New York, United States, Greenpeace USA activists deployed a giant “Climate Polluters Bill” nearly 160 feet long — the length of an Olympic swimming pool — through midtown Manhattan today, while marching in a mass demonstration during Climate Week NYC and on the eve of the UN General Assembly and the UN Secretary General’s Climate Ambition Summit.[1] 

Photos of the giant bill and the march will be available later this afternoon in the Greenpeace Media Library. 

Mads Christensen, Executive Director, Greenpeace International said: “No one is safe from deadly heatwaves, wildfires, toxic air, and rising seas. Yet those most sheltered from the crisis – the super-rich and oil and gas giants – keep profiting while the rest of us pay the price. It’s time to flip the script: governments must make polluters pay and use that money to fund a secure, green future. World leaders have a historic chance at COP30 and in negotiations for a UN Global Tax Convention to close the climate finance gap and to raise billions to protect people and the planet. We demand a new polluter tax on the global profits of oil and gas corporations, alongside taxing wealthy elites and addressing illicit financial flows.”

The bill reveals that economic damages from carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of five major oil and gas corporations throughout 2016-25 are projected to amount to over US$ five trillion, according to leading experts on the social cost of carbon (SCC). This is nearly 7000 times greater than the amount countries have currently pledged to the UN’s fund for loss and damage, set up to support communities in Global South countries facing the impacts of climate change.[2][3]

Emissions from a handful of investor-owned oil companies are driving the climate crisis, making wildfires, floods, typhoons, heatwaves and droughts more frequent and severe. The costs, projected to amount to US$ 5.36 trillion in damages, are impacting people today and expected to continue well into the year 2300. These result in huge costs to society in categories including human health, rising sea levels, disruption to energy supplies, agriculture, and labour productivity.

Applying the SCC methodology to project total damages by company (2020 US$):

  • ExxonMobil: 1.38 trillion US$ in damages.
  • Chevron: 1.16 trillion US$ in damages.
  • Shell: 1.03 trillion US$ in damages.
  • BP: 0.96 trillion US$ in damages.
  • TotalEnergies: 0.83 trillion US$ in damages.

Sushma Raman, Interim Executive Director, Greenpeace USA said: “Communities and families are losing their homes, schools, and livelihoods, while Big Oil billionaires are raking in astronomical profits. They want to cast off any liability for their actions, and push the rising costs of the damage they’ve inflicted onto working class families. A small handful of oil and gas companies are impacting people now and in the future to the score of more than $5 trillion. Their climate bill is long overdue, and it is time they pay up.” 

The giant bill carried by dozens of activists in the NYC protest also included written examples of some of the most extreme weather events to hit the world over the past decade.[4] In the years since the Paris Agreement was adopted the reported profits of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies alone amounted to almost US$ 800 billion.[5][6]

Governments around the world must present bold climate action plans (NDCs) during the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit next week to close the ambition gap and limit global warming to 1.5°C. 

In the coming weeks, Greenpeace organisations worldwide will deliver more giant polluter bills that reflect the economic cost of emissions from oil and gas corporations.

ENDS

Photos and videos from the mass ‘Draw the Line’ demonstration in NYC available on the Greenpeace Media library. 

Notes:

[1] 3] Draw the Line is a global week of events starting on 15 September, leading up to a weekend of actions on 19-21 September.

Greenpeace, along with 250,000 individuals and over 60 other organisations around the world, supports the Polluters Pay Pact, which demands that world leaders make oil, coal and gas corporations pay their fair share for the damages they cause through introducing new taxes or fines on them to help communities at home and around the world rebuild from climate disasters and invest in climate solutions. 

[2] The quantification of economic damages since 2015 was provided to Greenpeace International by Prof. James Rising of the University of Delaware and Dr. Lisa Rennels of Stanford University. The analysis uses data from the Carbon Majors Database and the SCC methodology. The SCC was used by former US administrations and policy analysts to assign a dollar value to future damages from an additional ton of CO₂ between the year of its emissions through to the year 2300. 

Emissions data for the oil and gas companies was provided by the Carbon Majors Database, which in turn sources emissions data from publicly available company reports.

[2] Governments have so far pledged USD $768.40 million to the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage Fund. USD $5,360,000,000,000 / USD $768.40 million = 6975.53 times, rounded up to 7000 times

[4] The giant bill is populated with a selection of some of the most expensive and notable extreme weather events since the Paris Agreement was adopted. These are sourced from the International Disaster Database EM-DAT. In this case they are noted for representative purposes only and not as part of the social cost of carbon calculation. 

[5] WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55°C above pre-industrial level

[6] Calculations for reported profits between 2016 and first half of 2025, for ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, TotalEnergies. Data originally sourced from company reporting. 

Contacts: 

Katie Nelson, Greenpeace USA, Senior Communications Specialist, [email protected], +1 (678) 644-1681

Tal Harris, Greenpeace International, Global Media Lead – Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign, [email protected], +41-782530550 

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), [email protected]. See the Greenpeace Press Centre for our latest international press releases