Guest blog: Cutting Through the Fog: The Propaganda That Keeps Big Oil in Business

Guest Blog from Franz Baumann published as an article on Taylor and Francis Online here.

Franz Baumann is the Vice-President of the Academic Council of the United Nations System.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.—Leon Trotsky

Truth be told, people are not very interested in climate change. The sense of unease that things are going in the wrong direction does not broadly translate into willingness to invest time and energy to understand the causes of the climate crisis. Of course, Big Oil, airlines, banks, industry, and assorted rightwing lobby groups invest much money in politics, public relations, social media, and universities, to keep things that way. The upshot is that, like nuclear weapons proliferation, which is another existential danger, climate change does not by and large instigate momentous political activism, heated conversations, or major lifestyle changes.

Given that we might be entering uncharted territoryFootnote¹—ever more intolerable temperatures,Footnote² unpredictable and volatile weather events across the globe, flooding, droughts, wildfires, distressed oceans,Footnote³ rising sea levels,Footnote⁴ melting ice sheets and glaciers,Footnote⁵ animals and plants going extinct,Footnote^6,Footnote⁷ viruses and diseases spreading,Footnote⁸ microplastics infestationFootnote⁹—such nonchalance is astonishing. The risks, after all, are existential, and the calamities not force majeure events but human-made interventions that can be undone only by human actions, urgent human actions. Despite the writing on the wall, most signs point in the wrong direction:

• Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are faltering and global heating is accelerating. Average global temperatures have already increased by 1.3 °C relative to preindustrial levels, are likely to exceed the 1.5 °C Paris goal in the coming years and increase between 3 and 4 °C by 2100, which would be catastrophic.Footnote¹⁰
• The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is higher than it has ever been since the end of the Pliocene epoch, 2.6 million years ago, when temperatures were 3 °C to 4 °C warmer, and the sea level was over 20 m higher than today.Footnote¹¹
• Scientists universally agree that the climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.Footnote^12,Footnote^13,Footnote¹⁴
• Fossil fuels still constitute 86% of global primary energyFootnote¹⁵ and 75% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.Footnote¹⁶
• Investments in fossil fuels are surging. Since the historic Paris Agreement in 2015, $7 trillion flowed into fossil fuel companies—last year alone, $700 billion, half of which went to companies that are expanding the extraction of fossil fuels.Footnote¹⁷
• The United States is by far the world’s largest producer and consumer of oil.Footnote^18,Footnote¹⁹
• Annual worldwide government subsidies of fossil fuels exceed $7 trillion.Footnote²⁰
• Fossil fuel-related excess deaths are estimated at 8,340,000 globally.Footnote²¹
• Electricity demand is skyrocketing as it replaces oil and gas in mobility, housing, and industry,Footnote²² and because of the high demand of artificial intelligence and other Web applications.Footnote^23,Footnote²⁴
• Inequality is accelerating. In 1993, the world’s richest 3000 households owned 3% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), and now it is 13 percent.Footnote²⁵ The emissions of wealthy people are multiples of the average.Footnote^26,Footnote²⁷
• Energy consumption is hugely unequal around the world; that of a U.S. citizen, for instance, is much more than double that of a German and equals that of 29 Bangladeshis or 168 Rwandans.Footnote²⁸
• A small percentage of the world’s citizens account for most of air-travel emissions, a trend that is accelerating, affected also because kerosene is not taxed.Footnote^29,Footnote³⁰
• For U.S. voters, climate change is only the 19th most important issue.Footnote³¹

The natural science understanding of the climate crisis, of the biodiversity crisis, of the plastics crisis, of the pollution crisis, is detailed and granular. Professionally, this understanding is uncontested; politically, it is challenged; and psychologically, it is resisted, because humans are status quo oriented and not wired to worry about dangers that seem far away. There are psychological explanations—for example, loss aversion, moral disengagement, and self-efficacyFootnote^32,Footnote³³—for why the scientific evidence of climate change does not translate into action. Humans also like to believe those who tell them things are going to be all right, or that governments will do what is needed.

