This tool tells you how fossil fuel emissions actually translate into heat deaths, coral reef damage, and more

Every new fossil fuel project that comes online will add more climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into our atmosphere. But just saying how many tonnes (metric tons) of CO2 a new coal or gas facility will produce can still be abstract. What does it really mean, for example, that a single coal mine in Australia will generate an estimated 4.7 billion tonnes of emissions over its lifetime? How will those emissions actually, tangibly impact the world and its inhabitants? A new open-source tool quantifies that impact, translating tonnes of CO2 emissions into measurable damages—like the number of excess heat deaths in Europe, the cost of crop production loss, or how many more coral reef colonies will succumb to bleaching. Called the Carbon Impacts Tracer, the tool was created by climate experts at Australia National University and the University of New South Wales, as well as the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and the Lethal Humidity Global Council. [Screenshot: Carbon Impacts Tracer] The tracer shows how much damage emissions will cause across eight categories: excess deaths in Europe Great Barrier Reef coral loss crop pro…