[I previously published this article on 31 December 2023. It’s a little dated but still a good one.]
In the ‘coming soon’ notice announcing this article I said that “[t]here aren’t any real climate deniers anymore”. I was mistaken and there are a very few people like Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers Corbyn. I’ve only met and spoken with him once but I’m satisfied that he’s genuine in his beliefs despite them being misguided. He and others like him have the right to believe whatever they like and he’s harmless enough – while he may persuade a few people the vast majority will understand that he’s mistaken and wrong.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
So apart from Piers Corbyn and a few similar people, there is no such thing as a climate denier nowadays. The Capitalists profiting from climate destruction have known for 60 years of more that they were profiting from destroying the planet and were forcing future generations to endure intolerable climate conditions, annihilating many thousands of species of plants and animals and generally totally fekking everything.
Governments are controlled, directed, owned by a very few extremely rich and powerful people, the very people that are profiting and maintaining their wealth, power and influence from destroying the planet. According to this perspective we do not exist in a democracy and it is instead a pretence hiding the influence of the rich and powerful. We exist in a plutocracy – we have a wealthy ruling class that politicians serve.
It cannot be accepted that politicians like UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak or our expected next Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the like are mistaken true believers like Piers Corbyn believes. Rather they are climate deniers in the sense of the fossil fuel industries – Exxon, Shell and BP – who know fully well that they are destroying the planet but deceive and mislead to continue making a filthy profit. It’s obvious to see that these politician cnuts serve this rich elite’s interests – Tory and Labour UK governments have answered to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, sucking up to him, grateful to accept his orders.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Sunak, despite being fully aware of the climate crisis is continuing to destroy the planet. Announcing the go-ahead for the Rosebank oil field he said that he intends to get every last drop of North Sea oil.
President Trump is a climate science denier because he was supported financially by the fossil fuel industry during his re-election campaign. He explicitly called for financial support from the “liquid gold” fossil fuel industry.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Original article by Rob Soutar republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Oil companies’ move to double down on fossil fuels should come as no surprise to anyone – not least its financers
Last week, BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss said his company had gone “too far, too fast” in its plan to transition away from fossil fuels. BP still says it aims to be a net zero company by 2050 but it will now take a different path to the one it set out in 2021 … doubling down on fossil fuels in the meantime.
Perhaps the move shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, BP is a commercial enterprise with a responsibility to deliver returns for its shareholders. And since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led many countries to prioritise energy security over long-term sustainability, oil and gas have remained reliably lucrative.
What’s more, the company made a similar announcement two years ago, saying it would be ramping up its investments in oil and gas.
But if BP had indicated such a significant change in direction so long ago, how did it continue to raise billions from banks that said they’d only do business with “net zero” companies?
Milestone moment?
At the 2021 climate talks in Glasgow, a number of the world’s leading banks made landmark pledges: to slash the footprint of their own operations and, crucially, the emissions of their lending and investment portfolios.
It was hailed as a watershed moment. In theory, the vast stockpiles of money that had supported fossil fuel expansion would now be cut off for companies without net zero ambitions. The same year, the International Energy Agency warned that there must be no new oil and gas projects if the world is to reach net zero by 2050.
The deals illustrate a core problem with the banks’ net zero commitments. A key condition for companies they agreed to do business with was the existence of a “credible” transition plan. But it wasn’t always clear how the banks were assessing that credibility.
Even before Auchincloss’ announcement last week, the world-leading Grantham Research Institute assessed the credibility of oil and gas companies’ transition plans – and found that BP’s fell well short.
That lack of clarity on what was “credible” left the banks with enough wriggle room to maintain relationships with huge fossil fuel companies.
And those relationships have proved profitable. Since May 2021, global banks that have committed to net zero have poured almost $1 trillion into companies pursuing expansion of oil and gas projects that would push the world beyond its survivable limits.
Looking long-term
The policy environment has changed since Glasgow, when both fossil fuel companies and banks launched net zero targets. BP is not the only company of its kind to have “reset” its core business to oil and gas. But critics say that recent moves to boost fossil fuels and ensure quick returns are alarmingly short-sighted.
In the UK, the costs of getting to net zero are cheaper than was anticipated just five years ago, according to a recent report by the Climate Change Committee. And in a low-carbon economy, fossil fuels could nosedive – leaving the oil and gas fields currently in development as “stranded assets” with little value.
But crucially, the banks face considerable risks too. Their previous promises to work only with clients committed to the transition were made for a reason: they were feeling the pressure from climate-conscious investors.
