The 1.5 degrees climate advocacy conundrum

Breakthrough has just released a new discussion paper, Warming has reached 1.5°C. What does that mean for climate advocacy? This blog is part 3 of the paper, on the 1.5 degrees conundrum.

by David Spratt

1.5°C has become the policy-making target 

Until 2015, climate-policy making and advocacy was focused on the 2°C goal, which was seen as appropriate to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (Article 2 of the UNFCCC). As an aside, how was 2°C ever considered a reasonable goal? Answering that question — it wasn’t science-based, but first proposed by an economist — may provide insight into why 1.5°C isn’t either. 

At the Paris COP in 2015, the overarching goal adopted was to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. Since the Paris Agreement, the focus of advocates has been 1.5°C.

How bad can climate damage get? Worse than you imagine

By David Spratt, first published at The Canberra Times

How bad can climate damage get? Worse than you imagine, if Australians’ recent experience of more extreme weather and natural disasters — driven by a hotter climate — are an indication, because the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future. 

Civil engineer Alan Hoban says flood maps around Australia drastically underestimate the impact climate change will have on rainfall due to conservative assumptions about how fast rainfall intensity will increase. “Very few flood maps in south-east Queensland, or even Australia, yet account for these changes,” he says. 

James Hansen and the scientific contest about accelerated warming: 2025 is the crunch year

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls and Irritations

The record-breaking warming years of 2023 (1.5°C) and 2024 (1.6°C) were above expectations and shocked scientists. Their responses and the subsequent research are a good example of how quickly the physical reality is changing, driving new and contested understandings.

In late 2023, as global and ocean temperatures soared, the most upfront assessment came from Zeke Hausfather: “Staggering. Unnerving. Mind-boggling. Absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.” It was a widely-shared view, with responses such as “unprecedented” and “frightening”. “We’re not as aware of what’s coming as we thought we were,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the University of NSW.

As well, the decline in Antarctic sea-ice extent was much greater than model projections, leading Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center to exclaim: “It's so far outside anything we've seen, it's almost mind-blowing.” The same was true for North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs), which were literally off the chart.

Is AUKUS a priority when climate change - which should be the focus - is about to upend our region?

By Adm. Chris Barrie (Ret.), first published at The Canberra Times and Pearls and Irritations

Global security alliances are in turmoil, and Australia needs to critically  rethink its defence and foreign affairs policies.
I have watched with alarm as Donald Trump and the Republican administration upend traditional alliances. This is the harshest wake-up call since the Fall of Singapore in 1942. Trump may be gone in four years, but the Republican Party and America's political landscape are being fundamentally changed. 

An immediate concern is the future of the American-built nuclear-powered submarines due from the early 2040s through to the late 2050s under AUKUS. There is an increasing likelihood that the US will never build us the submarines, as Trump administration officials have made clear. 

Government refuses to articulate ‘frankly terrifying’ security risks

 by David Spratt, first published at Pearls & Irritations

The Albanese Government has jammed itself by trying to not talk about the greatest threat to Australia’s future, but has now opened itself to the charge of playing politics with security issues.

The absurdity was on full display in a front-page story last weekend, when The Saturday Paper reported that the government gave a secret briefing on 9 December last year to a number of Teal and independent members of parliament on the contents of the Office of National Intelligence assessment of climate-related security risks — one which the government had classified and refused to release in a declassified form for two years.

Collision Course: 3-degrees of warming & humanity's future video

 

by David Spratt

On 11 February, more than 250 people joined me for an online discussion on  the findings of Collision Course, the latest report by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration.  The event was part of the National Sustainability Festival 2025.

Watch the Collision Course webinar

The event unpacked the stark realities of a world shaped by 3 degrees of global warming, and offered a stark examination of the profound risks to humanity, ecosystems, and the foundations of global stability.

As the planet approaches unprecedented climate thresholds, the risks intensify—not only for extreme weather events but for cascading systems failures that threaten food security, infrastructure, health, and geopolitical stability. Collision Course delves into the interconnected challenges of such a future and asks the pressing questions:

• What does life look like under 3 degrees of warming?
• How close are we to these scenarios, and what are the tipping points to avoid?
• Most critically, what actions can still be taken to alter this trajectory?

The forum shed light on the accelerating climate risks and the bold, systemic transformations required to restore a safe climate. Combining scientific insight, policy critique, and an emphasis on actionable solutions, the event aimed to inspire a deeper understanding of humanity’s climate future and catalyze the urgent changes needed to ensure safety and stability.

