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As dignitaries and negotiators gather in Azerbaijan for COP29, the annual United Nations climate change conference — once again held in an oil-rich nation — newly-published data shows the world is warming faster than ever, with no sign of slowing.
A report published by Climate Action Tracker estimates that the planet is currently on track for 2.7 degree Celsius of warming by the year 2100. That’s not only hotter than the goal set in the Paris Agreement but also blows past the 2-degree threshold that many climate scientists believed to be a more achievable limit for warming.
That means the vulnerable — including Black American communities — will remain on the front lines of climate change and continue to bear the worst effects of a warming planet. It’s increasingly likely that more Black workers will die from heat-related illnesses and more Black neighborhoods will suffer through extreme weather, including flooding and deadly storms.
A new version of the Climate Action Tracker is released every year, and the organization’s estimate has not budged since 2021.
“Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goals,” Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. His organization led a carbon budget study showing there is “no sign” that peak global CO2 emissions have been reached.
Disastrous Future Forecast
An annual global summit, COP29 where diplomats come together to continue to hash out plans designed to help the world meet the goals set out in the Paris Agreement to halt climate change. That historic treaty, reached at COP21 in 2015, legally requires nations around the world to cut carbon emissions that would keep the increase in average global temperatures under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But as the world is failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the possibility of meeting the 1.5-degree goal laid out in the Paris Agreement is beginning to slip away.
While 2024 is on track to be the hottest year ever, with global average temperatures creeping above 1.5 degrees over twelve months for the first time in recorded history, that does not mean the Paris Agreement target is shot.
When pledges and plans from world governments are accounted for the outlook appears slightly better, at a global average of 2.1 degrees Celsius. Still, it would portend a disastrous future for Black America and other frontline communities already experiencing climate change-related devastation at far lower levels of warming.
The new goal is to keep the increase in the average global temperature over pre-industrial levels below that threshold for a matter of decades.
The single most important step to stave off the worst-case scenario — 2.7 degrees of warming by the end of the century — is to halt carbon emissions entirely. But the Global Carbon Budget report, typically published around the annual COP conference, says that in 2024 there was a slight increase of 0.8% in carbon emissions over last year.
Friedlingstein, the Exeter Global Systems Institute researcher, says there is little time to waste: world leaders in Azerbaijan “must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels.”
While the 1.5-degree goal is still technically alive, the carbon budget study shows how close we are to sailing past it entirely. At the current rate of emissions there’s a 50-50 chance that temperature averages will be above 1.5 degrees Celsius on a consistent basis by 2030.
