temperature increase to not exceed 2° Celsius by 2100—and continues to invest its resources
contrary to the 2° Celsius goal.80 Similarly, according to Energy Transition Advisors and the
Carbon Tracker Initiative, Shell is making its projections based on a scenario that puts the world
on a pathway for a temperature rise of roughly 6 degrees Celsius.81
The Carbon Majors are ignoring the science and the harms related to the combustion and
use of the coal, oil and gas that they produce. The companies have the technical and financial
capability to prevent the harm. As a means to comply with the requirements of identifying,
preventing, mitigating, and accounting for adverse human rights impacts, it is important that
immediate steps are taken by the companies to eliminate the risk of further human rights
infringements.
4. The groundbreaking Carbon Majors data makes it feasible to assign responsibility to the
Carbon Majors collectively and individually for human rights impacts resulting from
climate change and ocean acidification.
The Carbon Majors Study “represents an important milestone in establishing legal
accountability for climate change impacts.”82 According to the Center for International
Environmental Law:
By tracing industrial CO2 emissions to their underlying source, and
to a small group of companies and entities whose actions have
made a measurable, demonstrable and historically important
contribution to global warming, this research demonstrates one
important route by which those barriers can and will be overcome
by plaintiffs in future litigation.83
The Carbon Majors collectively contribute to global climate change, in that the emissions
by one company are not distinguishable in their effects from emissions by other companies. The
research therefore provides the best surrogate or proxy measure of responsibility that has been
devised to date. The Carbon Majors data identifies the Carbon Majors’ responsibility, jointly and
severally, for contributing predominately to climate change and its resulting impacts that are
interfering with the enjoyment of human rights. Therefore, while it is not possible to attribute a
specific harm, or threat thereof, to the carbon produced by a single Carbon Major, there is a
substantial probability that the climate impacts experienced by Filipinos are made significantly
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80
ExxonMobil, Energy and Carbon – Managing the Risks, Mar. 31, 2014,
http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/media/global/files/other/2014/report---energy-and-carbon---managing-the-risks.pdf
(last accessed June 16, 2015).
81
Energy Transition Advisors and Carbon Tracker Initiative, Responding to Shell: An Analytical Perspective, June
2014, http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/CTI-Shell-Response-Final-030714-Full2.pdf, at 4..
82
The Center for International Environmental Law, CIEL Reaction to Carbon Majors Report, Nov. 22, 2013,
http://www.ciel.org/Climate_Change/CarbonMajors_22Nov2013.html (last accessed June 16, 2015).
83
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