Public data from verified sources, in one place. No agenda. The figures that shape daily life — and where they come from.
National emissions figures measure where production happens — not who profits from it. Climate Trace now attributes emissions to the operating entity rather than the geography, producing a meaningfully different picture of accountability. Water tells the same story: agriculture withdraws 70% of global freshwater, but water scarcity risk falls hardest on communities that didn't choose those supply chains. The waste built into retail supply chains is a structural feature, not an anomaly — suppliers guarantee full shelves by design, making overproduction the default outcome. Every kilogram of beef that goes uneaten also discards roughly 15,400 liters of embedded water.
The ultra-wealthy can access loans at 0.5–3% interest using appreciated assets as collateral — living on borrowed money that isn't taxable income, while the assets continue to grow. When those assets transfer at death, the accumulated gains are permanently excluded from capital gains tax. This strategy is legal, documented, and structurally unavailable below a certain wealth threshold. The racial wealth gap compounds the picture: decades of documented housing, lending, and labor policy exclusions created gaps that market participation alone does not close.
AI's current environmental footprint is considerably smaller than animal agriculture or transportation — but the trajectory is the story. Data center demand is projected to roughly quadruple by 2034, and water consumption for cooling scales with it. Whether that growth runs on renewables and nuclear or on fossil fuels — and whether cooling systems shift to air or water — are open policy questions with real local consequences. Three companies control two thirds of the infrastructure and are now investing directly in nuclear capacity. The Congo cobalt figure follows the same pattern: the physical cost of the digital economy falls heaviest on the people least compensated by it.
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