Study reveals how much carbon damage would cost corporations if they paid for their emissions

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

Economists calculate that the world’s corporations produce so much climate change pollution,  it could eat up about 44% of their profits if they had to pay damages for what they put out. An author of a new study in Thursday’s journal Science estimates that the climate damage from publicly owned companies analyzed probably runs in the trillions of dollars globally and in the hundreds of billions for American firms. That’s based on the cost of carbon dioxide pollution that the United States government has proposed. Nearly 90% of that calculated damage comes from four industries: energy, utilities, transportation and manufacturing of materials such as steel.