The year 2023 is on track to become the hottest in human history and the rate of warming is such that the most ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement, supposed to prevent us from the worst of the climate crisis , could be out of reach in just over ten years.
According to an update of the global climate trajectory established by the European Copernicus Observatory, global warming is expected to reach 1.5˚C, compared to the pre-industrial era, by the end of 2034.
This level of climate disruption will become a reality if the current trajectory is maintained, specifies the organization, which is a reference in the field of climate change. Its conclusions match those of a study published in early 2023 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which indicated that the +1.5°C mark should be reached between 2033 and 2035.
This limit of 1.5˚C was included as the most ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015. It aims to avoid the worst of the warming which is already underway, due to our dependence on fossil fuels.
Meeting this commitment would require, at a minimum, capping global greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2025, then reducing them by 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels. At the moment, the voluntary commitments made by States are leading us towards a warming of at least 2.5°C, assuming that everyone achieves their objectives.
Cooperation
This Monday, the director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, also pleaded for better international cooperation on the climate issue, a victim of current “geopolitical tensions”.
The goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C is “still within reach” but it faces “many challenges”, he declared at the opening of an international climate meeting and energy organized in Madrid two months before the next United Nations climate conference, COP28.
Limiting global climate disruption to a viable threshold requires rich countries to bring forward their carbon neutrality target to 2045, the International Energy Agency concluded last week in a new report.
In this context, no new fossil fuel exploitation projects, particularly in Canada, should not be authorized, underlined Monday the general director of the Climate Action Network, Caroline Brouillette.
The president of COP28 and boss of the main oil company in the United Arab Emirates, Sultan al-Jaber, for his part affirmed on Monday that the oil industry is “at the heart of the solution” to fight global warming.
“For too long this industry has been seen as part of the problem, not doing enough, even blocking progress in some cases,” said the head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, during a conference on energy in the United Arab Emirates.
“Global Boil”
The year 2023, marked by an increase in extreme climatic events, already gives us a foretaste of the future impacts of the worsening climate crisis.
Summer, namely the months of June, July and August, saw the highest average global temperatures ever measured, according to Copernicus, for which 2023 will probably be the hottest year in history.
The month of July 2023, for example, was 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial average. On the basis of these data, the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, declared that “the era of global warming is over” and that “the era of global boiling has arrived”.
Although climate change has not yet reached the dramatic thresholds predicted by science, the consequences are already very real, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Heat waves, heatwaves and droughts are almost certainly “more frequent and more intense” in most regions of the globe, as are intense precipitation events.
Humanity is also responsible for the melting of Greenland’s ice and that of several glaciers on the planet. Same thing for the rise in ocean levels and their warming. And once warming exceeds 1.5°C, more than 90% of the planet’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearing.
With Agence France-Presse