Response: What is being done?
Video 1: UN Development Programme: to play with sound, scroll to the bottom of this page
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Unchecked carbon pollution is forcing the globe’s most vulnerable on a frog march to destruction. The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson on our only home. It is essential to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C and science tells us that will require the world to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. But according to current commitments, global emissions are set to increase almost 14% over the current decade. That spells catastrophe. – António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations introduction to the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
We’re heading for a climate disaster, and yet every year, governments spend hundreds of billions of public funds on fossil fuel subsidies. Imagine if we had spent hundreds of billions per year subsidising giant meteors? That’s what you’re doing right now. – Video 1; Velociraptor, on behalf of the the United Nations
2024: Despite António Guterres warning, COP29, where countries get together and decide what to do about climate change, was an abysmal failure that prompted a joint statement from climate scientists across the globe:
…it is today well established that 1.5°C is a limit. Go beyond it and five large tipping point systems are likely to be crossed… In addition, 1.5°C will with zero uncertainty, imply life-threatening extreme events affecting millions of people due to severely amplified droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves, and fires…
We need to secure the carbon sinks in the ocean and in nature on land, and cross our fingers that no tipping points are crossed during overshoot (as this will likely amplify the rate of warming and create even more extreme climate impacts affecting people across the world). – Joint Statement on the New Common Quantified Goal (NCQG) of Climate Finance and Its Delivery on the 1.5°C Paris Agreement Goal
2025: COP30 ended with much the same failures as COP24. The NZ Government scrapped climate policies and legislation and reduced the role of the Climate Change Commission. Global CO2 emissions reached record highs.
2026: The second New Zealand National Climate Change Risk Assessment makes grim reading, while the UN announced that the world is set to cross 1.5°C global warming.
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C remains a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement, yet under current policies and alternative near-term trajectories, exceedance of 1.5°C is now widely assessed as unavoidable…There will be no going back to how things were. Some losses will be irreversible, which means returning to 1.5 doesn’t mean we return back to the same world we left. – United Nations 02 September 2026
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is still the best “road map” for how to effectively reduce emissions. It’s a complicated read; we recommend Carbon Brief’s (free to access) Q&A explainer.