This brings me to Genevieve Guenther, who, in her engaging, fabulous, angry, hopeful, and helpful book The Language of Climate PoliticsFootnote³⁴ deciphers this ostensibly perplexing situation and intrepidly battles deception and topic fatigue. Who really is responsible for the crisis, “happy to destroy a livable climate to gain more profit and power”?

Guenther’s method—forensic linguistic analysis—is illuminating and even fun for those who enjoy decoding words and how they are used as well as abused by climate predators. Five chapters have a one-word headline (Alarmist, Cost, Growth, Innovation, Resilience), and a sixth has two words (India and China). They dissect the buzzwords employed to muddy the public discourse by the climate deniers of yesteryear or by their contemporary incarnation, climate delayers. These

Titans of finance and tech, fossil-energy-funded researchers at elite universities, conservative media magnates and, strikingly, coal, oil, and gas executives … have started spreading a new, more subtle form of propaganda, which acknowledges that climate change is real but still seeks to justify continuing the fossil-fuel economy. (page 2)

The climate delayers know full well what they are doing, even though climate change is precisely as destructive as predicted, and slowing it down requires halting the use of fossil fuels. Even more, it demands leaving untapped resources in the ground and retiring prematurely still serviceable infrastructure. That challenges Big Oil’s business model to the core, which is why heaven and earth are moved to preserve it a bit longer—much longer, actually. Propaganda, greenwashing, and sowing uncertainty are arrows in Big Oil’s quiver.

Guenther ends each of her six chapters with a few pages of “How to Talk about …” that dissect, demolish rather, the talking points of the climate delayers, techno-optimists, lukewarmers, and other status quo defenders. Who are they and what is their shtick?

“Lukewarmers” don’t deny outright that warming over 1.5 °C will be catastrophic—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that in the gap between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, hundreds of millions of lives are at stakeFootnote³⁵—but they contend that the “doomsday mindset” exaggerates the risks and that, in any event, solutions are at hand.

Innovations will continue to improve lives … and market forces will lead us into a new, clean-energy era as technologies like solar and wind become increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. (page 15)

“Alarmists” are to be found, certainly not in the sanguine discipline of economics, but in the hard sciences, where the available data are interpreted as horrifying. Scientists from around the world in geology, geophysics, geochemistry, paleontology, oceanography, atmospheric physics, meteorology, glaciology, and many other fields are alarmed by the accelerating climate emergency. They demand pulling out all the stops to lessen the catastrophe’s impact. Guenther agrees that we are running out of time and have ample reason to be alarmed, but that the justified fear must energize “people to take on the fight to phase out fossil fuels” (page 46).

Climate activists and advocates are invariably confronted by the show-stopping argument of “cost,” a catch-all term for bad things like financial burden, sacrifice, and endangered comforts and jobs. In reality, though, outlays that mitigate warming are not frivolous expenditures but wise investments that yield substantial economic benefits.

The costs of climate change are potentially infinite, and climate action is not a cost at all, but a social and economic windfall that will put money directly into Americans’ wallets. (page 50)

Guenther devotes many pages to William Nordhaus, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis,”Footnote³⁶ and he is not a climate denier or a techno-optimist. She considers him nefarious because he argues against too vigorous mitigation since, if action is delayed, GDP will have grown and humanity be better positioned to afford the price of saving the world. Critical of the Paris Agreement since it ignores the costs of attaining the warming goals, Nordhaus advocates delaying the end of the fossil fuel system long enough to reach an optimal balance between the costs of climate policy and the costs of climate change itself. Rather hardnosed, he declared in his acceptance speech that “the cost–benefit optimum rises to over 3 °C in 2100.”Footnote³⁷ Such willful misalignment of economic modeling and climate science does a disservice to a core function of public policy, namely, risk management.

From a risk management perspective it is better economics to spend more money on climate policy up front, with the expectation that as emissions diminish, and the probabilities of catastrophic outcomes decrease, society can safely spend less. (page 61)

Spending more would mean higher energy prices to reflect energy’s scarcity and preciousness. It would also mean cleaner air, healthier cities, more renewable energy, a stronger dollar, more innovative industries, and, last but not least, less money for troublemakers like Russia, Venezuela, and the Gulf states.

