The Year the World Crosses 1.5 Degrees
One number anchors the climate outlook: the projected year the world crosses 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above the preindustrial average. Move that year, and the planning that depends on it shifts too. This week, at the COP31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, that number moved sharply forward.
When the Paris agreement was adopted in 2015, scientists projected the average global temperature would pass that threshold around 2045. [1] After another decade of global climate summits, the crossing is now projected as soon as 2029, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate change service. [1] Sixteen years of expected breathing room have evaporated in ten years of negotiations.
The EU scientists describe the shift as striking and say global warming has accelerated significantly since the Paris pact. [1] But they are unambiguous about the main driver: ever-growing concentrations of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.
What sits behind that acceleration is not a mystery in policy terms, even where the physics retains open questions. Climate Action Tracker, a nonprofit group that analyzes climate policies, finds the planet still on track to warm nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. That rise would devastate coral reefs, disrupt agriculture and forests, and melt most of the world’s ice.
Two Institutions, Two Lenses, One Direction
The finding gains its weight from two separate reports released at the same summit. Climate Action Tracker assesses what governments have pledged and what those pledges would deliver. Copernicus, the EU’s climate change service, measures what the atmosphere is actually doing. One reads the promises; the other reads the thermometer. When both point the same way, the warning is harder to dismiss.
Sarah Heck, a climate policy analyst with the international climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics, delivered the policy verdict without softening it. Collective government action on climate change has stalled for the fifth consecutive year, she said. The forces that negate progress are concrete: new oil and gas drilling projects, and governments that are delaying, weakening, or rolling back their climate policies. Renewables are rising, but the curve is not bending fast enough.
Niklas Höhne, a researcher with The New Climate Institute, supplied the image that makes the arithmetic visceral. Developing new oil and gas projects, he said, is a bit like discovering your food is burning and then turning up the stove instead of turning it off.
Even the most optimistic scenario — full implementation of every existing policy and promise — lands at 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels by 2100. Climate scientists consider that increase extremely dangerous, according to the research cited by the reporting.
Where the Next Test Lands
The next test is concrete. It sits in the negotiating rooms of COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, co-hosted by Turkey and Australia. Höhne noted a specific sticking point: the two co-hosts have so far opposed including the word “clean” in connection with electrification targets. He said the position is very hard to understand, and the only explanation he can think of is their interest in fossil fuels. Australia is one of the world’s biggest coal exporters; Turkey is a major coal consumer whose power sector remains highly dependent on the most climate-damaging fossil fuel. Neither host has offered specific plans to transition away from fossil fuels.
Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, framed the choice facing governments at this COP. If they continue supporting fossil fuels, he said, it would consign humanity and our ecosystems to insurmountable economic damage and irretrievable loss. He also called out wealthy, developed countries for a lack of leadership, noting that European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did not mention transitioning away from fossil fuels in her speech this week at COP31.
Greta Thunberg, attending the U.N. climate talks for the first time since 2021, put the stakes in the plainest terms. The climate crisis, she said, is a matter of life and death, and the actions of those in power are completely detached from reality. As we speak, she added, we are losing priceless lives, ecosystems, and species that we will never get back. The current level of warming has already triggered deadly and destructive floods, wildfires, and catastrophic glacier collapses.
