Carbon-Neutrality

500 billion dollars is the potential economic harm for not solving the carbon emission until 2090. It isn’t anyone else that pays these losses, but it’s solely on us. When we divide that amount by the total number of US citizens, it is approximately an extra 2000 dollars burden to every one of you only for not solving carbon emission. There are other taxes that citizens need to pay, such as individual Income Taxes, Corporate Income Taxes, Payroll Taxes, and on and on and on. In this slide, you see an innocent individual that is not only suffering from original taxes, but also from the new taxes coming from carbon pollution.

Let’s time travel back to the 2nd industrial revolution, approximately the 1800s, the golden age of steam-powered engines. There are mainly two causes that made this invention possible. One was widely supplied iron in the 1800s, and the other was on the fuel of steam engines. These two are both strictly connected to coal, as to begin with, coal was a needed material for supplying iron for the rail tracks, and the fuel for steam engine trains was the coals in the first place. Coal was first used for movement and transportation purposes, and it slowly increased its application range to electricity, as well as providing everyday materials such as plastics, which is why until now the society is dependent on coal.

Even more importantly, in order for coals to have that considerable effectiveness, they should undergo a process of burning the coals. In that process, it emits carbon dioxide excessively, and that’s where our story of carbon neutrality starts. On a short-term basis, the air quality for the country has been seriously affected by excessive carbon dioxide. According to sciencing.com, carbon dioxide emissions increase the formation of ​smog impacted from the thick atmosphere from methane and carbon dioxide, which is especially severe in the case of China. The lifestyle of Chinese citizens is now seriously influenced by smog, as one says “My Kid got mild pneumonia thanks to the smog. The hospital is filled with children with respiratory diseases,” in a CNN interview. Next, if carbon is absorbed by the ocean water, it increases the acidity rate inside the ocean. This decreases the living habitats for the sea-living organisms, as their biological traits cannot accept excessive acidity inside their habitat. For instance, the United States oyster farm has been fatally damaged by carbon emission, as oysters easily died as high acids inside the ocean have destroyed their shell, resulting in massive oyster death, thus severe economic harm for the United States oyster farms. At the end of the day, the harm we gave to nature is revenging back to us.