Why I Left My Engineering Job To Take On the Climate Crisis
And the realizations that would change my perspective forever
When I was born in 1991, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere was 356 ppm. This year I turned 30 and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere now stands at about 416 ppm.
For the majority of my 30 years on earth, those numbers were meaningless to me.
Now, they’re the most important numbers I pay attention to.
While economists focus on GDP growth and investors focus on ROI, I focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.
GHG concentrations are now higher than during the Pliocene period over three million years ago — a time well before homo sapiens even walked the earth. Average global temperatures were 2–3°C warmer and sea levels were 25 meters (82 ft) higher than today.
This is likely the long-term future we are heading towards based on current emission trends and government policies. Specifically, we could see a 3°C warmer world by the end of the century while multi-meter sea level rise would likely take anywhere from 50–150 years.
That may seem like a long time on human timescales but in geologic time, it is infinitesimally short.
