World’s top polluters linked to $28 trillion in climate damages

The world’s largest companies have collectively caused an estimated $28 trillion in climate-related damage, according to a groundbreaking study designed to help governments and communities more easily seek financial redress, similar to the lawsuits once brought against the tobacco industry.

The new analysis highlights the role of major carbon-emitting firms in driving global warming and offers a clearer scientific framework for attributing economic harm directly to specific polluters.

A research team from Dartmouth College calculated the environmental toll caused by 111 major companies, finding that more than half of the total damages stemmed from just ten fossil fuel producers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India, and the British Coal Corporation.

For perspective, $28 trillion nearly equals the total output of the United States economy in 2023. At the top of the liability list, Saudi Aramco and Gazprom were each responsible for more than $2 trillion in damages from heat-related impacts alone, the researchers reported.

Climate change: Emissions and damage

Lead author Christopher Callahan, who conducted the work at Dartmouth before moving to Stanford University, said the goal was to determine “the causal linkages that underlie many of these theories of accountability.”

His team estimated that each 1% share of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere since 1990 has generated about $502 billion in damages from heat-related effects, without even counting the additional costs from climate-fueled disasters like hurricanes, floods, or droughts.

“Everybody’s asking the same question: What can we actually claim about who has caused this?” said co-author Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth. “And that really comes down to a thermodynamic question of can we trace climate hazards and/or their damages back to particular emitters?”

The researchers say their findings leave little room for doubt. The answer is yes, Callahan and Mankin confirmed.

Calculating corporate climate damage

The researchers began by compiling the historical emissions tied to each company’s production, such as the burning of gasoline or coal-derived electricity. They traced these records as far back as 137 years ago, acknowledging that carbon dioxide emissions linger in the atmosphere for centuries.

Using 1,000 different computer simulations, they compared the real-world warming effects of these emissions to hypothetical scenarios where a company’s products had never been used. Through this process, they determined that Chevron’s pollution alone raised Earth’s average surface temperature by approximately 0.045 degrees Fahrenheit (0.025 degrees Celsius).

To connect emissions to economic harm, the researchers also analyzed the companies’ impact on the five hottest days of the year using another 80 simulations. By applying models that relate heat intensity to drops in economic productivity, they could directly link emissions to real-world financial losses.

This technique follows methodologies already widely accepted in the scientific community, such as the attribution models used to connect specific extreme weather events, like the devastating 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, to human-caused climate change.

Mankin emphasized how their work advances accountability. “Who’s to say that it’s my molecule of CO2 that’s contributed to these damages versus any other one?” he said. “We can actually trace harms back to major emitters.”

Changing the legal landscape

Some of the major companies implicated – Shell, Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP – either declined to comment or did not respond to media inquiries.

Outside experts have praised the study’s methodology. “All methods they use are quite robust,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who leads the World Weather Attribution initiative. She emphasized the importance of replicating this approach.

“It would be good in my view if this approach would be taken up more by different groups. As with event attribution, the more groups do it, the better the science gets and the better we know what makes a difference and what does not.”

At this point, no major lawsuit against a fossil fuel company for climate damages has succeeded. However, Otto believes the mounting weight of scientific evidence could shift outcomes: showing how overwhelmingly strong the scientific evidence is may change the legal landscape.

Beyond the numbers: An underestimated crisis

Callahan acknowledged that earlier efforts to tie specific damages to individual companies were hampered by data limitations.

Previously, damage caused by individual companies was lost in the noise of data, and it could not be calculated. Today, however, the crisis is so severe that even a single company’s emissions cause tangible, massive economic harm.

“We have now reached a point in the climate crisis where the total damages are so immense that the contributions of a single company’s product can amount to tens of billions of dollars a year,” said Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist unaffiliated with the study.

Still, some researchers caution that even this striking $28 trillion figure may be a significant underestimate. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that the true costs are likely even higher, given the complex and interconnected impacts of global warming not fully captured by the models used.

The Dartmouth team’s findings sharpen the scientific basis for demanding financial accountability from corporate polluters – and suggest that future lawsuits could be fought with increasingly precise evidence.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

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