Quotes About Emissions

Tip: Whenever you see some number of tons of greenhouse gases, convert it to a percentage of 51 billion, which is the world's current yearly total emissions (in carbon dioxide equivalents).

Meanwhile, making steel and cement alone accounts for around 10 percent of all emissions. So the question "What's your plan for cement?" is just a shorthand reminder that if you're trying to come up with a comprehensive plan for climate change, you have to account for much more than electricity and cars.

Around the world, there are roughly a billion cattle raised for beef and dairy. The methane they burp and fart out every year has the same warming effect as 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, accounting for about 4 percent of all global emissions.

About half of poop-related emissions come from pig manure, and the rest from cow manure. There's so much animal poop that it's actually the second-biggest cause of emissions in agriculture, behind enteric fermentation.

If we can spread the improved breeds and best practices more broadly—especially crossbreeding African cows to be more productive and making higher-quality feed available and affordable—it'll reduce emissions and help poor farmers earn more money.

All told, fertilizers were responsible for roughly 1.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, and the number will probably rise to 1.7 billion tons by mid-century

the math suggests you'd need somewhere around 50 acres' worth of trees, planted in tropical areas, to absorb the emissions produced by an average American in her lifetime. Multiply that by the population of the United States, and you get more than 16 billion acres, or 25 million square miles, roughly half the landmass of the world.

Although transportation isn't the biggest cause of emissions worldwide, it is number one in the United States, and it has been for a few years now, just ahead of making electricity. We Americans drive and fly a lot.

How quickly do we need to get to zero? Science tells us that in order to avoid a climate catastrophe, rich countries should reach net-zero emissions by 2050. You've probably heard people say we can decarbonize deeply even sooner—by 2030.

Another, more theoretical approach involves making cement out of seawater and the carbon dioxide captured from power plants. The inventors behind this idea think it could ultimately cut emissions by more than 70 percent.

Consider what it took to achieve this 5 percent reduction. A million people died, and tens of millions were put out of work. To put it mildly, this was not a situation that anyone would want to continue or repeat. And yet the world's greenhouse gas emissions probably dropped just 5 percent, and possibly less than that. What's remarkable to me is not how much emissions went down because of the pandemic, but how little.

When you use carbon dioxide equivalents, you aren't fully accounting for this important short-term effect.

It's aviation, trucking, and shipping—not passenger cars—that account for all the emissions growth in this sector.

The reason the world emits so much greenhouse gas is that—as long as you ignore the long-term damage they do—our current energy technologies are by and large the cheapest ones available. So moving our immense energy economy from "dirty," carbon-emitting technologies to ones with zero emissions will cost something.

At Breakthrough Energy, we fund only technologies that could remove at least 500 million tons a year if they're successful and fully implemented. That's roughly 1 percent of global emissions. Technologies that will never exceed 1 percent shouldn't compete for the limited resources we have for getting to zero. There may be other good reasons to pursue them, but significantly reducing emissions won't be one of them.

Besides, making electricity accounts for only 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Even if we had a huge breakthrough in batteries, we would still need to get rid of the other 73 percent.

Because every bit of carbon we put into the atmosphere adds to the greenhouse effect. There's no getting around physics.

What's remarkable to me is not how much emissions went down because of the pandemic, but how little.

How much greenhouse gas is emitted by the things we do? Making things (cement, steel, plastic) 31% Plugging in (electricity) 27% Growing things (plants, animals) 19% Getting around (planes, trucks, cargo ships) 16% Keeping warm and cool (heating, cooling, refrigeration) 7%

To sum up, the path to zero emissions in manufacturing looks like this: Electrify every process possible. This is going to take a lot of innovation. Get that electricity from a power grid that's been decarbonized. This also will take a lot of innovation. Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions. And so will this. Use materials more efficiently. Same.

The typical Kenyan produces 55 times less carbon dioxide than an American, and rural farmers like the Talams produce even less.

2. What's Your Plan for Cement? If you're talking about a comprehensive plan for tackling climate change, you need to consider everything that humans do to cause greenhouse gas emissions.

F-gases are extremely powerful contributors to climate change: Over the course of a century, they cause thousands of times more warming than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. If you don't hear much about them, it's because they're not a huge percentage of greenhouse gases; in the United States, they represent about 3 percent of emissions.

Together, furnaces and water heaters account for a third of all emissions that come from the world's buildings. And unlike lights and A/C units, most of them run on fossil fuels, not electricity. (Whether you use natural gas, heating oil, or propane depends largely on where you live.)