The chapter on growth is a bit wonky, not because it argues one way or another on whether infinite growth in a finite world is possible or delusional, or whether growth perforce means more material things, but because it is relentlessly America-centric. A serious discussion on economic growth must grapple with the colossal discrepancies in the world (as already described). A serious discussion needs to take into account that the Global South must grow to escape the poverty trap, and the North, for reasons of intergenerational and international justice, cannot continue taking more than its fair share.

Another recipient of the economics Nobel Memorial Prize, Robert Solow—over 10 pages are spent going down that particular rabbit hole—has nothing interesting to say on that score, and Guenther is off base to say that carbon pricing is a misplaced strategy. To the contrary, it is one of the very few policies with a proven track record.Footnote³⁸ It is also intuitive that cheap things are wasted and that, to avoid market failure, price signals must reflect value and scarcity, unless of course if they are artificially depressed by subsidies and the externalization of costs. As a matter of fact, without carbon pricing and elimination of fossil-fuel subsidies to reallocate capital toward clean energy, there is little incentive for collective action. When it pays to pollute, unsustainable practices will be rewarded and the burden of the energy transition is shifted to others, ultimately leaving everyone worse off.Footnote³⁹ This is elementary, Watson.

Higher energy prices induce innovation and conservation and, if they are seriously raised, lead to behavioral changes of consumers and producers that unleash creativity and reduce energy intensity without lowering living standards. A refundable $1 fee to use a shopping cart, common in grocery parking lots in the European Union (not a tax, to be sure—words matter) motivates people to bring shopping carts back to base. If there is no fee, they are left all over the parking lot. Economics 101, not rocket science.

A real canard, as Guenther asserts, is pointing to China and India as today’s climate culprits. Yes, China passed the United States as the largest emitter in 2005,Footnote⁴⁰ but per-capita emissions are still less than half those of the United States. Because CO₂ takes a very long time for only partially understood natural processes to remove it from the atmosphere,Footnote⁴¹ historical emissions must be considered in addition to current emissions. Therefore, in terms of responsibility to decarbonize, the United States’ obligation is still twice that of China and eight times that of India.Footnote⁴² The elephant in the room is coal’s resolute persistence in China, where a coal-fired power plant is opening every week or so, that dwarfs the rest of the world.

China’s 70.2 GW of new construction getting underway in 2023 represents 19-times more than the rest of the world’s 3.7 GW. … The level of new construction in China is nearly quadruple what it was in 2019.Footnote⁴³

Pointing at India and China is a textbook example of the prisoner’s dilemma, namely, that it is costly for any single country to decarbonize while others continue with their carbon-intensive ways. However, if all governments, asset owners, and managers are committed to reducing CO₂ emissions and support a just climate transition that protects workers, communities, and consumers, they could create long-term value and deliver prosperity for all.

Will innovation save the day? Can it halt global heating even if fossil fuels remain the mainstay of the world’s economy? The first ruse is Big Oil talking about decarbonizing their “operations,” that is, the process of extracting fossil fuels, rather than eliminating the pollution resulting from their eventual burning.Footnote⁴⁴ Another supposed deus ex machina has broader appeal, namely, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), that is, pulling CO₂ out of the atmosphere. CDR will be needed for hard-to-decarbonize industries, such as chemicals, cement, steel, or glass, that can price-in the enormously high costs. However, it is not a substitute for large-scale emissions reductions, considering that current levels of technology-based CDR amount to only about 10,000 tons CO₂, which is just one millionth of current fossil CO₂ emissions.Footnote⁴⁵ Genevieve Guenther concludes that it is “time for everybody to throw off the false hope that the fossil-energy economy can stay largely the same but be somehow retrofitted to become safe for living beings” (page 170).

