So the fact that I drive a hybrid†, minimize my overall driving, only buy like 3 tanks of gas a year, have cut out 70% of my beef consumption (yay, Beyond, Impossible, et al), and generally try to reduce or at least minimize my carbon and pollution footprint.....means nothing. Great.

Still going to keep doing my part ‡ even though it's not even a drop in the bucket.

† When I bought it, an EV wasn't practical for my situation. It's only 6 years old and has plenty of life left, so figure it's worth it to hang onto it.

‡ Yes, I know the whole "carbon footprint" thing is basically victim-blaming propaganda. Doesn't mean I still shouldn't try to minimize my environmental impact regardless.

Article doesn’t list them

And this is to the surprise of no one. They push the blame onto consumers so any decrease we make, they can use to increase their production.

This is wrong on top of wrong. First off, it's 57 entities (including "Former Soviet Union") producing 80% of the emissions tracked by the database -- which covers "88% of total fossil fuel and cement emissions," and totals 251G tonnes of CO2 equivalent gasses (CO2e) from 2016 through 2012 [1]. So with that we have 200Gt making up 70% of the global total over that 7 year period.

But fossil fuels and cement emissions are not the only source of greenhouse gasses. Human-caused global emissions are roughly 53GtCO2e annually during that time [2], for a total of 370Gt across all sources. So 200Gt is about 54% of that.

Most importantly though, this is a ridiculous measure in the first place. Who cares how many people are responsible for digging up the fuels that people are directly burning themselves in their homes and cars? If every oil well had its own company, how would that improve emissions? Nearly half of emissions are from individuals, and much of the rest is directly driven by consumer demand (e.g. power companies burning coal and gas).

Sources

• [1] https://influencemap.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-26913#briefing_section_bullet-26926
• [2] Our World in Data

This is extremely misleading--those companies produce those emissions in the course of creating the products that the rest of us 'down the pipeline' (pardon the pun) consume.

So, to everyone who's like 'all the things I do to reduce my footprint are meaningless because it's these guys at the top creating all the pollution'? No, it's not fucking meaningless. You and others like you consuming less is precisely THE way to get those companies at the 'top of the supply chain' to pollute less.