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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I think we need to put the greenhouse effect of CO2 into perspective, then:
CO2 is the universal measure, because we can measure it rather accurately, we are producing a whole lot more of it than we actually need to be, and it is, on its own, causing heavy meteoroligcal aberrations from rapidly heating planet.
The rest of these are significantly more “localized” effects, or are so much less bad than CO2 for the planet’s general health that it would take them a few decades to do to our health, what CO2 will do within 5 years.
Essentially, the answer is essentially “because it affects everyone”.
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