Death of the 2-degree climate goal and the plastic straw

Not that this story needs any participation from the newly sworn-in President Trump, but it does have some pieces headlined by him – withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, ramping up domestic oil and gas production, and removing incentives for EVs, besides scrubbing out climate change content from US agency websites.

But way before Trump came into the picture, the world was well on its way to 1.5-degree disaster with two wars and shrinking climate commitments from increasingly right-wing regimes. Renowned climate scientist James Hansen is among those who say that the planet is on course to shoot past 2 degrees of global warming over the next two decades. Last year he warned that the 1.5 goal was “deader than a doornail.”

Two new studies published last week called out an end to the 2-degree climate goal, signalling that the world is failing to tackle rapid global warming. According to the 1^st study, by Canadian climate scientist Alex Cannon, the world has seen 12 straight months over 1.5 degrees and another 6 months, and we would be officially over the 1.5-degree threshold. There is a 60-80% chance the Paris threshold has already been crossed. If the world experiences 18 consecutive months at or above the 1.5-degree limit, it will be “virtually certain” the Paris Agreement has been breached, the study found.

Already, 2023 and 2024 were consecutively the hottest years on record, with 2024 being 1.6 degrees above the pre-industrial average, making it the 1^st year above the Paris threshold of 1.5 degrees.

The 2^nd paper, by Emanuele Bevacqua, a climate scientist at the Helmholtz Centre in Germany, looked at historical warming trends and found the first single year to breach a temperature threshold also fell within the first 20-year period in which average temperatures reached the same threshold. If these trends continue, it is almost certain 2024 will fall within the first 20-year period of 1.5-degree warming, the report concluded.

Both papers stress that rapid and strong climate action can still reduce the likelihood of breaching the Paris Agreement goals over the next years and decades. Right on cue, Argentina and Indonesia are said to be mulling pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

With little to no likelihood of the more stringent climate action required to curb emissions and bring the wolrd backon the 1.5 degree or even 2-degree track, the world is on track for 3 or 3.5 degree warming.  Above 1.5 degrees, increasingly extreme heat, drought, floods and fires will become hard for humans and ecosystems to adapt to. At 2 degrees, millions of more lives would be at risk.

And I believe it won’t be an exaggeration to say that latest Trump’s executive order signing in plastic straws once again into the White House may well have been the proverbial straw that broke the 2-degree camel’s back.