"WASHINGTON — The world’s biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, a new study estimates as part of an effort to make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable, like the tobacco giants have been.
A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel providers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation.
For comparison, $28 trillion is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.
At the top of the list, Saudi Aramco and Gazprom have each caused a bit more than $2 trillion in heat damage over the decades, the team calculated in a study published in Wednesday’s journal Nature. The researchers figured that every 1% of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere since 1990 has caused $502 billion in damage from heat alone, which doesn’t include the costs incurred by other extreme weather such as hurricanes, droughts and floods."
Seth Borenstein reports for the Associated Press April 23, 2025.
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