The facts are brutal. To stay under 1.5°C, the global economy can burn only a fixed amount more carbon, which at time of publication, the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change estimated at approximately 275 gigatons and

This universal inclination to discount the future matters greatly when contemplating such complex and costly undertakings as pricing carbon in order to mitigate global climate change, because there would no discernible economic benefits for the generation of people that would launch the expensive quest.

half of the carbon stays in the plastic. (The actual percentage varies quite a bit, depending on which kind of plastic you’re talking about, but around half is a reasonable approximation.) Carbon

While we are converting increasing shares of electricity generation to new renewables (solar and wind, as opposed to the long-established hydroelectricity) and putting more electric cars on the roads, decarbonizing trucking, flying, and shipping will be a much greater challenge, as will the production of key materials without relying on fossil fuel