Al Gore, the former Vice President, has introduced a new initiative that leaves polluters with no place to hide.
Climate Trace, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Gore, unveiled a tool on Wednesday that leverages artificial intelligence to monitor fine particulate emissions from over 660 million sources across the globe.
While many are aware that fossil fuel combustion contributes to global warming, fewer realize it also produces fine particles responsible for up to 10 million deaths each year.
“For quite a while, I’ve been working to highlight the worldwide public health emergency linked to what’s often called traditional air pollution, or PM2.5,” Gore shared with TechCrunch. “It’s been challenging for people to access accurate details about the air they’re breathing, its sources, and the amounts involved.”
Climate Trace was established as an independent initiative to monitor greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale. The organization began developing this new tool after Gore’s involvement with Memphis, Tennessee residents who were opposing a crude oil pipeline that threatened their community and water supply. During his investigation, he noticed emissions from a nearby refinery drifting over local neighborhoods.
“I asked our Climate Trace team if it was possible to track these pollutants worldwide,” he recalled.
This innovation now allows the public to access both raw data on significant polluters and visual maps showing how PM2.5 pollution moves near major urban areas. Gore mentioned that, in time, these pollution maps will be accessible globally.
Although people have long suspected the dangers of soot, only recently have Climate Trace and researchers at Carnegie Mellon University managed to compile and interpret worldwide data on the problem in a meaningful and reliable way.
“The concept of monitoring 662 million locations globally—without AI, no one would have thought it possible,” he said. “But as we’ve witnessed recently, AI is capable of truly remarkable things.”
Only in recent years have scientists fully understood the extensive health consequences of fine particulate pollution. While its links to lung cancer and heart disease have been established for some time, research over the past decade has revealed that PM2.5 exposure can also raise the risk of numerous other serious conditions, such as low birth weight, kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, type 2 diabetes, and more. Even when within legal limits, fine particulate matter is responsible for tens of thousands of additional deaths in the U.S. each year.
Joel Schwartz, whose pioneering research decades ago led to the elimination of leaded gasoline, was among the first to study the health risks of PM2.5. Gore hopes that increased understanding of the health dangers posed by fossil fuels will inspire widespread action, much like the movement against leaded gasoline.
“I believe this creates circumstances and motivations that could significantly speed up our shift away from carbon-heavy infrastructure,” he said. “It also increases the chances of building political momentum to replace these facilities with cleaner technologies.”
