Mountains of Carbon, Rivers of Water
Mountains of Carbon, Rivers of Water
The $8 trillion of goods held for sale around the world represents a year’s worth of production and a staggering consumption of energy and raw material. If global inventory was a country, it would be ranked 3rd in the world, between China and Japan.
In terms of emissions and water, this equates to 6 Giga tonnes of carbon and 1.6 trillion cubic meters of water use, tied up in inventory. The emissions alone are the equivalent of taking all of the automobiles and light trucks around the world off the roads for a year and a half. This dwarfs other sustainability initiatives, even those at an international scale – 6 Giga tonnes is close to 4 times the annual carbon dioxide offsets purchased under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
It’s a similar story with water. Roughly 40% of the annual global water consumption is tied up in current inventory stocks. For comparison purposes, the 1.6 trillion cubic meters of water tied up in inventory is more than all of the oil pumped from the ground in the history of man and then again for the next 100 years or more.