. SEEDTABLE

January 24th, 2020 | #59

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This Week in Europe: The Carbon Complication

Last week, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft’s plan to be carbon negative by 2030.

By 2030 Microsoft will be carbon negative, and by 2050 Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975. – Microsoft's announcement

But first, let’s take a step back – what are carbon emissions and why does this even matter? Here’s the /r/eli5 version.

Carbon Emissions refers to carbon dioxide (or CO2) emitted into the air through burning fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), solid waste, trees and other biological materials, and as a result of certain chemical reactions (i.e., manufacture of cement).

This emissions caused by human activities are altering the carbon cycle by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere that our planet (via natural sinks, like forests) can remove from the atmosphere.

Source: The Guardian

This leads to something called "positive climate forcing", or a change in the Earth’s energy balance, leading to a warming effect over time. From 1990 to 2015, the total warming effect from carbon dioxide added by humans (mostly by combustion of fossil fuels) to the Earth’s atmosphere has increased by 30 percent.

The magnitude of the problem is an extremely debatable topic. Lots of people think it's VERY BAD; some people thinks its BAD; and some people think is not our biggest problem (and well, some think this isn't real but we’ll leave that to another time.)

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

"Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems."

The more dramatic example of this increase is what are called "Extreme Events".

"Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been