“Resilience” denotes the ability of people, communities, countries, indeed the world, to endure climate change. It is closely related to adaptation (“managing the unavoidable,” in Nicholas Stern’s memorable formulation).Footnote⁴⁶ However, conceived as a palliative, like carbon capture, it distracts from the need to defossilize the world’s economies and societies. Guenther explains how resilience has become used at times as an anti-woke ideological trope, coopted by fossil energy interests to extend the status quo and avert what is actually needed, namely, transformation, as opposed to some fine-tuning adjustments.

A sustainable world involves fundamental changes to how society functions, including changes to underlying values, worldviews, ideologies, social structures, political and economic systems, and power relationships.Footnote⁴⁷

Concluding her tour-de-force of a book, Genevieve Guenther exhorts the reader that “in the end, it is your soul to whom you are accountable” (page 185). The citizens of the privileged North must take responsibility for the fate of the world, as citizens first and as consumers second. This requires diligence and effort to hold elected representatives accountable for the larger whole. After all, the climate crisis is a global, unprecedented public policy challenge.

Science in this campaign is an essential tool, but not a change agent. It is necessary to recognize the cause and effect of a warming climate, and the trajectory we are on. Ever careful, prudent, risk-averse, and unfinished, science is no match for the daunting forces—Big Oil, Petro States, banks, governments, some media, and so on—lined up to prevent the fundamental changes that are warranted.

But it is not only vested interests that stand in the way of the necessary transformation. Another obstacle is the fact that the climate catastrophe is the flip side of a phenomenal success story. Fossil fuels have liberated billions of people from drudgery and poverty and also enabled longer, healthier, better, more comfortable and mobile lives. But now the bills for this unquestionable triumph are coming in. Preserving human civilization, the quest for short-term advantages—shareholder values, cheap food, gasoline, air travel and stuff, or economic growth, full employment, and social peace—cannot square the circle of carbon neutrality, economic sustainability, and political viability. Further delaying and obstructing the move away from fossil fuels is the greatest political failure of the present time.

Genevieve Guenther contributes compelling arguments and lucid urgency to an overdue conversation about climate policy as risk management, not only environmental policy. Global heating is a political challenge, not a scientific, financial, or engineering challenge, and certainly not a matter of individual virtue. The difference is monumental.

Notes

1 G. Schmidt, “Climate Models Can’t Explain 2023’s Huge Heat Anomaly—We Could Be in Uncharted Territory,” Nature, March 19, 2024, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00816-z.

2 According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2024 was the hottest July on record. It followed the hottest June of the hottest year. See K. Gleason, A. Hoell, and B. Pugh, “July 2024 Global Temperature,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Science and Services Monthly Climate Update, July 2024, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/briefings/20240815.pdf.

3 D. Wallace-Wells, “The Vast, Invisible Effects of Ocean Warming,” June 26, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/opinion/global-warming-ocean-life.html.

4 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Is Sea Level Rising? Yes, Sea Level is Rising at an Increasing Rate,” National Ocean Service, June 16, 2024, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html.

5 M. Siegert, “How We Know Antarctica Is Rapidly Losing More Ice,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 15, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-07/how-we-know-antarctica-is-rapidly-losing-more-ice.

6 International Union for Conservation of Nature, “IUCN Red List,” 2024, https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/summary-statistics#Summary%20Tables.

7 United Nations, “Landmark UN Report Reveals Shocking State of Wildlife: The World’s Migratory Species of Animals Are in Decline, and the Global Extinction Risk Is Increasing,” February 12, 2024, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2024/02/un-report-migratory-species-decline-global-extinction-risk-increasing.

8 D. Nucitelli, “New IPCC Report Highlights Urgency of Climate Change Impacts,” Yale Climate Connections, February 28, 2022, https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/02/new-ipcc-report-highlights-urgency-of-climate-change-impacts/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.

9 D. Main, “Microplastics Are Infiltrating Brain Tissue, Studies Show: ‘There’s Nowhere Left Untouched,’” The Guardian, August 21, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/microplastics-brain-pollution-health.

10 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Summary for Policymakers,” in Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero, eds.), IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf https://doi.org/10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647.001.

