Supported by
By Zeke Hausfather and David Keith
Dr. Hausfather is the climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist with Berkeley Earth. Dr. Keith is a professor and founding director of the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago.
Since the Industrial Revolution, burning coal and oil has filled the air with sulfur, shortening the lives of billions of people. In response, countries passed stringent air pollution laws requiring coal plants to scrub out sulfur and ships to switch to cleaner fuels. Global sulfur emissions have fallen some 40 percent since 2006. China alone has slashed them by about 70 percent.
We should celebrate cleaner air, but we also have to reckon with an unintended consequence. It turns out that by reflecting sunlight back into space, tiny sulfur particles protected Earth from about a third of the warming caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide. Now more of the underlying greenhouse gas warming is showing through, accelerating climate change. As The Economist recently put it, “If India chokes less, it will fry more.”
