The climate crisis is no longer a forecast—for millions, it’s become a frequent, difficult, even devastating reality, and every part of Patagonia’s business is implicated. We are enmeshed in carbon emissions: making polyester thread from oil, weaving fabric on machines run on fossil fuels, dyeing fabrics with chemical dyes and waterproofing jackets, sewing shirts in factories, transporting pants from one country to another or from one city to another, shipping clothes in plastic mailbags to the people who order them, driving to work.

If we’re to keep earth livable in the future, we must change our ways. We’re going to have to undertake “rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its October 2018 report. What’s more, if we’re to reduce the risk of calamity, we must act fast to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which will require cutting human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) by about 45 percent from 2010 levels—and achieving “net zero” CO2 emissions—removing as much CO<sub>2</sub> from the air as we add—by 2050.<sup>I</sup>