8 As discussed more fully in Answer 14 below, the landmark research by Richard Heede into the Carbon Majors has identified a discrete group of corporate actors whose contributions to climate change are both globally and historically significant. 9 By demonstrating that a small collection of actors has contributed disproportionately to the climate crisis and its resulting harms, Heede’s research has dispelled the myth that everyone everywhere is equally responsible for climate change and that, accordingly, no one is responsible. In so doing, his work demonstrates that climate impacts once perceived as broad societal harms may in fact be actionable legal wrongs. Finally, and most recently, an emerging branch of attribution science is integrating the breakthroughs in impact attribution with the causal attribution work of Richard Heede to quantify the Carbon Majors’ contributions to specific climate impacts—from atmospheric temperature increases and sea level rise to individual extreme weather events. The work of Brenda Ekwurzel et al., is particularly noteworthy.10 By demonstrating that these contributions can be credibly traced and quantified not only for the Carbon Majors as a whole but to individual Carbon Majors companies, this research will further accelerate the identification of legally cognizable climate-related harms. For the foreseeable future, the scale, scope and severity of climate impacts will continue to grow. As advances in attribution science allow climaterelated harms to be more precisely identified, quantified and traced to potentially culpable actors, the need for remedy and redress, and demand for access to justice will increase accordingly—and dramatically. The Commission’s present inquiry into corporate contributions to climate harms in the context of human rights is not only timely, but urgently needed. Q14: In your Smoke and Fumes research, you mentioned Richard Heede’s Carbon Majors study. How do Richard Heede’s Carbon Majors study and corporate attribution science make it easier to identify those responsible for contributing to harm? A14: Richard Heede’s Carbon Majors study traces nearly two-thirds of all carbon dioxide and methane emitted from industrial sources since the industrial revolution began to a discrete list of only 90 entities. While some of the identified entities are states or state-owned enterprises, the majority are investor owned corporations, including major producers of oil, gas and coal. These companies sit at a unique and vital point in the supply chain for fossil fuels and--because the burning of those fuels is the most important source of 9 Richard Heede, Tracing Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emissions to Fossil Fuel and Cement Producers, 1854 – 2010, 122(1-2) CLIMATIC CHANGE 229 (2014), available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-0986-y. As noted in the Preliminary Matters section, I serve in an unpaid, volunteer capacity as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Climate Accountability Institute, of which Richard Heede is the Director. 10 B. Ekwurzel et al., The Rise in Global Atmospheric CO2, Surface Temperature, and Sea Level From Emissions Traced to Major Carbon Producers, 144(4) CLIMATIC CHANGE 579 (2017), available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-017-1978-0.