The global dream of 1.5 C is dead, but hope isn’t lost

The world can no longer avoid overshooting the 1.5 degree limit. So now what? It seems the dream is dead. To be clear, limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius was always a dream. But it was a collective one. In 2015, close to 200 nations said, OK, yes, we're going to try. Well, actually, two degrees was the main goal. But countries would be pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius because doing so would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. So like a stretch goal, smash cut to now, and a new UN report that says those efforts are not enough. Now our limited overshoot is gone. But that does not mean that we give up on the Paris Agreement's most ambitious target, because we can't. For context, 1.5 degrees means the average global temperature is 1.5 degrees warmer than before the Industrial Revolution. And we're actually in the ballpark of that right now. 2024, the hottest year ever, was already measured at 1.5 degrees over. Since then, we've been just below that threshold. But even then, 2023 has had climate-fueled extremes, from five heat waves in Europe to a deadly glacier collapse in Nepal. So even around 1.5 degrees, we're feeling these effects. And the point of this UN report is that if nations wait, it'll get a lot worse. Think of droughts and harvest failures, etc. Think of that happening much more frequently. One thing to point out is that the aspiration of this target, trying to limit climate change, has led to booms in renewable energy and green technology. Otherwise, we would have been headed for a future that was four degrees over by the end of the century. Now this report lays out the new dream, the new stretch goal, 1.7. So we overshoot, and then here's the hard part, we get aggressive with our policies to bring us back down. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions would have to go far beyond. That is how we set the course for more stable climate, more stable societies, and more prosperous economies.