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No. You're right about the company case: when you look at a company, you only care about its profit today (and in the future). You don't really care about how much money it spent to get here.

But for purposes of global warming, you care about the total amount of carbon in the air. The cumulative sum. The integral.

If a company becomes profitable today, it survives.

If emissions were to magically stop today...warming continues!



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