And the amounts of money at stake are huge. The total amount of carbon in reserve represents roughly $27 trillion—more than ten times the annual GDP of the United Kingdom. If we were serious about keeping warming below 2 degrees, approximately 80 percent of that would be useless, stranded assets. Given these stakes, it is no mystery why the fossil fuel companies fight furiously to block every piece of legislation that would point us in the right emissions direction, and why some directly fund the climate change denier movement.
