A/HRC/41/39 34. Fossil fuel companies are the main drivers of climate change: in 2015, the fossil fuel industry and its products accounted for 91 per cent of global industrial greenhouse emissions and 70 per cent of all human-made emissions. 64 The industry has known for decades about their responsibility for rising CO2 levels and the likelihood that the rise would lead to catastrophic climate change. 65 From 1979 to 1983, the American Petroleum Institute ran a task force originally entitled the CO2 and Climate Task Force. In one meeting in 1980, it reviewed a report describing “strong empirical evidence” that a rise in CO2 was caused “mainly from fossil fuel burning”. The author of the report cautioned that a 3 per cent annual growth rate of CO2 could lead to a 2.5°C increase that would bring “world economic growth to a halt in about 2025” and a “likely” 5°C rise by 2067, with “globally catastrophic effects”.66 35. However, the industry took no action to change its business model. From 1988 to 2015, fossil fuel companies doubled their contribution to global warming, producing in 28 years the equivalent of their emissions in the prior 237 years since the Industrial Revolution. 67 During that time, just 100 companies produced 71 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.68 36. Fossil fuel companies also embarked on an ambitious campaign to prevent meaningful change and thwart the imposition of binding emissions commitments. When the Kyoto Protocol was open for signature in the 1990s, the American Petroleum Institute worked to ensure that the United States did not ratify the treaty, arguing in correspondence to the White House that it “would be extremely harmful to the U.S. economy”. 69 The Institute also took the lead on what it called a “global climate science communications plan” to convince the public of significant uncertainties in climate science, defeat the Kyoto Protocol and put an end to further initiatives. 70 According to one count, the fossil fuel industry spent $370 million lobbying on United States climate change legislation from 2000 to 201671 and even more funding think tanks, research institutions and industry scientists. Within the United States, this was depressingly effective: the Kyoto Protocol was never ratified, public understanding about climate change dropped precipitously and President Trump has referred to climate change as a “hoax” created to hurt domestic manufacturing. 3. Governmental complicity with corporate emissions 37. Even today, States subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $5.2 trillion per year, or 6.3 per cent of global GDP. 72 Another trillion goes to support natural resource overexploitation.73 Efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015 would have reduced global carbon emissions by 28 per cent.74 38. The failures of States to protect people from climate change in the 1990s and 2000s stand in stark contrast to their willingness to extend extraordinary protections to investors 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 See CDP, “The carbon majors database. CDP carbon majors report 2017”. See, for example, Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2014), pp. 31–64; Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer, “Exxon: the road not taken”, Inside Climate News, 16 September 2015; and Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, “Turning up the heat: corporate legal accountability for climate change” (2018). Minutes of the Task Force meeting, 29 February 1980, available at www.climatefiles.com/climatechange-evidence/1980-api-climate-task-force-co2-problem/. CDP, “The carbon majors database”. Ibid. Letter from William F. O’Keefe to Laura D’Andrea Tyson, 20 March 1996, available at www.climatefiles.com/trade-group/american-petroleum-institute/1996-api-white-house-greenhouse/. See John Cushman Jr., “Industrial group plans to battle climate treaty”, New York Times, 26 April 1998. See Yale Environment 360, “Fossil fuel interests have outspent environmental advocates 10:1 on climate lobbying”, 19 July 2018. See International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Global fossil fuel subsidies remain large: an update based on country-level estimates”, Working Paper 19/89 (May 2019). UN Environment and others, Green Industrial Policy: Concept, Policies, Country Experiences (2017), p. 29. See IMF, “Global fossil fuel subsidies remain large”. 9