07/18/2025
We can't outrun climate change, and 'doing our part' is insufficient, even if it is the right thing to do. The facts require us to focus societal attention on the emitters of CO2, nitrous oxide, and methane. The data is crystal clear.
The global average carbon dioxide metric set a new record high in 2024: 422.7 parts per million ("ppm" for short). The increase over 2023 amounts was 3.75 ppm—the largest one-year increase on record. In 2024, 41.6 billion tons of CO2 were emitted, and 90% of it came from burning fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas.
The global oil industry has generated an average of $1 trillion in annual profit (current US dollars) over the past 50 years. That's $2.7 billion of profit every single day. Each day the industry obfuscates, manipulates, and orchestrates continuing profit while emitting massive amounts of CO2, they make another $2.7 billion.
By allowing the destruction of the earth by profit-seeking fossil fuel companies and the industries that support them (transportation, tech (think AI and the massive energy infrastructure needed to power their data centers), chemicals, construction, banking, etc.), and the policy makers that are funded by fossil fuel companies and their supporters, we are commiting intergenerational genocide. It is a crime against humanity.
CO2 accumulates and remains in the atmosphere for 400 years. Nitrous oxide emissions, generated primarily by the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers and animal manure, stays in the atmosphere for over 120 years, and it is 300 times more potent than CO2. Methane emissions, generated primarily from livestock management, stays in the atmosphere for up to 12 years and it is 27 times more potent than CO2. More than 1.3 trillion tons of methane are buried in permafrost and ice in arctic regions however, and as temperature rises, this methane will be released with devastating impact.
Foosil fuel industries and their downstream supporters are free riders - they are getting a free pass on the devastating impact of climate change that is directly correlated to the CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted every day. Property damage from wildfires, flooding, mudslides, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Lives lost. Broken hearts and broken lives.
Individually, we are not to blame. We are pawns, consumers to be manipulated by profit-seeking industries that are enabled by policy makers and politicians that we put into power. All of this is what behavioral scientists call social construct - it's made up - we made it all up - and we can change it. Changing societal behavior requires policy change, and changing policy requires a change in our collective behavior - speaking out - engaging in truthful debate - speaking truth to power at every level of society - getting engaged social actors, networks, organizations, and institutions aligned on ceasing societal (corporate and individual) behaviors that will destroy our future.
This is the purpose of the Verdant Commons Project. We each own this earth. It is a commons that can be healed, but it starts by acknowledging the cause, and by stopping the ongoing Tragedy of the Commons. I hope you will join our effort to unify around the carbon crisis that creates climate change.
