The Earth is experiencing 12 months of record heat: “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet”

It is possible that the succession of heat records exerts an anesthetic effect on the population, but the territory into which the planet has entered due to human beings has no precedents close in time, in intensity and in the speed of change. The recently completed month of May has been the warmest May on record so far, as reported this Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, from the European Commission. In April, the same thing happened. And in March, February, January, December… The last 12 months – from June 2023 to May 2024 – have been the hottest, at least, since direct measurements began in the mid-19th century (although there are specialists paleoclimatic scientists who maintain that you have to go back thousands of years to find such a hot planet). “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” warned UN Secretary General António Guterres, who has called for a veto on fossil fuel advertising similar to that of tobacco.

Coinciding with World Environment Day, Guterres has organized an event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, focused on the climate crisis. “Our planet is trying to tell us something, but it seems like we aren’t listening. “We are breaking global temperature records and suffering the consequences,” he warned. “Now is the time to mobilize, act and comply,” he assured about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, linked mainly to fossil fuels.

In addition to reducing consumption and increasing energy efficiency, the alternative that is most clearly emerging to break human addiction to oil, gas and coal are renewables. Governments committed at the last climate summit, held in December in Dubai, to triple global renewable capacity by 2030. Although the advance of these energies is very significant – driven by the low costs of photovoltaics and wind – the efforts They are still not enough. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), current government plans will lead to a 2.2-fold increase in renewable power in 2030 compared to the 2022 level.

Although the IEA recognized in a report released Tuesday that “almost 30 countries aim to increase their renewable capacity two to three times by 2030,” this organization asked to increase the pace of installation. Among the most ambitious countries in this field, the IEA gave China, the United States, India, Germany and Spain as examples.

The speed and intensity at which the world economy is disengaged from fossil fuels is key to preventing the warming that is already being suffered from being more or less catastrophic. The problem is that, despite the advance of renewables, global emissions are not falling as quickly as required because humanity continues to depend largely on oil, gas and coal. “We are going in the wrong direction,” Guterres warned at the event this Wednesday. “Last year emissions increased by 1%,” he added.

Ban on fossil fuel advertising

In any case, the secretary general, in a long speech, has also made it clear that economic logic, in addition to the climate fight, points to “the end of the era of fossil fuels being inevitable.” He has asked companies in that sector to stop investing in oil, gas and coal. And he has also proposed to the media that they no longer accept fossil fuel advertising. He has also asked the governments of the countries to veto the advertising of these products – which he has described as the “godfathers of climate chaos” – as many States do with tobacco.

Guterres began his speech by referring to the Copernicus data, a service that, based on satellite measurements, has become a reference in recent years in monitoring the consequences and impacts of the climate crisis in the world. As this European agency has explained, the average of the last 12 months is 0.75 degrees Celsius above the average of the period between 1991-2020. If the focus is expanded further, the average of the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) is 1.63 degrees above.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said: “It is shocking but not surprising that we have reached this 12-month streak.” This concatenation of records, which is also influenced by some natural phenomena such as El Niño, will end up stopping. But climate change will continue to be present and worsen at a dangerous rate as long as greenhouse emissions are not stopped. “We live in unprecedented times, but we also have an unprecedented ability to monitor the climate,” Buontempo stressed.

When the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the objective was established for countries to reduce greenhouse emissions as a whole in such a way that global warming did not exceed the barrier of two degrees compared to pre-industrial levels and, to the extent if possible, 1.5. A specific exceedance of the 1.5 goal, such as the one that has been experienced in recent months, can no longer be considered a non-compliance with Paris because that line must be exceeded stably over time, something that, in any case , is very likely to occur over the next two decades, as the IPCC, the panel of experts that analyzes climate change for the UN, warned last year.

The warmest year

2023 was the warmest year recorded so far, and the 1.5 degree limit was already touched: it was 1.48 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial average. Another report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also presented this Wednesday warns that there is an 85% chance that at least one of the next five years will surpass 2023 as the warmest.

Furthermore, there is an 80% chance that the 1.5 degree limit will be temporarily exceeded in at least one of the next five years. Beyond this specific data, the important thing about this estimate is its evolution: in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed, the probability that in at least one of the following five years global warming would exceed 1.5 was almost null. That is, warming is advancing at a speed and intensity without recent precedent.

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