Global Warming's Terrifying New Math By Bill Mckibben Summary

In a world where the influence of corporations, both good and bad, is widespread, who is responsible for the harm done by these corporations? Some blame the corporations, others blame voters. Let’s look at someone that blames corporations, Bill McKibben, in his article Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math, argues that fossil fuel corporations are the number one public enemy. The article starts by discussing some numbers of importance when considering the ceiling of climate change before the harmful effects are completely irreversible. McKibben’s argument uses the third number presented, 2,795 Gigatons, as a premise to his argument that fossil fuel corporations are public enemy number one. This number is the amount of carbon fossil fuel corporations and countries have planned to burn, though most it is still in the soil. This amount is five times greater than the amount of carbon that we could burn without causing catastrophic events by exceeding an average global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius. As McKibben says, “… those reserves are their primary asset, the holding that gives their companies value.”

There’s a great example of this in Michael Moss’ article The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. An executive of Coca-Cola attempted to pursue a social cause, putting Coca-Cola into a slightly more health-oriented mode, but “A director of one bottler wrote a letter to Coke’s chief executive and board asking for Dunn’s head.” (Section 4). Dunn, the Coca-Cola executive, was indeed fired because the bottler company saw an impact to their profit. This sort of greed keeps corporations locked into some of their harmful