11 M. Siegert, A. Haywood, D. Lunt, T. van de Flierdt, and J. Francis, “What Ancient Climates Tell Us About High Carbon Dioxide Concentrations in Earth’s Atmosphere,” Grantham Institute Briefing Note 13, Imperial College London, May 26, 2020, https://doi.org/10.25561/79292.

12 M. Lynas, B. Z. Houlton, and S. Perry, “Greater Than 99% Consensus on Human Caused Climate Change in the Peer-Reviewed Scientific Literature,” Environmental Research Letters, 16, no. 11 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966.

13 State of California, “List of Worldwide Scientific Organizations That Hold the Position That Climate Change Has Been Caused by Human Action,” Governor’s Office, undated, https://web.archive.org/web/20170807111205/https://www.opr.ca.gov/s_listoforganizations.php.

14 NASA, “Scientific Consensus,” undated, https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/scientific-consensus.

15 M. Igini, “Fossil Fuels Accounted for 82% of Global Energy Mix in 2023 Amid Record Consumption: Report,” Earth.Org, June 26, 2024, https://earth.org/fossil-fuel-accounted-for-82-of-global-energy-mix-in-2023-amid-record-consumption-report.

16 International Energy Agency, “CO₂ Emissions in 2023,” March 1, 2024. https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Where Greenhouse Gases Come From,” June 18, 2024, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from.php.

17 Rainforest Action Network, “Banking on Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Finance Report 2024,” May 12, 2024, https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BOCC_2024_vF1.pdf.

18 U.S. Energy Information Agency, “What Countries Are the Top Producers and Consumers of Oil?,” undated, https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6. “There is no blocking of production in the United States,” boasted Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm during testimony before U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Committee; see A. Natter, “US Energy Chief Touts Record Oil Output in Face of GOP Backlash,” September 14, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-14/us-energy-chief-touts-record-oil-output-in-face-of-gop-backlash.

19 M. Joselow, “Why No President Has Slowed the U.S. Oil Boom—Under President Joe Biden, Who Campaigned on a Pledge of “No More Drilling,” America Is Pumping More Oil Than Any Country Ever Has,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production.

20 S. Black, I. Parry, and N. Vernon-Lin, “Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion,” IMF Blog, August 24, 2023, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion.

21 J. Lelieveld, A. Haines, R, Burnett, C, Tonne, K. Klingmüller, and T. Münzel, “Air Pollution Deaths Attributable to Fossil Fuels: Observational and Modelling Study,” BMJ, November 29, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-077784.

22 International Energy Agency, “Global Electricity Demand Set to Rise Strongly This Year and Next, Reflecting Its Expanding Role in Energy Systems around the World,” July 19, 2024, https://www.iea.org/news/global-electricity-demand-set-to-rise-strongly-this-year-and-next-reflecting-its-expanding-role-in-energy-systems-around-the-world.

23 Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I.,” The New Yorker, March 9, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-obscene-energy-demands-of-ai.

24 A. Cohen, “AI Is Pushing the World Toward an Energy Crisis,” Forbes, May 24, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2024/05/23/ai-is-pushing-the-world-towards-an-energy-crisis.

25 Three thousand households means one household out of one million or 0.0001% of households. The concentration of wealth bought political influence for billionaires, brought about tax avoidance, and caused extraordinarily high greenhouse gas emissions. See G. Zucman, “A Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals,” EU Tax Observatory, June 25, 2024, https://www.taxobservatory.eu//www-site/uploads/2024/06/report-g20.pdf.

26 J. McKenzie, “Inequality Is a Climate Problem,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 5, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/2024/02/inequality-is-a-climate-problem/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter02052024&utm_content=ClimateChange_InequalityClimateProblem_02052024.

27 “Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99%,” Oxfam International, November 20, 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.21201/2023.000001, https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/climate-equality-a-planet-for-the-99-621551/?utm_term=655b489e7f408ca3c5e6c65d30bd7739&utm_campaign=USMorningBriefing&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=usbriefing_email.

28 Central Intelligence Agency, “Energy Consumption per Capita,” undated, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumption-per-capita/country-comparison.

