Kyle Kramer

Let’s Not Blow the Budget

A few years back, financial analysts and scientists alike began to figure out a “global carbon budget ” we would need to stick to if we want to avoid radically overheating our planet. In other words, there’s a fixed amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide we can emit globally by 2050 at the time, it was about 565 billion tons (gigatons, or Gt) total. Currently, human activity produces about 36 Gt of carbon dioxide a year.