I was born at 323ppm. And you?

When were you born? Forget your Christian birth year – what was your "CBY"!?

I was born with 323.04 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. Parts per million. Today it’s 416.43 ppm. A staggering rise of 30% – a continuously rising line in our measurements over the past decades with an undeterred upward trajectory for the years to come.

So, look it up. What was your ppm?

Why?

Every year has a very specific carbon footprint. And scientifically more accurate than our globally predominant Christian “common era”, governed by our Gregorian calendar – and that alone is neglecting Islamic, Hindi, Buddhist, Chinese, and many other cultures and traditions. Apart from that, historical “forensics” is inconsistent, so religious scholars relate Jesus Christ’s birth year to King Herod’s death to approximately 4 BCE, already putting our global timeline off by at least a full 4 years.

Let’s look around for alternatives.

For Chinese it would be the year 4721. Governed by a “lunisolar” calendar on a sexagenary (60-year) cycle with “stems” and “branches”, creating 60 stem-branch combinations in total. The 60-year cycle figuratively representing a lifespan in ancient times.

Or as the Hindi new year celebration, the Vikram Samvat, now having welcomed the year 2080.

The current Buddhist (Thai) year is 2566 BE, celebrated actually on their New Year’s day April 13th (Songkran), but moved to January 1 to synchronize with the rest of the world. And yes, for those who guessed it, the “BE” abbreviation stands for “Buddhist Era”.

Looking towards the Islamic cultures we would have celebrated the year 1444 on July 30 last year. So 1445 is just around the corner likely starting July 19 this year with an already announced public holiday on July 20.

According to the Hebrew calendar we would be in year 5783. By the way, just giving us another 217 years as the year 6000 marks the latest time for the initiation of the Messianic Age, a new era proclaimed by the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) in one form or another.

For the more secular, agnostic or scientific among us, we could dive into physics and revert to approximations of pulsar or neutron star cycles or galactic rotations of our Milky Way. Or we could expand our existing atomic clocks: these hi-tech, ultra-precision lab contraptions measuring the oscillations of suspended Caesium atoms – breaking down that simple regular second on our watches to a mind boggling 9,192,631,770 units.

Wait, what…? Over 9 billion segments of a second in accuracy? Great for scientific research and keeping satellites in sync, but probably not viable for our desktop calendars.

We could try to go with Earth’s geological epochs and break down time via Triassic, Jurassic up to Holocene phases. Though then leaving us with inaccuracies of up to several 100,000 years while trying to interpret sediment layers in our Earth’s crust. And radiocarbon C-14 dating will only go back reliably about 50,000 years to track our calendar years fairly accurately. Because using humankind’s cultural calendar for Stone Age phases and continuing over Bronze, Iron, and Industrial Ages until today, will leave us with overlapping geographical pockets and undefined transitions as cultural developments were never globally in sync.

So, where does that leave us?

Yes, how about our "carbon dioxide" clock. According to statista, in 2021 global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industries already surpassed 37 billion tons (gigatons). Emissions are expected to have risen another 1% percent in 2022 to 37.5 gigatons of CO2. The numbers of the IEA are just slightly lower, but also on a record-breaking course. This is an increase of over 60% globally since 1990 – with the two biggest contributors USA and China.

My proposal of a "Carbon Birth Year" might not sound very attractive – but could keep us focused for the decades to come.

Because time is limited: How many CO2 gigatons do we have left before we ruin our atmosphere for good?

Happy Carbon Birthday to all of you! ?