“Across
the board, these eight companies continue to disparage the science
and undermine the urgency of action,” said Kathy Mulvey, lead
author of the report.
A new report
by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) ranks 8 leading fossil
fuel companies according to their response to mitigating climate
change. The in-depth investigation found that while the companies
vary in their aggressiveness to combat carbon emissions, all of them
“bear a particular responsibility for climate change”.
Indeed, the
report authors say, all of the major corporations have “products
(that) cause a buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere”.
More
significantly, “(all) of these companies have worked to
systematically block laws or regulations that would reduce
heat-trapping emissions, in some cases by spreading disinformation
about climate science,” the authors say.
Assessing
the companies' climate-related communications, positions, and
actions, from January 2015 to May 2016, the report looked at whether
they had renounced flawed climate science and policy, have taken
steps to comply with the United Nations Paris accords, have supported
fair and effective climate policies, and have disclosed climate risks
to investors.
While BP and
Shell fared relatively well in a couple of these areas, all of the
companies did poorly in the report’s overall rubric.
“Across
the board, these eight companies continue to disparage the science
and undermine the urgency of action—either directly or through the
trade associations and industry groups they support,” said
Kathy Mulvey, lead author of the report and Climate Accountability
Campaign manager at UCS. “In the wake of numerous exposés that
revealed companies’ records of working to deceive the public about
global warming, many of the companies now insist that they no longer
promote denial and accept the reality of climate change. This study
belies those claims.”
The report
calls on these major fossil fuel producers to accept their role in
the problem of climate change and take action in several areas,
including planning for a world free from carbon pollution and
stopping the spread of or supporting the spread of disinformation on
climate science and policy.
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