The world has changed dramatically in the decade since leaders celebrated historic climate agreement in Paris ten years ago, but not quite in the way they expected or wanted.
Earth climate warming received nastier faster than society could wean itself off burning coal, oil and natural gas which emits carbon pollution which causes global warmingsaid several scientists and officials.
There is progress – more than a degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) has not been factored into projections of future warming since 2015, but its shortfall will be in focus over the next two weeks when diplomats gather in Belem, Brazil, to annual UN climate talks.
“I think it’s important that we are honest with the world and declare failure,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He said the harm from warming is occurring faster and more severely than scientists had predicted.
But diplomats are not giving up.
“We are actually moving in the direction we set in Paris at a speed that none of us could have predicted,” said former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, who helped lead this is an agreementwhich requires countries to develop plans to combat warming.
But the pace of human climate action is slower than the acceleration of negative climate impacts, she said, adding that this means that “the gap between the progress we see on the ground and where we need to be, that gap still exists and is widening.”
UN Environment Program executive director Inger Andersen said the world was “clearly falling behind”.
“It’s like we’re sawing off the branch we’re sitting on,” she said.
Danger Signs
The planet's annual temperature has jumped about 0.46 degrees Celsius (0.83 degrees Fahrenheit) since 2015, one of the biggest 10-year changes. temperature increase recordedThis is evidenced by data from the European climate service Copernicus. According to Copernicus' calculations, this year will be the second or third hottest on record. Every year since 2015 has been hotter than the Paris Climate Agreement year.
Deadly heat waves have not only hit traditional hotspots such as India And Middle Eastbut even in more temperate places such as Pacific Northwest in North America And Russian Siberia.
The Earth has been repeatedly exposed to more costly, dangerous and extreme weather conditions. The decade since 2015 marked 5th Atlantic category hurricanes and the largest weather disasters costing billions of dollars in the United States, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. America was hit by 193 disasters costing at least $1 billion over the past 10 years, totaling $1.5 trillion.
Forest fires ate parts Hawaii, California, Europe And Australia. Floods devastated units Pakistan,China And American South. And many of them, but not all, had Imprints of anthropogenic climate changescientists have calculated.
Since 2015, the world has preserved more than 7 trillion tons of ice. glaciers of the world and ice sheets in Greenland And Antarctica have disappeared, ice scientists have calculated. This is equivalent to more than 19 million Empire State Buildings.
Sea level rise accelerates. Over the past decade, global sea levels have risen by 40 millimeters (1.6 inches). That may not sound like a lot, but according to Steve Nerem, a University of Colorado professor who studies sea level rise, that's enough water to fill 30 lakes the size of Lake Erie.
Even the Amazon, where climate talks will take place, has ceased to be planet-saving region that sucks in heat-trapping gases from the air into a region that, due to deforestation, spews them out from time to time.
Success in bending the curve
But officials have also had a lot to celebrate over the past 10 years.
Renewable energy is now cheaper than polluting coal, oil and natural gas in many places. According to two July UN reports. In 2015 half a million electric cars were sold worldwide, with 17 million sold last year, the report said.
“It can’t be stopped,” said former U.S. special climate envoy Todd Stern, who helped negotiate the Paris agreement. “You won't be able to hold back the tides.”
In 2015, UN projections showed the Earth was on track to warm by nearly 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-1800s. The world is now on track to rise in temperature by 2.8 degrees (5 degrees Fahrenheit), and maybe a little less if countries do what they promise.
But this is far from the goal keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), a level that scientific reports let's say, is a more or less dangerous line and which became the main goal of the Paris Agreement.
“Ten years ago, we had a more orderly path to completely eliminate the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise,” Rockström said. “Now we are 10 years later. We failed.”
A report with analysis of dozens of indicators advances—such as solar and wind power—in the transition away from fossil fuel economies found that none were able to keep warming to 1.5 degrees or below.
A report from the Bezos Earth Fund, Climate Analytics, Climate High-Level Champions, ClimateWorks Foundation and World Resources Institute found that 35 of them are at least moving in the right direction, albeit too slowly.
“Technologies that were once hypothetical are now becoming reality. And the good news is that reality has surpassed many of the predictions from a decade ago,” said report author Kelly Levine, head of science and data at the Bezos Earth Fund. “But it's not fast enough for what's needed.”
Pollution continues to rise
Methane levels in the atmosphere increased by 5.2% from 2015 to 2024, and carbon dioxide levels jumped by 5.8% At the same time, according to NOAA.
Several developing countries, including the United States and the rest of the developed world, have cut carbon emissions by about 7% since 2015, but emissions have risen sharply in other countries, with China up 15.5% and India up 26.7%, according to the data. Global Carbon Project data.
Oxfam International looked at global emissions by income level and found that the richest 0.1% of people increased their carbon emissions by 3% since 2015. Meanwhile, the poorest 10% of people reduced their emissions by 30%.
'The Paris Agreement itself failed to produce results,' says historian of climate talks Joanna Depledge from the University of Cambridge in England. “Unfortunately, it's one of those half-full, half-empty situations where you can't say it was a failure. But at the same time, you can't say it was a dramatic success.”
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