I've been saying for a while that I strongly suspect that out-of-sight industrial scale harvesting (and its incidental destruction) of living marine resources are likely to prove an even more critical driver.

To that we should add the loss of coastal, riverine and other wetlands which in their natural state played disproportionate roles in wider environmental protection (as evidenced in New Orleans and the Irrawaddy delta), as well as feeding the prehistoric rise of humanity (refer ubiquity of shell middens).

Let us also not forget that old environmental standard bearer, deforestation, which has much more complex consequences that are communicated by absorbing it into broad brush CO₂ measures.

And I'd like to add the loss of intellectual stimulation provided by direct observation of the glories of nature, from a night sky not dimmed by aerosols and light pollution to the increasing inaccessibility of true wilderness to urbanised populations.

If the self-indulgence of my generation (and of the aspirants we have cultivated) is to be redressed sufficiently to provide a way forward for both our heirs and the natural systems which begat and still sustain us, we are going to need to address the (negative) contributions all of the above systemically instead of deluding ourselves that a carbon budget will somehow prove a more useful measure than that other over-simplistic metric, money, has ever been of true value.