Read or download the Collision Course report

The world is heading towards 3 degrees Celsius of warming. Will humanity have a future?

 

The world is heading towards 3 degrees Celsius of warming.  Will humanity have a future? 

Join me for an online discussion on Tuesday 11 February at 7.30pm. It's free and you can book at events.humanitix.com/collision-course/tickets.  It is part of the National Sustainability Festival 2025.

This thought-provoking forum will explore the findings of Collision Course, the latest report by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. This event will unpack the stark realities of a world shaped by 3 degrees of global warming, offering a clear-eyed examination of the profound risks to humanity, ecosystems, and the foundations of global stability.

Is Catherine King’s third Tullamarine runway approval valid? No, if climate impacts are included

Air travel is just about the fastest-growing source of climate-heating greenhouse gas emissions.  So the Australian government would be stopping the planned worsening of these emissions, due mainly to optional, conspicuous consumption? Well, no actually.

 by Mark Carter, first published at Pearls&Irritations

On 10 September 2024, federal aviation minister Catherine King gave Melbourne Airport the go-ahead to build a third runway.

Eighteen months earlier, on 10 February 2023, Melbourne Airport’s owner, Australia Pacific Airports Melbourne (APAM) submitted its draft Third Runway Major Development Plan to the Minister, for her approval. 

The federal Airports Act specifies what APAM needed to include in its Plan, along with the procedure the Minister is required to follow in assessing the Plan. 

Climate and security risks? Shhh, says the Albanese Government

 by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

The Los Angeles fires have again demonstrated the need for a steely-eyed approach by governments to climate risks, ensuring that the assessment of those risks is up-to-date, considers the plausible worst-case scenarios, and is made widely available so the public understands what we are facing.

But the Australian Government’s work-in-progress National Climate Risk Assessment appears to be sinking fast, leaving us ill-prepared.

You can’t get to the solution to a problem if you don’t first elaborate the question. That is why risk assessments have become such a big thing in business, at all levels of government, for community-based organisations… and even at my local tennis club, where one is to be done yearly.

But not if you are the Albanese Government, which has blithely set about its climate policy agenda — renewables, batteries, EVs and the grid, all well-mixed with a large expansion of Australia’s coal and gas industries — without ever understanding, or explaining to Australians, the basic question: what is the nature of the threat to be mitigated, and how does their policy contain that threat?

Mobilise as if our lives depend on it

by David Spratt

This article appears as the concluding section of Collision Course: 3 degrees of warming & humanity's future, recently published by Breakthrough.

“The problem is that the status quo is a suicide. Those (Paris) commitments, even if fully met, would lead to an increase in temperature […] above 3 degrees which would mean a catastrophic situation.”
— UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, May 2019

Download the report

In 2005 James Hansen, sometimes dubbed the “godfather” of modern climate research, warned that humanity was “on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption”. Nineteen years later, we are heading for eye-watering social and ecological disruption, and civilisational collapse.  Cities and regions and nations will drown and desertify. There will be an unrelenting global food crisis. Billions will be displaced and the global economic and governance systems of contemporary society will not work. 

In practical terms, the world has reached 1.5°C of global heating, the rate of warming is accelerating and will likely continue on that path for several decades, especially given the failure so far to bend the emissions curve down fast. That means 2°C by 2040 or shortly after, and the emergence of vast zones of unlivable heat two decades after that on the present course of grossly inadequate action. Tipping points have been passed or are close at hand for some of the biggest elements of the climate system, including polar ice sheets and vast forest and permafrost carbon stores; and system inertia and hysteresis make preserving and restoring those systems very challenging. Scientists are increasingly alarmed that we may be heading towards AMOC collapse by mid-century.

A(nother) year of scientific shock and awe

Aftermath of Cyclone Chido, Mayotte

 

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

If an unexpected leap in the global average temperature in 2023 was described by one scientist as “gobsmackingly bananas”, are there even words to talk about 2024?

This year, Death Valley hit 54.5°C and India 48.9°C during an April–May heatwave. More than 1,300 Hajj pilgrims died in Saudi Arabia as Mecca reached 51.8°C. September brought record-breaking rainfall to central Europe, with disruption costing billions of euros. Devastating floods hit Brazil and Kenya.  2024 ended with a tropical cyclone demolishing the French colony of Mayotte, completely or partly destroying over 35,000 houses.

It was a year when the global average temperature record was broken (again!), and the international climate policy-making charade suffered its own breakdown in Baku.  Here are some of the big stories.