I am working with a neighborhood organization to improve tree canopy in my urban area. I got involved with my neighborhood association and another org in an effort to build and strengthen my community. I would love to take more action but I’m not sure what or how. Starting to see now that working together with people helps make us more resilient
I fully understand what you’re saying and agree that on an individual level our impact is minimal compared to these companies, but I always wonder how fair it is to say they have to change and that’s the only solution.
My understand, and this is of the top of my head, is that 93 of those companies are oil/gas companies and the other 7 are cement. If they all gained a conscience today and stopped operations tonight, the world would be in chaos. People on an individual level would still need fuel to be able to get to supermarkets, and the supermarkets need fuel to get food moved around the supply chain.
Whilst I’m not saying it’s a solution and I’m using a simplified example to make my case, but if everyone prioritised buying electric cars as their next car, then manufacturers would speed up production of them and phase out combustion engine cars and vehicles. This would reduce the need for oil and at some point these top 100 polluters would either adapt or collapse.
What I’m trying to get at is the masses need to put pressure on these companies both through policy changes and purchasing power. I think it’s too easy to keep driving petrol cars and pointing at the oil companies as the bad guys.
It has to be a team effort, but those companies also engaged in a multi decade effort to underplay the impact of human activity (specifically theirs) on the climate and the dangerous associated with those changes.
Apparently due to a new clean fuel rule for ocean going vessels they stopped making sulphur oxide clouds and that is the main reason for there recent spikes in ocean water temperatures. It took 3 years to see a manual reduction in sulphur oxide pollution. No calamity in the world economy. Just an unexpected revelation of how much that pollution was cooling the ocean.
https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg
So yeah, we can’t just turn off the O&G sector. But we can set ourselves some pretty aggressive targets and make them.