If the banks are found to have broken these promises, they could well be held to account by regulators – not to mention see their credibility shattered in the eyes of their investors.
Reporter: Rob Soutar Deputy editor: Chrissie Giles Editor: Franz Wild Fact checker: Ero Parksakoulaki Production editor: Alex Hess
TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.
Original article by Rob Soutar republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Corrected a reference to “oil company’s” in the subheading in this version.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Companies and states most responsible for climate change are also those working hardest to prevent climate action, new Carbon Majors report finds.
Half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 came from just three dozen companies, according to a new report released today by the Carbon Majors project, with the list dominated by coal, cement, and oil producers.
Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, the year’s worst offender, drove 4.4 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide pollution alone in 2023, the report found.
Five publicly-traded oil companies — ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, and BP — combined to produce an additional 4.9 percent of the year’s global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the report adds.
The Carbon Majors database builds on the innovative work published by researcher Richard Heede of the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI) begun in 2013. For the first time, instead of attributing the build-up of industrial carbon dioxide and methane emissions to each of the world’s nations, Heede managed to trace those emissions to 90 specific “carbon major” companies. Last year, the nonprofit think tank InfluenceMap collaborated with CAI to produce major updates to the database — and today’s report marks the first annual update to that report, incorporating global data from 2023.
The year’s top carbon polluters were a mix of investor-owned and state-owned or national companies — but they have one thing in common.
“They’re some of the most obstructive actors towards climate policy,” Emmett Connaire, a senior analyst at the Carbon Majors project and one of the authors of the report, told DeSmog.
“I think it kind of kills the argument from industry that they’re not responsible for their CO2 emissions because we need fossil fuels to grow,” Connaire said, “when they’re the most obstructive and trying to keep up the demand for their products in the face of the overwhelming scientific opinion.”
Eight of the nine public companies most responsible for carbon emissions in 2023 were “highly active or strategic” in their climate lobbying, the report notes. And their lobbying efforts took aim at regulating climate-altering pollution or sought to impede the energy transition.“ Of these 9 companies, 5 score a D or below, indicating unsupportive positions on climate policy,” the new report finds, citing data from InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap database, which grades companies based on their alignment with the Paris Agreement. “The remaining 4 score only slightly higher at C-.”
InfluenceMap gave climate policy lobbying scores to the top 10 investor-owned companies, all oil, gas, and coal firms. Credit: Carbon Majors 2025 report
None of the five top oil companies named in the report immediately responded to a request for comment from DeSmog.
Investor-owned companies aren’t the only ones actively fighting to prevent climate action, the Carbon Majors report notes.
“State-owned companies are even more oppositional to climate regulation globally according to LobbyMap research,” the report finds, listing Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom, Mexico’s Pemex, and China’s CHN Energy among the worst actors.
“The ‘Carbon Majors’ are keeping the world hooked on fossil fuels with no plans to slow production,” former United Nations climate chief and Paris Agreement architect Christiana Figueres said in a response accompanying the report. “While states drag their heels on their Paris Agreement commitments, state-owned companies are dominating global emissions — ignoring the desperate needs of their citizens.”
A sizable majority — 80 percent — of the year’s 20 worst offenders are state-owned, the report found.
State-owned fossil fuel companies dominated global climate emissions in 2023, compared to public companies, the Carbon Majors report noted. Credit: Carbon Majors report 2025
Throughout history, responsibility for driving climate change is concentrated among a strikingly small number of corporations, the report suggests.
Two-thirds of all fossil fuel and cement emissions worldwide from 1750 through 2023 can be traced to just 181 entities, the report finds, adding that one-third of emissions came from just 26 companies.
These findings may have significant legal consequences. During 2024, New York state and Vermont both enacted “Climate Superfund” laws that aim to hold fossil fuel producers and oil refiners responsible for the damage done by their climate-altering products — and the Carbon Majors database is a proposed tool to assess companies’ relative liabilities, according to InfluenceMap. Its earlier findings have been cited in civil lawsuits brought by U.S. cities and counties against fossil fuel producers and an inquiry in the Philippines (which has seen some of the strongest typhoons in recorded history) into corporate responsibility for human rights violations.
The report approaches companies’ contributions to climate change based on production data — meaning that it focuses on the companies that do the drilling and mining (which helps avoid double-counting, Connaire told DeSmog). Those production figures are self-reported by companies but are widely used by governments to assess taxes and by investors in public companies. That methodology means that, for example, natural gas pipeline companies and natural gas utilities aren’t included in the report’s rankings.