29 A. Niranjan, “‘Flight Shame Is Dead’: Concern Grows Over Climate Impact of Tourism Boom,” The Guardian, September 6, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/sep/06/flight-shame-climate-impact-tourism-boom-covid-environment-net-zero.

30 H. Young, “What Is Aviation Fuel Tax?,” Deutsche Welle, January 18, 2024, https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-aviation-fuel-tax/a-67970533#:∼:text=But%20unlike%20road%20and%20rail%20fuels%2C%20kerosene%20%E2%80%94,taxation%20on%20all%20international%20flights%20around%20the%20world.

31 A. Leiserowitz, E. Maibach, S. Rosenthal, J. Kotcher, E. Goddard, J. Carman, M. Ballew, M. Verner, T. Myers, J. Marlon, S. Lee, M. Goldberg, N. Badullovich, and K. Their, “Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Spring 2024,” Yale Program on Climate Communications, June 13, 2024, https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-in-the-american-mind-politics-policy-spring-2024/toc/4/?campaign_id=54&emc=edit_clim_20240820&instance_id=132197&nl=climate-forward&regi_id=57600159&segment_id=175643&te=1&user_id=2e5dd19b681392269185448a9674eabb.

32 S. Heald, “Climate Silence, Moral Disengagement, and Self-Efficacy: How Albert Bandura’s Theories Inform Our Climate-Change Predicament,” Environment 59, no. 6 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2017.1374792

33 G. Marshall, “Understand Faulty Thinking to Tackle Climate Change,” New Scientist, August 13, 2014, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329820-200-understand-faulty-thinking-to-tackle-climate-change.

34 G. Guenther, The Language of Climate Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), ISBN 9780197642238, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-language-of-climate-politics-9780197642238?cc=ca&lang=en&#.

35 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Global Warming of 1.5 °C: An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5 °C Above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty,” Summary for Policymakers, October 6, 2018, https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15.

36 K. Vetenskapsakademien, “The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2018 to William D. Nordhaus, …,” Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Press Release, October 8, 2018, https://www.kva.se/en/news/ekonomipriset-2018-2.

37 W. D. Nordhaus, “Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics,” The Nobel Prize Lecture, delivered on December 8, 2018, at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2018/nordhaus/lecture.

38 A. Stechemesser, N. Koch, E. Mark, E. Dilger, and A. Wenzel, “Climate Policies That Achieved Major Emission Reductions: Global Evidence from Two Decades,” Science 385, no. 6711 (2024), doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl6547.

39 J. Chateau, F. Jaumotte, and G. Schwerhoff, “Why Countries Must Cooperate on Carbon Prices,” IMF Blog, May 19, 2022, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/05/19/blog-why-countries-must-cooperate-on-carbon-prices.

40 International Energy Agency, “CO₂ Emissions in 2023,” March 1, 2024, https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023.

41 MIT Climate Portal Writing Team, “How Do We Know How Long Carbon Dioxide Remains in the Atmosphere?,” January 17, 2023, https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-we-know-how-long-carbon-dioxide-remains-atmosphere.

42 S. Evans, “Which Countries Are Historically Responsible for Climate Change?,” Carbon Brief, October 5, 2021, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change.

43 M. Lempriere, “China Responsible for 95% of New Coal Power Construction in 2023, Report Says,” Carbon Brief, April 11, 2024, https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-coal-power-construction-in-2023-report-says.

44 Exxon Mobil, “ExxonMobil Announces Ambition for Net Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050,” News Release, January 18, 2022, https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2022/0118_exxonmobil-announces-ambition-for-net-zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-2050.

45 Global Carbon Budget, “Fossil CO₂ Emissions at Record High in 2023,” December 4, 2023, https://globalcarbonbudget.org/fossil-co2-emissions-at-record-high-in-2023.

46 N. Stern, “Economic Development, Climate and Values: Making Policy,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (July 22, 2015), http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1812/20150820.

47 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II: Impacts Adaptation, and Vulnerability—Overarching Frequently Asked Questions and Answers,” June 16, 2023, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/faqs/IPCC_AR6_WGII_Overaching_OutreachFAQ6.pdf.