Whose carbon dioxide is in your living room?

In the air in any small room* there is a soda-can volume of carbon dioxide gas that is attributable to Chevron

How much carbon dioxide is in a small room courtesy of major fossil fuel companies?  This was our question two years ago when we created images for the launch of the groundbreaking Carbon Majors Report.  

The Report names those responsible for extracting the oil, coal and gas that’s causing warming of the planet. Instead of showing countries' emissions, any operation that produced more than eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide in any given year is identified in the study together with their cumulative contribution to the problem we all now face.

We wanted to find a more personal way to show the emission volumes and came up with the idea of drink cans branded with names such as Chevron, Exxon, Aramco, BP and Gazprom which are presented as if filled – in the case of Chevron – or part-filled with carbon dioxide gas.  Each can shows by volume precisely how much carbon dioxide is in a typical living room* (by which we mean every room of this size) as a consequence of these companies’ extractions. 

Cheers.

*room size 18 X 18 X 9ft.  CO2 concentration 400pm.

Images in imperial and metric available to download under Creative Commons licence from our Flickr Albums.