Nonetheless, natural gas producers figure among the report’s list of all-time top polluters. That includes the former Chesapeake Energy, which first rose to prominence — and some notoriety — during the shale gas fracking boom only to implode into bankruptcy in 2020. Chesapeake later emerged from bankruptcy and has since merged into the newly formed Expand Energy.
As the Carbon Majors database traces emissions throughout history, it accounts for the effects of mergers and acquisitions in the tumultuous oil industry, known for its booms and busts. “For example, the multiple smaller companies into which the Standard Oil Trust was broken up have evolved to become some of the most recognizable companies in the database today,” the report notes. “Some are direct descendants of Standard Oil, like ExxonMobil, with both Exxon and Mobil as descendants separately, and Chevron. Others have resulted from mergers with descendants of Standard Oil, such as BP and ConocoPhillips.”
The Carbon Majors database traces the historical cumulative emissions of the top individual entities, such as Chevron or the former Soviet Union, from 1854 through 2023. Credit: Carbon Majors report 2025
It also calls attention to the importance of coal pollution — not just historically, but also in 2023.
“In 2023, coal remained the largest source of emissions, contributing 41.1 percent of emissions in the database,” the new report finds, “continuing a steady increase since 2016.”
Emissions from the cement industry — also a major driver of carbon pollution — increased significantly in 2023, rising 6.5 percent year-over-year, which the Carbon Majors report noted was “the largest relative rise” found. “Four of the five companies with the greatest relative increases in emissions in 2023 were cement companies — Holcim Group, Heidelberg Materials, UltraTech Cement, and CRH — with cement emissions seeing the largest relative rise among the four commodity types.”
Cement producers aren’t the only ones, however. In fact, emissions from most of the top emitters rose in 2023, the Carbon Majors report found.
“It is truly alarming that the largest fossil fuel companies continue to increase their emissions in the face of worsening natural disasters caused by climate change, disregarding scientific evidence that these emissions are harming us all,” said Tzeporah Berman, founder of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “It is clearer than ever that dirty private companies, driven by profits and business as usual, will never choose to self-regulate. Governments around the world must use their power to end fossil fuel expansion and transition their economies before fossil fuel companies destroy the planet.”
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Calling the bill a “failure of process and policy,” an MLI paper advocating for abolishment states that it has had a “dramatic silencing effect” on many nationwide businesses and associations that want to communicate their environmental goals. It also says the amendment’s wording exposes companies to frivolous lawsuits.
Canada’s Parliament adopted the omnibus Bill C-59, officially known as the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, in June 2024. The bill included anti-greenwashing amendments to the Competition Act, which came about as a result of public meetings held in the spring of 2023.
The bill says that companies found deliberately misleading the public with false environmental claims could be fined up to $10 million.
While Canada’s oil industry argued that the new anti-greenwashing regulations necessitated the removal of advocating for carbon capture efforts as much as their Net-Zero goals, other major Canadian corporations did not have a similar reaction. In addition, major tar sands producers and Pathways Alliance partners, such as Cenovus and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., blamed the regulations when they delayed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting to investors.
Critics argue CCS is an ineffective climate change mitigation technology because it habitually underperforms at capturing carbon dioxide emissions. It’s also historically been used to extend the lifespans of otherwise derelict oil wells, and – irrespective of emissions captured during production – produces fossil fuels that create new emissions when combusted for energy or electricity. Because of these reasons, critics argue CCS’s only purpose is to provide the appearance of social acceptability while continuing fossil fuel production.
Carbon capture has been widely promoted by the Pathways Alliance, which is seeking to develop a massive carbon capture project in Alberta that would link 13 tar sands facilities with 400 kilometers of carbon dioxide pipelines to a centralized carbon capture hub. CCS projects have historically underperformed in Canada; a 2020 report by Global Witness found that Shell Canada’s Quest hydrogen facility — which uses carbon capture — was actually emitting more carbon than it captured.
Recent research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reveals that the Pathways project is not financially viable, and is likely to be subsidy-dependent with limited revenue potential. The IEEFA also notes that Canada’s carbon capture projects have struggled to keep up with projected capture rates.
On the Offensive
Though Bill C-59 is designed to protect Canadian consumers from fraudulent advertising, just as other industries do, fossil fuel advocates — from conservative Canadian newspapers to Koch Brothers-affiliated Canadian think tanks and conservative Alberta politicians — immediately went on the offensive shortly after the bill became law in June 2024.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith described the new requirements as “draconian legislation that will irreparably harm Canadians’ ability to hear the truth about the energy industry and Alberta’s successes in reducing global emissions.” She also stated that the new law was “absurd authoritarian censorship.”
