"Fifty-five heat waves over the past quarter-century would not have happened without human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday.

Planet-warming emissions from 180 major cement, oil and gas producers contributed significantly to all of the heat events considered in the study, which was published in the journal Nature and examined a set of 213 heat waves from 2000 to 2023. The polluters examined in the study include publicly traded and state-owned companies, as well several countries where fossil fuel production data was available at the national level.

Collectively, these producers are responsible for 57% of all the carbon dioxide that was emitted from 1850 to 2023, the study found.

“It just shows that it’s not that many actors … who are responsible for a very strong fraction of all emissions,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a climate professor at the Swiss university ETH Zurich who was one of the study’s contributors."

Isabella O’Malley reports for the Associated Press September 10, 2025. [2]