In an effort to build the largest display of virtue the world has ever seen, MIT climate experts have vowed that by 2050 not a single molecule of life-threatening carbon dioxide will escape campus.

Never mind that China will have over 2,000 operating coal power plants by then. Intentions are more important than results, and if the flow of federal climate dollars is to be sustained to make up for collapsing alumni donations, only the noblest of intentions will do.

According to MIT’s Climate Action Plan, the average person exhales 2.3 pounds of carbon dioxide every day. This does not include bloviating SHASS professors who have been known to produce four times that amount. Beginning in 2026 no student, faculty member, staff, or visitor will be allowed on campus unless they are wearing carbon dioxide capture masks.

Students have already demonstrated sheep-like attributes when ordered to wear masks, so compliance is not expected to be a problem.

Phase two of the program will address the problem of methane emissions due to the 14 to 23 farts the average person releases every day. Scientists are working diligently to prefect a disposable carbon-scrubbing anal plug that will become mandatory as soon as the design is approved by experts at MIT’s office of LGBTQ valorization.

MIT president Sally Kornbluth praised the plan, noting that “at least 20% of MIT’s faculty work on questions related to climate change.” Keeping that much elite brain power on the dole takes a constant flow of federal dollars. Sustaining this flow will be the primary focus of MIT’s new Vice President for Climate, living proof of MIT’s unshakable commitment to the war on carbon.