The Paris Agreement Is Dead
The Paris Agreement Is Dead
We have failed.
I have some horrific news. The Copernicus Climate Change Service, a world leader in climate study, recently announced that global temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 were the highest on record. In fact, the global average temperature over that time was 1.64 degrees Celsius hotter than in pre-industrial times. Why is that horrific? Well, it’s the first time we have broken past the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. In fact, it takes us worryingly close to the Paris Agreement’s back-up target of “limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius.” So, is the optimistic future promised by said agreement now dead?
Firstly, let’s get some clarity on this situation. Copernicus’s revelation doesn’t actually break the Paris Agreement’s goals. The Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius target is measured as an average global temperature over a decade, not a year. But, average global temperatures have only gone up since 2020, and before then, there was a solid upward trajectory since the late 70s. As such, it is highly likely we will break this target over the next few years, as global temperatures are only set to rise even further.
1.64 degrees Celsius might not sound like a huge increase, but to give you some context, the average global temperature was only 1.01 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. So, in less than 4 years, global temperature increases have gone up roughly 64%!
Why? Well, during this time period, we experienced an incredibly powerful El Niño. El Niño and La Niña are two sides of a natural climate cycle which sees the Pacific heat up (El Niño) or cool down (La Niña), which have a significant impact on global temperatures and weather systems. The El Niño in 2023 was one of the hottest and most powerful on record and helped create this spike in global average temperatures. You might be tempted to think that this means this recent temperature spike was a natural occurrence and that, therefore, we can ignore it. But this isn’t how El Niño or La Niña works. Instead, during La Niña, heat from the environment is absorbed and stored in the Pacific, which is then released during El Niño. As such, a strong El Niño can only be deemed “natural” if it is preceded by a strong and cold La Niña. Well, the La Niña before 2023’s insanely strong El Niño was incredibly weak. As such, this strong El Niño results from the Pacific absorbing vast amounts of additional head from climate change, effectively delaying its impact. All we are seeing with this Copernicus data is how hot things really are when the Pacific isn’t helping to cool the entire planet.
There are other huge reasons too. For example, recent clean marine fuel rules have reduced the amount of sulphur emissions from shipping. Sounds good, and it is for the health of animals and humans. However, sulphur emissions cause marine clouds to become brighter, reflecting more of the Sun’s light back to space, reducing the greenhouse gas effect and helping to cool the planet. As such, switching fuels like this has led to a dramatic increase in global warming, as it was no longer hidden by sulphur emissions.
There is, of course, the other gigantic reason: we have failed to cut emissions fast enough. Besides a temporary dip in emissions thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, global emissions have continued to rise. We simply aren’t decarbonising industries or adopting low-carbon technologies fast enough. Without dramatically curbing our emissions, global average temperatures will rise at the same rate, and we will blast past our ultimate 2-degree Celsius target by 2040.
So, is the Paris Agreement dead?
The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is now practically dead. We would have to massively change the global culture and economy in just a few years to meet that target. But the 2-degree limit is still just about achievable. If we make sizeable and consistent progress over the coming decade and a bit, it is possible. Now, 2 degrees Celsius of global warming is still utterly devastating. The global economy will suffer, ecosystems will collapse, and our quality of life will go substantially down. But it is liveable, and we can just about mitigate the impact of 2 degrees of warming. As such, this Copernicus data is the giant red flag that this is our last chance saloon to save the planet from ourselves and have a future that isn’t a vision of hell.
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Sources: The Guardian, Climate.gov, Will Lockett, Nature, Will Lockett, UN, UN, Our World In Data