Keep It in the Ground
How you can help end the fossil fuel era
Today, I am more motivated than ever to keep remaining fossil fuel reserves in the ground. I’ve been supportive of “Keep It In the Ground” efforts ever since I heard Bill McKibben speak in 2012 about the shocking math of the climate crisis. McKibben stated that to remain below 2°C of warming with only 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, we had to keep all future emissions to 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel companies already had enough reserves then, that if burned, would create 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions, five times the safe amount.
You would think, with this information, the world would have slowed down exploring, drilling, and use of fossil fuels. But it didn’t. Since then, the world has continued to finance, explore, extract, and burn fossil fuels at an increasing rate. For instance, banks have funded fossil fuel companies with large amounts of financing. One recent report stated that since 2015, 60 of the world’s largest banks have invested $2.7 trillion in the fossil fuel industry.
So, it’s no surprise that eleven years later we now have around 419 ppm of CO2 in the…
