Degrees, millimeters, gigawatts, megatons — telling the story of climate change, and the state of the planet, with numbers is a tough challenge. Most of these numbers are too abstract, or simply too big to relate to. I still recommend reading this. If you put in the effort to process the numbers, it gives a good overview of where we stand towards the end of what will be the warmest year ever recorded. Also, one number is easy to understand, precisely because it is so staggeringly big: 7 trillion dollars. That’s by how much the world subsidises fossil fuels — per year.

From Weekly Filet #466, in November 2023.