(a) Avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities, and address such impacts when they occur; [and] (b) Seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts.63 As such, there are three scenarios in which a company can be responsible for adverse impacts on human rights: (1) it may cause impacts through its own activities; (2) it may contribute to impacts through its own activities, either directly or through some outside entity (government, business, or other); and (3) it may be involved in impacts caused by an entity that is directly linked to its business operations, products, or services.64 In accordance with the Guiding Principles, the Carbon Majors’ activities have contributed to, or the Carbon Majors have been involved in, climate change related infringements of human rights as discussed in the Statement of Facts. For one, the accumulated emissions from the carbon these companies have produced have contributed to a consistently elevated level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases radiative forcing65 thereby increasing global atmospheric !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Guiding Principles, supra note 24, principle 13 at 14. Interpretive Guide, supra note 25, at 15. 65 According the the IPCC radiative forcing is ��the net change in the energy balance of the Earth system due to some imposed perturbation,” i.e. increasing CO2 and other climate active gases in the atmosphere. Myhre, G., D. Shindell, F.-M. Bréon, W. Collins, J. Fuglestvedt, J. Huang, D. Koch, J.-F. Lamarque, D. Lee, B. Mendoza, T. Nakajima, A. Robock, G. Stephens, T. Takemura and H. Zhang, 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. It is also explained in this manner: “Energy is constantly flowing into the atmosphere in the form of sunlight that always shines on half of the Earth’s surface. Some of this sunlight (about 30 percent) is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed by the planet. And like any warm object sitting in cold surroundings — and space is a very cold place — some energy is always radiating back out into space as invisible infrared light. Subtract the energy flowing out from the energy flowing in, and if the number is anything other than zero, there has to be some warming (or cooling, if the number is negative) going on.” Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Explained: Radiative Forcing, Mar. 10, 2010, http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2010/explained-radforce-0309 (last accessed on Sept. 17, 2015). 64 ! ! ! ! ! 32 !