A team from UNSW Sydney and partner universities has launched the Carbon Impacts Tracer, an open source tool that estimates how much warming and human and environmental damage a specific fossil fuel project will cause. It connects a project's lifetime CO2 emissions to global temperature rise, then to effects like heat deaths, crop loss, glacier melt and coral reef damage. The tool uses peer reviewed attribution studies only where the evidence is robust enough, so it currently covers eight damage types. Users can enter emissions for any project, company or country, or use built in case studies such as Woodside's Browse to North West Shelf gas project and proposed Australian and UK projects. This matters for legal accountability. Courts and regulators have struggled to link one project's emissions to concrete harms. The tool gives communities, insurers and decision makers a transparent way to see what a new coal, gas or oil field is likely to cost in lives and nature, not just in tonnes of carbon.
