Scientists warn that the planet's remaining carbon budget to meet the international 1.5°C target is only two years away at current emission levels, highlighting how deeply the world has plunged into the climate crisis, reports UNN citing The Guardian.
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Breaching the target will lead to an intensification of extreme weather events, which are already devastating communities worldwide. To restore a stable climate, in which all of civilization has developed over the past 10,000 years, it will also be necessary in the future to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
A carbon budget is how much planet-warming CO2 humanity can still emit while leaving a reasonable chance that the temperature goal will not be exceeded. The latest estimate by leading climate scientists showed that to achieve a 66% chance of staying below the 1.5°C target, emissions from 2025 must be limited to 80 billion tonnes of CO2. This is 80% less than in 2020.
Emissions reached a new record high in 2024: at this rate, the 80 billion tonne budget will be depleted within two years.
Scientists have been warning for some time that breaching the 1.5°C target is becoming increasingly inevitable as emissions from burning fossil fuels continue to rise. The latest analysis shows that global emissions must fall sharply to zero within just a few years to have any decent chance of staying within the target. This seems highly unlikely given that emissions in 2024 have risen again.
However, scientists emphasized that every fraction of a degree of global warming increases human suffering, so efforts to reduce emissions must be scaled up as quickly as possible.
Currently, the world is on track for 2.7°C of global warming, which would be a truly catastrophic increase, the publication writes.