We Blew Through That One

For the first time on record, temperatures have held steadily in excess of 1.5º above the preindustrial average.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the main scientific body which informs the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, had set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° C with no or limited overshoot. The IPCC believed that holding to 1.5° C above pre-industrial temperatures would spare the world the worst consequences of anthropogenic climate change.

We failed. Not only was 2023 the warmest year on record; the average global temperature for May 2023 – June 2024 was 1.63° C above pre-industrial levels. And rising.

In fact, from July 2023 to to May 2024 – the latest date for which there is data – there was never a time when the world’s average temperature was less than 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels.

What does that mean? And what happens now?

It means more rapidly melting glaciers and ice fields, with consequential rise in sea level. It means more moisture in the atmosphere, resulting in more catastrophic rainstorms and more disruption of historic climate patters. It means more profound alterations of oceanic ecosystems, both warming and acidification, with attendant disruption of the food chain. It means more melting of permafrost and increased risk of a runaway CO₂ and CH₄ cycle. It means we have lost our best chance of limiting the scale and scope of our self-inflicted injury.

It doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless or that we are excused from trying to give up our fossil fuel addiction. But it means that carbon sequestration must now be now part of the solution. While it is more critical than ever that we must stop consuming fossil fuels; we now have to capture and store, away from the atmosphere and the ocean, some of the CO₂ and CH₄ we’ve spewed into the atmosphere as well.

That’s going to be a challenge, because to date we haven’t found a rapid, energy efficient, scalable means of sequestering those greenhouse gases. Choose your metaphor: We’ve painted ourselves into a corner. We’ve failed to get off a path that leads to utter disruption of our lives. We’re on a course that will make the drought-driven migration of the Dust Bowl look like a summer picnic. We’ve made it absolutely necessary to rely on a technology we haven’t developed yet.

In Roger Zelazny’s wonderful novel, Lord of Light, a character challenges Lord Yama, the Hindu god of death, to a fight to the death. Yama accepts, but warns the challenger, “Know that when you stand before the Lords of Judgment, you shall be accounted a suicide.”

If we don’t do the right thing, and quickly, so shall we.