If you’re in the climate space, you would have seen a new research report released this week quantifying deaths attributed to carbon footprints by country. Horrific stuff. I appreciate Vox.com’s coverage of the study in Future Perfect, quoted below
Danny Bressler, a PhD candidate in sustainable development at Columbia University, has published a study in the journal Nature Communications that updates the social cost of carbon (SCC) based on findings that have emerged in the last few years about heat-related deaths. He calls it the mortality cost of carbon.
Adding 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Bressler found, would result in one heat-related death this century. That’s equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans — which means that 3.5 Americans generate enough carbon to kill one person over the century.
This finding on carbon mortality in the journal Nature is the inspiration for the following climate ghost story.
🔪🔥Serial Killer Story
Now here's an echo of an old story that I’ve heard tell about a serial killer
A mystery and tragedy, an ongoing manhunt, and a getting-warmer thrillerÂ
About the phantom, a murderer, a ghost who kills one for every three Americans
You may have seen them in the newspaper, climate risking all our residences
Though we could stop them and they’d kill fewer, the number’s bigger
Now. Here's an echo of an old story I’ve heard about a serial killer.
In some places, less folks are felled, proportional to an equivalence:
For every 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide, one innocent
Life living, a soul typically from somewhere hotter and poorer
Serially increasing until caught, the carbon’s stopped, and the planet's cooler
This century, our century of change, fighting multiple impacts in triplicate
Against the serial killer climate ghost, not one, but of a crisis syndicate.
So though we may have mystery gang-unmasked the villains, this thing ain’t over
So far from against such an ongoing spectral onslaught, doing nothing’s the real horror
Since we now know their tools of division, capital, caste, heat, and hate
We can fight back with sanctuary in earth, envisioning a completely recreated
Fortress of Solartude, to end abuse from the toxic source– you can do the honors
Now there's an echo of a story we could tell well about some serial-solvers.