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The story of the environment can largely be told in data, various numbers that detail how the Earth is warming and how much pollution you're inhaling. Math is newly central to environmental considerations. Last summer, writer and activist Bill McKibben wrote an essay for Rolling Stone in which he outlined the mathematical argument for taking action on climate change. In short: To prevent a global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, we need to hold our carbon dioxide emissions to 565 gigatons of by 2050.
Perhaps ironically cold in their matter-of-factness, those numbers tells the story of the state of the climate in a way that is tangible. It allows us to create a thermometer of sorts, like those used for fundraising at suburban middle schools — the goal being not to reach the line at its top. Earth Day is a similar sort of benchmark, a string tied around the finger of the country to remember to look at how we're doing. Here are the tools you need to make an assessment of the state of the Earth.
Climate change
Data resources: The NOAA's monthly reports on climate
Last month, the temperature of the world's land and oceans was .58 degrees Celsius higher than the 20th century average. That alone seems innocuous. Here's another number: 337. For 337 straight months, the world has seen temperatures above the 20th century average. Meaning, as has been pointed out before, that anyone born after March 1985 — anyone 28 or younger — has never experienced a month during which global temperatures were below average for the century.