In all society, we make a choice to do something one way or another and as long as it is legal society reflects that choice. Because the underlying aspect is legal, then it filters into everything else that society does. Thus it becomes very hard to change, because the solution is not a simple one. A great example is the oil industry. The oil industry replaced the killing of whale for the oil that lit lamps to allow people to read in the evenings. Otherwise, we would go to bed after the sun goes down.

in an article by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press, a Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies. About half came from fossil fuel producers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil, Pemex, Coal India and British Coal Corp.

The 111 companies was estimated to have caused $28 trillion in climate damage. To provide context, $28 billion is the sum of all the goods and services produced in the US last year.

The study determined every 1% of greenhouse gas in the environment causes $502 billion from heat alone.

The researchers started with known final emissions of products produced by the biggest 111 companies going back 137 years. They used 1,000 different computer simulations to translate those emissions into changes for Earth’s global average surface temperature by comparing it to a world with that company’s emissions.

The system is modelled on the established techniques scientists have been using for more than a decade to attribute extreme weather events to climate change.

Although it is interesting topic for research, society has to determine whether we still value and what fossil fuel companies to do their thing which benefits society at large.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in many dividend paying portfolios are oil stocks and pipelines because they have a consistent return of dividends because the larger companies are very profitable, which allow them to pay dividends and raise them on a regular basis. Every industry has some downside and as an investor you can determine if you want to be directly holding stocks in that field. If you do, then the upside is profits and dividends.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.