"Carbon neutrality"
is not so hard a word

The word "carbon" comes up often in our stories. "Recent carbon," "cutting carbon," "carbon neutrality"… yet we've never taken the time to explain what carbon actually is, or what carbon neutrality means. Today, let's go back to the very beginning and unpack these words as simply as we can.

But what on earth is carbon?

Before we speak of carbon neutrality, we should first know what "carbon" is.

Every substance in the world is made of particles far too small to see. We call these basic particles "elements." The oxygen we breathe, the hydrogen in water, the iron in steel — all are elements. Carbon is simply one of them. Like Lego bricks, these tiny particles snap together this way and that to build all the countless things of the world.

And among them, carbon is a very special brick — because it is the core material that builds living things. Our bodies, trees, the food we eat, even the coal in the ground are all framed upon carbon. It's no exaggeration to say nothing alive is made without carbon. Astonishingly, both pencil lead and the dazzling diamond are, at heart, pure carbon. The same carbon takes on such different forms depending only on how it is arranged.

So here is what to remember: carbon is not a bad thing in itself — it is, rather, the stuff of life. The problem arises elsewhere.

The trouble begins when "carbon dioxide" grows too great

By the way, carbon is written with the symbol C — from the first letter of the Latin word for "charcoal." And oxygen is written O. When one carbon (C) meets two oxygen (O₂) in the air and pairs off, it becomes the gas we've all heard of — carbon dioxide (CO₂). The name means just that: "carbon with two oxygens attached." It's what we breathe out, and what rises whenever something burns. To burn anything, wood or coal, is to send the carbon within it out as carbon dioxide, joined to oxygen from the air.

This, too, is natural in itself. The problem comes when this carbon dioxide grows too abundant.

The blanket over the earth grew too thick

Carbon dioxide has one particular trait: it wraps around the earth and traps heat — much like a quilt.

A blanket of the right thickness is a blessing. Thanks to it, the earth does not freeze but stays warm enough to cradle life. Had there been no blanket at all, the earth would be a bitterly cold planet. The problem is a blanket grown too thick.

As industry advanced, people began digging up and burning great quantities of coal and oil that had slept deep underground. Each time, carbon long locked in the earth poured out into the air as carbon dioxide. The blanket thickened, and as it thickened, the earth grew a little warmer. This is what we call "global warming."

Picture a seesaw

So what should we do? Here is where the phrase carbon neutrality comes in.

There's one point about carbon neutrality that's easy to misunderstand: taking it to mean "let's emit no carbon at all." But that is simply impossible. We release carbon dioxide with every breath, and carbon comes from everything we do — cooking, heating a room, making things. We cannot emit none at all.

So carbon neutrality means something a little different. Picture a seesaw on a playground. On one side sits the carbon we send out into the air. On the other sits the carbon we take back in. When the two weigh the same, the seesaw tips to neither side and comes to level.

This level state is exactly what carbon neutrality is. Not sending out no carbon, but taking back as much as we send, to strike a balance. That is why we use the word "neutral" — it means a state tipped to neither side, held in perfect balance. Not an empty zero, but a taut and level poise.

What sits on the other side is a tree

So what can sit on the other side of the seesaw, in the seat that "takes carbon back in"? The most natural and oldest answer is the tree.

As a tree grows, it draws carbon dioxide from the air and stores it, bit by bit, within its body. This is the photosynthesis we spoke of in an earlier story. For a tree to grow is for that much carbon in the air to move over and settle inside the tree. So a forest is a vast warehouse that takes carbon in, and planting trees is placing weight on the other side of the seesaw.

Now you can see how this connects to our story. We plant trees to take carbon from the air. With the trees we raise, we replace coal, cutting the carbon freshly dug up and burned. And where we cut, we plant again, so the weight on the take-in side is never broken. What we do is lend our strength to tipping the earth's tilted seesaw back toward level.