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what we've done

what we've done
petroleum refining

what are we doing?

types of things we do1.

if you imagine that this...

...is about 590 million tons of CO2 (or the equivalent) released into earth’s atmosphere...

then this is what we did in a year, not long ago:

2019 emissions by sector2.

and if this is what we did that year...

...then this is what we’ve done:

mass of all of our greenhouse gas emissions3,4.

in addition, this is how much stuff we’ve made:

mass of human-made materials on earth (metals, asphalt, concrete, plastic, etc.)5.

and this is how much mass is (still) in living things on earth6:

living biomass on earth7
  1. “A comprehensive and synthetic dataset for global, regional and national greenhouse gas emissions by sector 1970-2018 with an extension to 2019.” https://zenodo.org/records/6483002
  2. Total of 59 Gt CO2-equivalent in emissions during 2019, from (1)
  3. Rough 2021-2024 emissions estimate: 220Gt CO2-equivalent. “Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence“ https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/16/2625/2024/
  4. Rough estimate of 2900 Gt CO2-equivalent, from (1) and (3)
  5. 1.2 Tt of anthropogenic mass. “Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5
  6. “Since the first agricultural revolution, humanity has roughly halved the mass of plants, from approximately two teratonnes to 1 Tt.” (5)
  7. 1.1 Tt of biomass, from (5)