Climate's collision course: Science meets politics

Is humanity on a path to collapse in a 3-degree hotter world? That's the question Breakthrough's recent report, Collision Course, sets out to answer.  This is the report overview. 

There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals and slow, non-disruptive change, and activists and key researchers who see the world hurtling towards climate breakdown and social collapse. What light does recent evidence shine on these dissonant views? 

In practical terms, the world has reached 1.5°C of warming and the pace of warming is increasing. An accelerated rate of warming is likely to continue to mid-century given the failure so far to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.  Many impacts are occurring faster than forecast, and beyond model projections, including the form, severity and frequency of extreme events such as unprecedented heatwaves and floods.

Climate policy is on a collision course with physical reality

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Download the report

There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals, market solutions and non-disruptive change, and activists and key researchers who see the world hurtling towards climate breakdown and social collapse. 

A prime example was the 29th global gathering of 50,000 climate policymakers and lobbyists at the the United Nations’ COP conference, held this year in the petrostate of Azerbaijan, which failed much as its predecessors have done. It was not a surprising outcome. Every participating nation has a veto over every decision, which a bloc led by Saudi Arabia used to great effect. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev told the conference that oil and gas are a “gift of God“. Climate activists were dismayed at the outcome.

The two main COP29 “successes” were a flawed carbon trading deal which means the system may essentially give countries and companies permissions to keep polluting, and a 2035 climate finance deal that was just 30% of the amount estimated by the Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance as necessary for the most vulnerable states.

And key experts including former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson in a damning statement said that COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul.

Whilst governments and policy wonks at the COP ritually reiterated their mantra about “keeping warming below 1.5°C”, several agencies are reporting it is almost certain that 2024 will be hotter than 1.5°C and surpass 2023, even though the El Niño had faded earlier in the year.

In practical terms, the world has reached 1.5°C and the pace of warming is increasing, an acceleration likely to be sustained to mid-century given the failure so far to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and the remote prospect of a rapid decline.