There are 10s/100s of pollutants. Hydrocarbons, VOCs, free radicals, dust, smog, microplastics, and more. Why are only CO2 emissions so universally used as a metric for climate targets? Surely measuring just the greenhouse effect isn’t sufficient as an indicator of overall climate health.

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There are 10s/100s of pollutants. Hydrocarbons, VOCs, free radicals, dust, smog, microplastics, and more. Why are only CO2 emissions so universally used as a metric for climate targets? Surely measuring just the greenhouse effect isn’t sufficient as an indicator of overall climate health.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because it is easy to detect and measure and released by almost all activities.

By focussing on CO2 the reduction of greenhouse gasses becomes everyones responsibility.

Although other compounds can be much worse contributer to the greenhouse effect, they are luckely also not present or released in such big ammounts.
(Some gasses are 27000x more potent than CO2.)

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