ILLUSTRATION BY GREGORI SAAVEDRA
Some things move too quickly, and some are too stuck in place. Carbon dioxide falls into the first category: after it pours out of the tailpipe of your car or the smokestack of your power plant, it rapidly mixes into the atmosphere, warming the temperature everywhere. Money is kind of the opposite: over the decades it has been piling up in the global north, in places where it can’t do enough to stop the climate crisis.