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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The first point is the massive scale of our CO2 output. Humans have released 1.1 trillion tonnes and we’re adding 35 billion tonnes per year. What other chemical is anywhere near that level?
Secondly, we don’t only concentrate on CO2 but instead, use the term “CO2-equivalent” which includes the contribution of other greenhouse gasses. A big one is methane which is released with fossil fuel extraction (it’s a fossil fuel itself), in agriculture (e.g., cow farts), and rotting vegetation. Methane has a CO2-equivalent score around 30 (over 100 years) so our emissions of 360 million tonnes per year adds 11 billion tonnes to our CO2-equivalent emissions.
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