“Freedom for people to express themselves is crucial to a democracy,” said Emilia Belliveau, program manager, Energy Transition, Environmental Defence. “But giving businesses a free pass to spread disinformation and greenwashing isn’t.”
“Bill C-59 builds on the longstanding work of the Competition Bureau to protect fair business practices and ensure the public isn’t being lied to,” Belliveau said in a statement to DeSmog.
“People have a right to know the truth — whether it’s about a product, a service, or the companies behind them. That’s why it’s imperative that our democracy has rules in place to stop ultra-wealthy CEOs and multi-billion-dollar corporations from spreading misinformation and manipulating the public for their own profits,” she added.
The MLI paper contains its own inaccurate and misleading statements, including an assertion that there was no opportunity for discussions. Despite making this statement several times, and including it as a key talking point in the paper’s executive summary, the paper’s authors conceded that a consultation process did take place roughly a year earlier. They said greenwashing was addressed, but still argued that a last-minute amendment is much broader and therefore deserved its own, separate consultation process.
Efforts to contact Charlie Angus, the NDP MP who sponsored the bill, were unsuccessful, as were DeSmog’s efforts at contacting MLI for comment.
Chief among MLI’s concerns are that the wording of the amended competition law puts the onus of proof on the person or company making a representation (such as an oil company claiming carbon capture is a viable climate change mitigation technology). With the C-59 amendment, companies and individuals now have to demonstrate their claims based on an internationally recognized standard. The MLI paper further argues that this exposes companies — such as multi-billion-dollar oil and gas companies — to frivolous lawsuits. MLI also claims that the new regulations open the door to too many potential complainants, such as environmental activists and climate advocacy groups.
“Should companies be allowed to exaggerate, cherry-pick, or straight out lie to us in their advertising? No,” said Melissa Lem, family physician and president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) in a statement to DeSmog. “But this is exactly what companies have been doing with their environmental claims for too long.”
“This has had real impacts on our health due to unchecked pollution and escalating climate disasters,” she added.
“At its core, Bill C-59 is about truth in advertising — which ultimately protects us from corporate harm.”
Former Alberta energy minister Sonya Savage has said bill C-59 will result in ‘green hushing.’ Credit: CPAC / YouTube
The MLI paper’s authors are former Alberta energy minister Sonya Savage and Heather Exner-Pirot, the institute’s director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment.
DeSmog previously reported on Savage’s public statements about her belief that the anti-greenwashing law was “silencing” Canada’s oil and gas sector. Savage was formerly a senior executive with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), as well as Enbridge, a multinational pipeline company. Exner-Pirot is well-known for her fossil fuel advocacy as much as for her campaigns on behalf of the MLI against everything from an emissions cap to electric vehicles.
Both Savage and Exner-Pirot have made misleading statements in the past concerning various legislative efforts to control carbon emissions. For example, Exner-Pirot published op-eds criticizing the federal government’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate and characterized it as a quota, among several inaccurate statements about EVs in general. Savage has described C-59 as part of a global effort to silence Canada’s energy sector and that the regulations constituted an indirect ban on fossil fuel advertising, neither of which are true.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute presents itself as a non-partisan and independent think tank, but is, in fact, part of the Atlas Network. Like Atlas, it has received funding from the Koch Brothers, and generally opposes government regulations — particularly on environmental issues or as they relate to the energy sector. MLI counts among its donors CAPP, Imperial Oil, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Fuels Association, among others.
MLI has considerable access to mainstream Canadian media and routinely criticizes the environmental movement, attacking efforts to curb emissions as responding to climate change “alarmism.”
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
BP is expected to announce it will slash its renewable energy investments and instead focus on increasing oil and gas production.
The energy giant will outline its strategy later following pressure from some investors unhappy its profits and share price have been much lower than its rivals.
Shell and Norwegian company Equinor have already scaled back their plans to invest in green energy. Meanwhile US President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill” comments have encouraged investment in fossil fuels and a move away from low carbon projects.
Some shareholders and environmental groups have voiced concerns over any potential ramping up on production of fossil fuels.
Five years ago, BP set some of the most ambitious targets among large oil companies to cut production of oil and gas by 40% by 2030, while significantly ramping up investment in renewables.
It is now expected to abandon it altogether while confirming it is cutting investments in renewable energy by more than half in what chief executive Murray Auchincloss called a “fundamental reset”.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsNeo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
dizzy: Fossil fuels are no longer reliable high-return investments.
