Year 4, Month 12, Day 3: Because I Said So, That’s Why.

Wanna know who they are? Here ya go:

WASHINGTON — Just 90 companies worldwide produced fuels that generated two-thirds of industrial greenhouse gas emissions from 1854 to 2010, according to a new study.

The 90 biggest producers of fuels driving climate change include investor-owned corporations, such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and state-owned oil companies, such as Saudi Aramco and Mexico’s Pemex.

The study attributes 914 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases to the fuels extracted by the companies, which is 63% of the total 1,450 billion metric tons of emissions estimated since the mid-19th century.

The study, published in the journal Climatic Change, also found that of the 914 billion metric tons, half was pumped into the atmosphere since 1986, a result of the rapid industrialization of the developing world. The journal focuses on the causes and implications of climactic change.

“This is the most complete picture we have of which institutions extracted coal, oil and natural gas and when,” said Richard Heede, the study’s author and head of the Climate Accountability Institute, a small research group in Snowmass, Colo.

“These are the companies and institutions that have created the products — used as intended — by billions of consumers that have led to persistently higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane,” Heede said.

Disgusting. November 22:

The folksinger and “hobo philosopher” Utah Phillips once remarked, “The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” Indeed. And the new study just published in Climatic Change provides us for the first time with specifics about the corporate entities which have done the most damage to Earth’s environmental stability. Even a few moments’ analysis confirms that these same corporations routinely use their enormous financial power to exacerbate the paralysis of our political system in the face of the extraordinary threat posed by climate change.

Our economic system allows these firms to reap huge profits from the sales of fossil fuels, while providing them with no reason to act responsibly toward the long-term survival and prosperity of our species and our planet. In this post-Citizens-United world, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that these particular “corporate persons” are conscienceless sociopaths.

Warren Senders