A Key Paris Agreement Goal Is Dead. What Now?

It was the climate movement’s unifying slogan for the past decade: “Keep 1.5 Alive.” The tagline referred to the central ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which almost every country pledged to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Now, just 11 years after the target was set , 1.5 is effectively dead. Scientists now say that without drastic efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, it is very likely that the planet will warm at least 2.6 degrees Celsius, or 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century.

At COP31 , the United Nations climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, diplomats who spent so long championing the 1.5 degree target lamented the abrupt setback. “The world has no chance of holding to 1.5 degrees,” said Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate change and energy, who is leading the negotiations. Scientists for years have warned that allowing global average temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels would result in a profoundly more dangerous world.

Extreme heat will become more common and more intense. Storms will become more powerful and destructive. Sea levels will rise. And poor countries will bear the brunt of the damage. That scenario is already playing out around the world. In recent months, wildfires have raged from Canada to Indonesia. The collapse of a glacier in Nepal killed thousands and wiped away towns. Floods and mudslides devastated Brazil. And a European heat wave killed an estimated 50,000 people .

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