The Earth is running out of time.
Our climate is becoming more chaotic & dangerous. The world’s carbon budget is about to run out. Yet current & planned coal investment will exceed the 1.5ºC threshold by 300 per cent.
These are the key reports and studies that show the urgency for moving beyond coal.
Accelerating global heating
The Earth has now passed 1ºC of average global heating, and in some regions even more. In 2019 Australia experienced 2ºC and vast and unprecedented fire. To avoid the worst climate effects, the IPCC recommends the world cut greenhouse emissions to zero by 2050 and 50% by 2030.
Scientists warn that warming beyond 1.5ºC could trigger “self-reinforcing feedbacks” that will push the Earth System into a “Hothouse Earth” pathway from which there can be no recovery. They recommend a faster reduction timetable than the IPCC - net zero by the early 2040s.
In its recent study of the global climate from 2015-2019, the World Meteorological Association states that climate change is accelerating. Evidence includes record temperatures on land and sea, increased acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans, and abrupt decline in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.
Massive forest fires and devastating tropical cyclones are signs that dangerous climate change has already arrived.
Hothouse Earth? Trajectories of the Earth system in the Anthropocene
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Global Warming of 1.5ºC
World Meteorological Organization: Climate change is accelerating
Paris & the disappearing carbon budget
The Paris Agreement was a great achievement, but its voluntary and unenforceable structure is now a major weakness. Greenhouse emissions have continued to rise and not enough nations will commit to the rapid reductions needed.
This is why proposals for new agreements - like the CET and the fossil fuel NPT - are being made, to force action on key emissions sectors.
The “carbon budget” picture - how much CO2 the world can emit before the 1.5ºC threshold is breached - is especially alarming. This Climate Analytics study shows that existing and planned coal power investment could exceed the 1.5ºC budget by 317 per cent by 2050.
The CarbonBrief survey shows that if current levels of emissions continue, the world has at best six years and at worst one year before 1.5ºC of warming is locked in.
Dangerous Incrementalism of the Paris Agreement
Climate Analytics - Implications of the Paris Agreement for Coal Use in the Power Sector
CarbonBrief - How much ‘carbon budget’ is left?
Deepening climate insecurity
Climate science has long predicted that ocean and atmospheric heating would increase the intensity of cyclones, floods and fire. This decade a new level - Catastrophic - was added to the McArthur forest fire danger index, and tropical cyclones set new records in power and violence. In this way, climate change is a growing threat to people, states and ecosystems. Climate-induced drought and crop failure were also a factor in the wars in the Sudan and Syria.
Now we have disturbing evidence that such insecurity is worsening.
Australia’s 2019-20 fires were unprecedented in scale and speed. 451 people died, 22 million ha. burned, and over a billion animals perished. Major cities were choked in smoke and under threat from the flames. Earlier that year Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique were hit by two powerful cyclones - one the strongest to make landfall in Africa - putting 2 million people in dire need. And in 2020, South Asia endured vast floods that inundated a third of Bangladesh, killed hundreds, and displaced millions from their homes.
South Asia's extreme floods in 2020
Australia's summer of crisis
Malawi, Zimbabwe & Mozambique's 2019 cyclone destruction
