Sakset (stjålet) fra gårsdagens The Guardian:
Eight of the biggest oil companies amassed profits of more than $90bn (£67bn) in just three months as the Iran conflict sent energy prices soaring and the emissions-fuelled climate crisis caused deadly heatwaves.
The windfall war profits have reignited calls for oil and gas supermajors such as Saudi Aramco and BP to pay for the environmental damage caused by “cashing in on human misery” and fund a rapid transition to renewable energy.
Guardian analysis found that the eight listed oil producers made almost $93bn (£69bn) in the three months to the end of June – the first full financial quarter after the US-Israeli war on Iran triggered a surge in global oil prices to
highs above $126 a barrel.
The companies have used the
biggest disruption of fossil fuel supplies in the market’s history to almost double their combined profits from just under $50bn in the same period last year, with campaigners warning that millions of households are left paying the price in higher bills and climate chaos.
The data suggests the eight oil companies – Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron and ExxonMobil – made more than $700,000 of profit every minute over the spring quarter.
While their market valuations were swelling by about $600bn to above $3tn, temperatures built towards a
run of deadly heatwaves, all made more likely and more severe by burning fossil fuels.
Carbon emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms were
directly linked to fatal spells of hot weather for the first time by scientific analysis published last September. It found the emissions from any one of the 14 biggest companies were each enough to cause more than 50 heatwaves that would otherwise have been virtually impossible.
[…]
The impacts this summer include Europe’s
worst ever heatwave, another categorised by scientists as “impossible” without human-caused global heating. About 20,000 people are estimated to have died due to the extreme temperatures, including close to
3,000 in the UK in May and June alone.
South Korea and
Japan have also experienced record-breaking heat of up to 42.5C, with the Korean weather agency instructing people to “
immediately stop all outdoor activities”, while the climate crisis pushed up
temperatures across much of Africa in July. Global heating makes every heatwave more intense and more likely, and rising global temperatures
kill one person a minute around the world, a report in the Lancet estimated in October.
The UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, said: “Around the world, climate-driven disasters are reaching nightmare proportions. What needs to be done is clear: leave coal, oil and gas behind faster, scale up renewables, and protect people where the impacts are already hitting hardest.”
Europe’s succession of heatwaves has
sucked soils dry and led to extreme drought, damaging food supplies from
maize to sunflowers to salad. At least
9m tonnes of grain are expected to be lost, with the UK, for example, facing its worst harvest on record.
The arid conditions have also enabled
huge wildfires in France, Spain, Portugal and Greece, causing
billions of euros of damage. The blazes send toxic air pollution soaring and in the US and Canada the fires from 15-23 July are estimated to have
caused about 4,000 deaths within a week of exposure. The climate crisis is making fire weather worse and about
1.5 million people a year have their lives shortened by wildfire smoke.
In south Asia, the climate crisis is supercharging extreme rainfall – air that is 1C warmer holds 7% more water. More than
40cm of rain fell in 24 hours in Chattogram in Bangladesh in early July, for example, leading to flash flooding. Floods and landslides have taken lives and livelihoods in
Pakistan and
India. There have also been
dozens of fatalities in north-west China, where many thousands of people have been evacuated due to heavy storms.
