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Climate accountability as a fulcrum
for climate stewardship.

News Updates

News Update 4 April 2024

Richard Heede’s landmark Carbon Majors research transformed the landscape of climate accountability by using the fossil fuel industry’s own reported production and operation figures to calculate and expose the true scale of its role in the climate crisis. By updating and extending that research–and making it more widely accessible and usable for researchers, decisionmakers, and litigators alike–InfluenceMap’s new Carbon Majors Database will transform that landscape yet again. The Carbon Majors Database makes it dramatically easier to document, calculate, and visually demonstrate the growing chasm between the urgent demands of climate reality and the continued reckless, and intentional growth of oil and gas production. Critically, it enables to track changes in corporate behavior and production across discrete and clearly defined timescales that will be relevant to investors, investigators, and litigators alike. It is a vital and powerful new tool in the work toward climate action and climate accountability.

• Carroll Muffett / Center for International Environmental Law, President & CEO

Rick Heede was the first person to calculate and publish just how much carbon dioxide and methane had been produced by the major oil, gas, and coal producers since the industrial revolution. His data showed that just a couple of dozen companies had drilled or mined the fossil fuels responsible for more than half the global carbon pollution since the mid 19th century.  He also showed that it was possible to attribute specific, quantitative amounts of carbon pollution to specific companies, such as ExxonMobil’s ~2.8% of all such emissions since 1751. This work has laid a solid foundation for thinking through the legal and moral responsibility of these companies in producing the current climate crisis.

• Naomi Oreskes / Harvard University, Dept. Earth and Planetary Sciences

News Update 31 March 2024

News Update 18 November 2023

News Update 14 August 2023

News Update 19 May 2023

News Update 23 November 2022

News Update 14 November 2022

News Update 27 October 2022

“In Uganda, having been at the center of the campaign against the proposed East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), I have seen forced displacement of communities, police brutality on peaceful environmental activists, delegitimization of otherwise legitimate environmental institutions, abduction of human rights activists and journalists, among other ills. The proposed EACOP must not be allowed to proceed. Total Energies must be stopped!”  ~ Prince Papa, Laudato Si’ Movement, and Refueling Africa, personal communication, 24 October 2022.

Watch Real World Visuals short animations:

25-year EACOP CO2 emissions from Eiffel Tower to bird’s eye view above Paris (each sphere contains 1 milllion tonnes CO2)

Real-time emissions of small spheres containing 1 kg CO2 each.

News Update 19 July 2022

News Update 16 June 2022

News Update 6 May 2022

News Update 26 May 2021

News Update 15 April 2021

News Update 9 December 2020

Climate Accountability Institute releases treasure trove of data on fossil fuel company operational and product-related emissions.

 

News Update – 2 June 2020

News Update – 11 December 1019

News Update – 17 October 2019

Top Twenty Carbon Majors 1967-2017, 1 million tonnes CO2e, every forty minutesIllustration by Adam Nieman, Real World Visuals, UK.

News Update – 9 October 2019

News Update – 30 September 2019

News Update – 24 April 2019

News Update – 6 September 2018

News Update – 30 March 2018

News Update – 15 December 2017

News Update – 7 September 2017