Al Gore helped launch a global emissions tracker that keeps big polluters honest

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is a founding member of the nonprofit that made a tool to track big polluters. (Maansi Srivastava/NPR)

In the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one of the longstanding challenges has been figuring out who is exactly producing them and how much.

Now, a new global tracker is helping to make clear exactly where major greenhouse gas emissions are originating. Created by the nonprofit Climate Trace, the interactive map uses a combination of satellites, sensors and machine learning to measure the top polluters worldwide.