This raises the related and important question, of which Carbon Majors specifically are encompassed by the petition generally, and the present report and Opinion specifically. Both the synthesis report and this Opinion focus disproportionately on Carbon Majors from the oil and gas industries and on companies headquartered in or with substantial operations in the United States. This emphasis arises from the greater availability of public information regarding industry research activities and engagement on denial efforts in the United States and the historically smaller number of very large actors in the oil and gas industry as compared to coal or cement industries. Nonetheless the synthesis report does encompass documented science and other activities by non-U.S. oil majors with significant U.S. operations; some international operations by U.S. oil majors; and three U.S.-based coal companies. A brief discussion of these factors and their implications for the present Opinion is set forth in the Report at Appendix 2--Companies and Industries Addressed. To what extent global greenhouse emissions might have been reduced—and their associated and inexorable impacts on human lives and human rights averted or minimized—by a different course of conduct is and will likely remain unknown. What is clear beyond any reasonable doubt is that, since 1988, in the face of compelling evidence that the planet was warming and urgent action was required, the Carbon Majors, individually and collectively, have dramatically increased their production and marketing of fossil fuels and cement. In so doing, they contributed substantially to the doubling in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases; matching in just three decades the cumulative emissions generated by humanity in the preceding 130 years. They did so amidst ever greater scientific certainty that fossil fuel combustion would cause massive human rights impacts, and in defiance of increasingly urgent evidence that those impacts were materializing worldwide, including for the people of the Philippines. The Laws and Procedures of the Philippines Empowers the Commission to Investigate and Provide Recommendations to Address the Substantial Evidence that Implicates the Carbon Majors for their Contributions to Climate Change The Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, the Commission’s Rules of Procedure, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) empower the Commission to conduct investigative and inquiry proceedings of all forms of human rights violations. Thus the Commission has the power to address Petitioners’ allegations of violations of civil and political rights with broad authority to provide the appropriate legal recommendations for the protection of human rights including those rights that are violated by the devastating impacts of climate change.23 As articulated in the Petition and in the Amici Curiae briefs submitted, the Commission’s Constitutional mandate compels an investigation into the infringement of the Filipino people’s human rights. Emissions research predicted catastrophic weather events like super-typhoon Yolanda. These extreme weather events, if unchecked, will continue to kill thousands and deprive the Filipino people of their human rights including the rights (a) to life; (b) to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; (c) to food; (d) to water; (e) 23 See Constitution, Art. XIII, secs. 18(1)(3), 18(2); The Omnibus Rules of Procedure of the Commission on Human Rights. See also International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), art. 2(1) Dec. 19, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171, 61 I.L.M. 360 (stating “Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant.”). 7