumption of fossil fuels, for instance people give car manufacturers more money for a machine that burns the fuel than they give for the fuel itself.
Re: The emissions happen when the fuel is burned. (Score:2, Troll)
Most people can't afford to make those changes, so you're blaming victims. A slashdot pastime!
Re: The emissions happen when the fuel is burned. (Score:2)
And cancel culture is another one...
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Yes. These companies only pump and refine oil. (OK I admit that refining oil results in CO2 emission) I think a lot of blame should fall on environmental groups that worked hard to oppose nuclear energy throughout the world.
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if you paid someone to pump it out of the ground, then perhaps you should pay for someone to pump it back in when you're done using it.
Shocking (Score:3)
> All 17 are controlled by countries that opposed a proposed fossil fuel phaseout at the Cop30 UN climate summit in December
Wild! You're saying that 17 countries with economies based in large part on fossil fuels didn't agree to sabotage their own economies??!!
We may not like that they won't ruin their economies to save the planet, but it shouldn't be surprising.
Graphics Cards all over the world ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... use chips made by just 3 companies.
EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!
Re: (Score:1)
> EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!
Can do!
We're all GOING TO DIE!!!!
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There was a time when there was a bunch of companies making graphics chipsets - 3Dfx!, S3, Chips & Technologies, 3dlabs,.... and some more making graphics cards - ATI, Diamond Multimedia, Matrox, Number Nine,.... All that consolidated to the point that we just have 3 companies now that makes graphics cards/GPUs. Btw, isn't it 4 - since Apple uses their own GPU in their Macbooks?
Some consolidation was inevitable, but people at the FTC were asleep at the wheel, allowing all sorts of mergers that got
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It's 3, because if we're talking about GPUs, we must be talking about discretes. Because if it's not 3, it's a whole lot more.
There are many proprietary iGPU cores.
Off the top of my head....
Apple, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Arm, Broadcom, Qualcomm, PowerVR. There are more.
Thumbs up (Score:1, Redundant)
Go ahead, keep calling it a climate crisis. It just raises our utility bills more and more. Great. Thanks.
Blaming only data centers in 3...2...1...
Stupid logic (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a climate denier- not even a tiny little bit.
But this is some boneheaded fucking logic.
Saying that the producer of the fuel is the one responsible for the emissions when it is burnt is just a weak fucking attempt at reducing the web of responsibility to someone easier to target, when the real culprit is staring at you in the mirror.
"Re:Stupid logic" but it works in court (Score:3)
They're just setting the stage for extended lawfare. They're trying to do the same thing as asbestos and lead paint etc. It's depraved, but it's worked before.
Just wait until they go after Nvidia. just think how much energy would be saved if only Nvidia stopped making chips!
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While that is true, you are missing the point.
These few companies have incredible power and influence plus an enormous financial incentive to lie and do precisely the wrong things. THOSE actions are, in a very direct way, responsible for the emissions even if they don't emit all the CO2 themselves.
And how are these companies and countries "easier to target"? I'd say quite the opposite.
"I'm not a climate denier- not even a tiny little bit."
But you support climate deniers, you praise them, promote them and
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> While that is true, you are missing the point.
No, I'm not. I'm doing a more nuanced analysis of the problem than they/you are.
> These few companies have incredible power and influence plus an enormous financial incentive to lie and do precisely the wrong things. THOSE actions are, in a very direct way, responsible for the emissions even if they don't emit all the CO2 themselves.
Those companies aren't responsible for shit.
At the end of the day, JoeBob's car still needs gasoline. Someone has to pump it for him.
It's not JoeBob's fault that his car needs gasoline, or this system that basically requires him to have that car exists- but it's also not the fault of those supplying him the gas to keep it running.
Dumbass Dimwit over in Appalachia isn't rolling coal and driving a truck 7x larger than he needs
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Here's some constructive feedback: if you don't want people to automatically assume your a lunatic maga moron don't use the work "lawfare".
Re: (Score:2)
Allow me to give you some of my own:
If you don't want people to think that you're an illiterate partisan fuckwaffle, then read before you reply.
I never used the word "lawfare".
No, only 15%. The rest are the consumer. (Score:3)
See [1]https://www.iea.org/reports/em... [iea.org]
"Today, oil and gas operations account for around 15% of total energy-related emissions globally, the equivalent of 5.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions."
The 50% number is like claiming that Taco Bell is responsible for the water use of people flushing the toilet after eating a taco.
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/emissions-from-oil-and-gas-operations-in-net-zero-transitions
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Would Taco Bell be responsible if it enriched its tacos with laxatives? If it lobbied governments to prevent all competition for its tacos? If laws were passed requiring taco consumption?
