We are part of The Trust Project.
Do we need to limit our CO2 emissions?
Our global CO2 levels have risen from 280 to 420 parts per million. Though a small percentage of our atmosphere, as Phil Drietz says, it is a powerful heat-trapping gas.
Just as a 5-milligram pill is an extremely small percentage of a person's total weight, it may spell life or death.
NASA has a list of almost 200 science academies in the world and all say, like the IPCC, CO2 is the “culprit” in increasing droughts, heatwaves, storms, floods, extinctions and sea level rise.
Conservative analysts at Deloitte estimate hundreds of trillion dollars of damages can be expected if we don't act, whenever and wherever possible, to transform our energy systems away from dirty fuels. No source can just “sit it out.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Drietz suggests letting sulfur and nitrogen oxygen be emitted from our coal plants to “cool” the Earth. These are acid-forming compounds that, along with particulates lead to 100,000 premature deaths each year in the U.S. Just Google “health effects of fossil fuels.”
Let's rethink that.
Climate change also exacerbates inflation. I applaud the Inflation Reduction Act for its strong first steps to facing the climate problem. It is still “code red.”
Jan Freed
Los Angeles, California
