Increase in Atmospheric Aerosol Loading
Not yet transgressed: the Stockholm Resilience Centre's 2023 update found atmospheric aerosol loading was not transgressed despite rising pressures. It remains one of the two boundaries not breached in the 2025 Planetary Health Check.
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Aerosol loading comes from combustion. WHO names energy, transport, industry, and waste as the sectors behind the ambient air pollution that caused 4.2 million premature deaths in 2019. In most markets those sectors are dominated by listed utilities, automakers, refiners, and manufacturers. Corporate lobbying is a documented obstacle to the vehicle and fuel standards that cut aerosol precursors. InfluenceMap finds 14 of 15 major automakers actively advocated against at least one policy promoting electric vehicles. If these companies made clean combustion and electrification core objectives and lobbied for tighter emission standards, the industrial and vehicular share of aerosol emissions would fall across the board. That would keep the boundary from being crossed. A large share of the pressure sits outside corporate reach, however. Household solid-fuel cooking, open agricultural burning, and state-owned power plants dominate emissions in the South Asian and African regions where aerosol loading is most acute. Owners are a necessary lever on the corporate share and its politics, while governments and households must also act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Planetary boundaries, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2025 (2023 update described)
- Planetary Health Check 2025, Planetary Boundaries Science Lab / Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 2025-09-24
- Ambient (outdoor) air quality and health (fact sheet), World Health Organization, 2024-10-24
- Automakers and Climate Policy Advocacy: A Global Analysis, InfluenceMap, 2024-05-01
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed a resolution at Toyota, through the asset manager Kapitalforeningen, seeking fuller disclosure of the company's climate-related lobbying.
Toyota AGM: shareholders reject climate lobbying resolution, Net Zero Investor, 2024
Represents the faith-based filers behind repeated proposals at Chevron that document air pollution and respiratory illness in communities around the company's refineries and Permian Basin operations.
Filed the 2022 racial equity audit proposal at Chevron citing sulfur dioxide levels above federal health limits in the Permian Basin and elevated cardiovascular disease, cancer and asthma rates near the Richmond refinery.
Filed the 2025 proposal at Chevron seeking a report on the effectiveness of the company's efforts to prevent, mitigate and remedy human rights impacts, including refinery air pollution.
3 campaigns on record
Report on the effectiveness of the company's efforts to prevent, mitigate and remedy actual and potential human rights impacts of its operations, including refinery air emissions and childhood asthma rates in Richmond, California.
Result: not stated in source
Disclose more fully the company's climate-related lobbying, on the grounds that Toyota's January 2024 report fell far short of investor expectations.
Result: over 90 percent of shareholders voted against
Toyota AGM: shareholders reject climate lobbying resolution, Net Zero Investor, 2024
Commission and publish an independent racial equity audit of the company's policies and practices, given hazardous air pollution and health outcomes in the communities around its operations.
With Investor Advocates for Social Justice and other ICCR-affiliated investors
Result: not stated in source
Chevron conducted a racial equity audit, but investors documented that it examined only employment practices and philanthropy, omitted community and environmental-justice impacts, was conducted by Chevron's own longtime law firm, and did not consult the proponents.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.