Please note that the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs CC BY-ND. The Periodic Table is available for free download. Play the EuChemS video game ‘Elemental Escapades!’ online here! If we behave responsibly by cutting our dependence on fossil fuels and never using it from conflict resources, we can save our beautiful and diverse planet and restore carbon to its rightful green colour. This updated version of the EuChemS Periodic Table graphically highlights the problems of carbon in our world now. For millennia these two processes, compounded with CO 2 absorption and release by the oceans, have been in balance justifying the benign green colour given to carbon in the 2019 Periodic Table.īurning carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas) pumps so much extra CO 2 into the air that photosynthesis and the oceans can’t keep up so CO 2 levels rise leading to global warming and climate change that will cause severe disruption to all forms of life in the planet very soon if we do nothing.Ĭhanging the colour of carbon is a clarion call to everyone, especially those responsible for the outcomes of COP26, to do all in their power to reduce their CO 2 emissions for the good of the next generations.īut why is it also grey, defined as “From conflict resources”?Ĭarbon, especially oil, can come from places where wars are fought over the oilfields or where oil revenues are used to fight wars.Īs with all other conflict minerals, EuChemS calls on all oil refiners and users to avoid buying from oilfields tainted by conflict. The carbon cycle balances photosynthesis, by which plants grow taking up CO 2, with respiration (breathing), by which we and all flora and fauna live and give out CO 2.
Grey because it can come from conflict resources. Red because it will very shortly cause serious problems if we do nothing to restrict its use. Green because it is plentifully available in the form of carbon dioxide (too plentiful), carbonate rocks and vegetation. The main change to the EuChemS Periodic Table is to convert the colour of carbon from the benign green colour to a tricolour of green, red and dark grey. The European Chemical Society (EuChemS) is releasing an updated version of its iconic Periodic Table, first produced for the International Year of the Periodic Table in 2019.
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