Category Archives: 1.5 degrees

Why We Must Continue Fighting for 1.5°C

I’m writing this post from Bonn, Germany, where I’m attending the UNFCCC’s 62nd session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62) – a critical mid-year climate negotiation aimed at helping the world stay on track to meet its climate goals (read more about my trip in a recent blog here). But, after the most recent scientific updates and a stunning rollback of U.S. environmental protections, I’m left asking myself: “What will it take for those in power to finally take the climate crisis seriously?”

According to a significant update presented here in Bonn by Climate Analytics to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) negotiating bloc, the Earth is now truly, dangerously close to breaching the 1.5°C global warming threshold. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the world is predicted with 70% certainty to top 1.5°C between 2025 and 2029, sometime within the next three years. The data illustrate that 2024 was already close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and that unless we drastically cut emissions starting now, we are likely to overshoot 1.6°C or more, with devastating consequences for ecosystems, economies, and communities.

Let me be blunt: 1.5°C is not just a number, it’s a lifeline, especially for vulnerable places like my home in South Florida and for low-lying nations across the Caribbean and Pacific. Overshooting this target will lock in multi-meter sea level rise over the coming centuries, submerge coastal cities, devastate coral reefs, collapse ecosystems such as the Amazon Rainforest, and expose billions of people to lethal heat and water stress.

And yet, in this moment of scientific clarity and political urgency, the United States (one of the world’s largest emitters of fossil fuels that are causing our climate change crisis) just did the unthinkable. On June 12th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will no longer regulate climate pollution from power plants, effectively gutting one of the few federal policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. I shouldn’t have to, but I do want to note that this department is titled the “Environmental Protection Agency,” not the “Energy Proliferation Agency.”

This is more than just a political decision; it’s a climate crime. It defies science, future generations, frontline communities, and decades of advocacy. And it flies in the face of decades of U.S. knowledge: even back in 1986, President Reagan’s own EPA Administrator acknowledged the need to act on global warming in an article written for the New York Times:

So, why are we moving backward?

From the science presented here at SB62, the message is crystal clear:

1. The rate of warming has doubled since the 1970s.

2. Natural carbon sinks (like forests and our oceans) are failing to keep up, reducing the Earth’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

3. Sea level rise is accelerating, disproportionately affecting small island nations and coastal regions, such as Miami-Dade and Monroe County, as two local Florida examples.

4. Current policies are leading us to 3°C of warming—a world of disaster and displacement.

But there is still hope.

The Climate Analytics briefing made it clear that limiting warming to 1.6-1.7°C is still achievable if we act now. And global net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the 2070s could bring temperatures back under control by the end of the century.

This isn’t about blind optimism. It’s about fact-based science, holding polluters accountable, accelerating the transition to renewable energy, and standing in solidarity with the world’s most vulnerable, who have contributed the least to this crisis but are suffering the most.

We cannot give up on 1.5°C. Giving up would be the ultimate betrayal of Small Island Developing States, such as those I am working with here at SB62, as well as global youth and every single future generation forever and ever. It would mean walking away from the most science-based and equitable goal the world has ever agreed upon, undermining net-zero targets and climate justice commitments, and legitimizing fossil fuel expansion at the exact moment we must phase them out.

1.5°C is not dead, but time is running out.

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3.1 Degrees

As the second week of COP29 continues, it’s worth considering that the Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty that was adopted in Paris, France during COP21 in late 2015 when 196 of the world’s nations agreed to a primary goal that seeks to limit global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” above pre-industrial levels, while also setting what was called an ambitious goal to limit the actual increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius versus pre-industrial levels. It is these goals, especially the 1.5 degrees mark, that the nations of the world have since been focused on achieving so as to mitigate and avoid the most catastrophic and costly impacts of our climate crisis should temperatures rise above that mark by century end.

How are we doing since those goals were established?

Well, nine years after the Paris Agreement’s goals were published, society is currently on track to have temperatures increase between 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Based on existing technologies, a rapid, seismic adjustment is needed by the nations of the world, especially the largest polluters such as China and the United States, if we are to have any chance of achieving the goals from Paris in 2015.

At COP29, which started last week in Baku, Azerbaijan, the world’s nations will review their progress and plans towards meeting the Paris Agreement goals and debate the updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NCDs) that I wrote about in one of my last posts, revised plans that are due to be published in early 2025. The NDCs seek to determine how the world’s nations, by country and collectively, are progressing (or regressing) towards the Paris Agreement goals and it is my view that the outcome from this year’s COP on this topic will be one of the most important issue delegates address in Baku.

Just in time for COP29, the United Nations Environment Programme has published its most recent Emissions Gap Report, its 15th in an ongoing series in which the world’s leading climate scientists review ongoing trends and possible solutions with the Paris Agreement’s goals in mind. Given our current trajectory versus mankind’s stated goals from 2015, this year’s report is fittingly entitled “No more hot air … please!” As the report aptly summarizes, when it comes to transitioning our society to renewable energy and reducing the world’s greenhouse gas pollution there is a “massive gap between rhetoric and reality.”

This year’s report includes the illustration above that depicts where the world’s temperature is headed under various scenarios beginning with what is expected to happen if current policies continue (there is, for example, an estimated 100% chance that we will exceed the 1.5-degree aspirational goal from the Paris Agreement, a 97% chance of reaching or surpassing 2 degrees, and a 37% chance of reaching/exceeding 3 degrees). This table, and the first line within it that depicts a continuation of our current worldwide approach, helps explain the report’s conclusion that there is a “massive gap between rhetoric and reality.” Without dramatically increasing our shift away from polluting products and processes to renewables, it’s clear that we will exceed our current temperature goals and in doing so place our society and planet in dire danger.

You can find the most recent Emissions Gap Report from the UN here.

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