It's easy to make stupid analogies when you don't have to face what these companies actually do.
They needed a study? (Score:2)
32 firms happen to produce most of the world's oil. If they went away tomorrow, some other firms would take their place or there would be a global energy crisis. All of that oil is collectively burned (directly or indirectly) by basically everyone on earth.
This article is saying nothing. (Score:1)
So basically the people who purchase our products emitted CO2. I don't get the point of the article. Blame the marketing team at Saudi Aramco convincing people to buy their products?
"Saudi Aramco was responsible for 1.7bn tonnes of CO2, much of it from exported oil."
Blame where it's due, yep (Score:1)
The Billionaire techbro oligarchy is totally fine doubling CO2 output over the next 10 years so they can become trillionaires.
That's okay. Keep blaming a dude driving his 20-year old car to his shit job that he'll never escape, (and eventually lose), as the problem.
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If you had actually read the article (I know, I know, it's slashdot), you'd see they blamed neither the techbro, or the guy driving his car- they blame the people producing it.
Blaming the people pumping it is as dumb as blaming the dude and his car.
The people are pumping it because the dude and his car need it.
We should indeed be going after people who are wasting the shit. Engineering sectors to find alternative energy sources where possible, and penalizing those using fossil sources because they save
This is a story about wealth consolidation more (Score:2)
than carbon emissions.
Destroy them (Score:2)
I don't care how, and I don't care by who. Any and all consequences be damned. Destroy their plants. Destroy their HQs. Destroy the people that would attempt to rebuild it.
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It would help if you could be more specific about who you want destroyed. If you read the detail of the report and look at the tables (which the Guardian fails to give much information about) you will find that most of the emitting is being done by entities which are
(a) outside the West
(b) doing something other than oil extraction and sale.
So are you urging people to get out there and destroy Chinese cement plants and the HQs of the Chinese cement producers? What about the Chinese coal extraction companie
And we all use their products (Score:5, Interesting)
The uncomfortable truth is this, every one of us uses their products, in one way or another. The electricity that lights our homes. The fuel that moves our cars, buses, ships, and airplanes. The concrete, steel, plastics, fertilizers, medicines, and electronics that make modern life possible. The food system, the construction industry, global logistics, heating, cooling, data centers, all of it is built on energy supplied largely by fossil fuels. Those 32 companies did not emit carbon in a vacuum. They extracted and sold what the world demanded, and the world governments, industries, cities, and individuals bought it. This does not absolve these corporations of responsibility. Many knew the consequences decades ago, funded misinformation, and delayed the transition. Accountability matters. Regulation matters. Transparency matters. But pretending this is only a “them” problem lets the rest of us off the hook too easily. Climate change is not just a story of bad actors, it’s a story of a system we all participate in, willingly or not. We live in cities designed around cars. We inhabit buildings that require energy intensive materials. We rely on global supply chains optimized for cost, not carbon. Even the devices we use to read climate reports depend on fossil fuel powered infrastructure. Real solutions won’t come from scapegoating alone. They come from: - Changing how energy is produced, - Redesigning how cities are built, - Rethinking how we move, consume, and invest, - And demanding both corporate accountability and systemic transformation. Yes, 32 companies sit at the center of the problem. But 7+ billion people are connected to it. If half of emissions come from a few firms, the opportunity is just as clear: changing the system upstream can change everything downstream. The transition is possible, but only if we stop pretending we’re not part of the story.
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On the positive side, consumption based emissions in the US have been dropping since 2005. You can argue that more should be done, but we can't act like we aren't doing anything. You could even make a case that [1]temperatures on earth have been rising since we started cutting emissions [discovermagazine.com].
[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-earth-is-getting-darker-which-could-mean-hotter-summers-in-the-future-48108
We all suffer as infected. (Score:2)
If you could somehow convince 100 million humans to actively pursue a 100% carbon-neutral, organic balanced life within their own existence to ensure the planet does not suffer, the impact would be..what again?
What happens when even the efforts of those who aren't pretending at all, become completely irrelevant? Do we even still have the original problem to solve, or do we simply have the same old problem of human ignorance that ends the same way, every time?
Find a cure for the Disease of Greed that has in
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They lobby hard and spew misinformation to ensure that we keep using their products. They don't invest their profits in developing ways to stop using their products.
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> The electricity that lights our homes. The fuel that moves our cars
Relatively little oil is used for producing electricity, roughly 2-3% of global electricity generation. Electric vehicles accounted for about 25% of global new car sales in 2025.
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since I indirectly fund their operations I should get a vote on how they move forward, since they are using common property (atmosphere) in their business.