Tom Grylls

I think one way to put it is it's like the emergency brake that we can pull on climate change.

If we just used all available technology around the world and financed the solutions, we could reduce black carbon emissions globally by 80%.

Hi, really great to be here.

So the more technical term, and the grouping and the language around this has been evolving over the last few decades, and in particular over the last few years, is short-lived climate pollutants or short-lived climate forces.

Exactly.

And I think that's the key.

That's the reason that this language has really emerged over the last few years is to package up what the science community has been thinking about and has shown up in all of the international panel on climate changes assessment reports over the years into something that we can communicate effectively with different types of stakeholders, be that the public, be that policymakers.

So super pollutants is basically a way to package that up.

So super pollutants are the gases and particles in the atmosphere that have a climate effect bigger than carbon dioxide per ton.

So that's black carbon, tropospheric ozone, methane, HFCs, and nitrous oxide.

And what that categorization does is it brings together three really important and powerful characteristics of what's going on in the atmosphere and what solutions we can implement to drive climate and health benefits.

So super pollutants as a grouping are responsible for

half of global warming to date, with the other half attributed to carbon dioxide.

They are responsible for millions of premature deaths per year due to air pollution.

Many of them also last in the atmosphere for a much shorter amount of time than carbon dioxide, which means that some of the benefits we can see by tackling these super pollutants can be realized much more quickly.

Yeah, for sure.

I think one way to put it is it's like the emergency brake that we can pull on climate change.

So by tackling these super pollutants, we can avoid the temperature increase within the next decade.

And on the health side, you can immediately and visually see the benefits in tackling these.

So from an air pollution perspective,