Fears of ‘big regression’ in climate action that could spread across Europe if National Rally gains power
A victory for the far right in the French elections could deal a serious blow to climate policy in France, experts have warned, with consequences that could ripple through the European Union and beyond.
The second round of snap polls, whichEmmanuel Macron called after the National Rally (RN) scored big gains in European elections last month, could result in Marine Le Pen’s party securing a majority in the French parliament on Sunday, although nationwide efforts to form a “republican front” may prevent that.
Climate action has barely featured in the election campaign but RN plans to roll back some policies if it wins power. The party has ridden a wave of anger at green measures unleashed during farmers’ protests this year and decried what it calls “punitive ecology”. It has has indicated it wants to overturn a 2035 ban on combustion engine cars, block new wind turbines, scrap low-emissions zones and rip up rules on energy efficiency.
“It’s going to be a big regression, at least for climate policy,” said Christophe Cassou, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
France is the EU’s third-biggest polluter of planet-heating gases. Although per person the French emit less than the continental average – a large nuclear fleet means its electricity grid is less carbon intensive that its neighbours – French farms, roads and buildings remain big sources of pollution that the government has struggled to clean up.
Part of its reluctance has come from resistance at home. Huge protests from the gilet jaune (yellow vest) movement rocked the country in 2018. Explosive anger at fuel prices and inequality was fired up by a carbon tax on petrol that Macron tried to introduce after having partially abolished a wealth tax.
Political scientists see limited evidence of a backlash to costly climate action driving far-right support in countries such as France and Germany. A more likely explanation, they say, is that the environment has fallen down voters’ priority lists and issues such as migration and inflation have shot up. The French Greens saw their vote share plummet from 13% to 5% at the European elections, while RN’s rose to 31% – capturing nearly one in every three voters.
But even as RN politicians have relegated the topic of climate action to the sidelines, observers say they will have to reconcile conflicting desires, such as attacking renewables while trying to keep industries competitive, or promoting sovereignty while cutting taxes on fossil fuels, for which France relies on imports.
Benoît Leguet, the director of the I4CE Institute for Climate Economics, said RN would face a “reality check” if it came to power that could force it to reckon with the climate implications of competitiveness, sovereignty and security.
“They will have to confront climate,” he said. “Maybe with a different narrative, but it will be climate policy behind the scenes.”
A win for RN could also slow down climate action at the European level. France has been a vocal champion of EU-wide industrial policies to support clean technologies and Macron has pushed for Europe to build up a green manufacturing base that can hold its own against subsidised competition in the US and China.
“It’s not that the French are the most pro-green deal,” said Sébastien Treyer, the executive director of sustainability thinktank IDDRI. “But they were putting a lot of emphasis on finding new financial means [to make it happen].”
If the far right wins, scientists fear it could hurt global climate diplomacy and usher in attacks on science similar to what happened in the US under the former president Donald Trump.
“As scientists, we have the feeling we are in a trap,” said Cassou, who served as a co-author on the latest IPCC report. “Our goal is to bring facts to help the public discussion … but with scepticism and denial of science it’s very complicated to have a dialogue.”
The rhetoric in France has shifted from a focus on open denial to a kind of “reassurism” that justifies delaying action, he added.
“They keep arguing that the IPCC is alarmist,” said Cassou. But they are “making the confusion between alarmist and alarming”.
JPMorgan Chase, the world’s biggest investor in fossil fuels, may have misled investors and the public by backtracking on its already weak climate and environmental commitments, six US senators have warned in a letter to the CEO Jamie Dimon.
Although a climate-disrupted world demands stronger action by the financial sector to reduce emissions and protect nature, the Wall Street firm is heading in the opposite direction, say the upper chamber legislators, who include Senate banking committee member Elizabeth Warren.
They have demanded clarification about the intentions of the world’s biggest bank. Senator Warren said: “If JPMorgan Chase has misled investors and the public, both Congress and regulators have a range of tools to respond as necessary.” They have given the bank until 24 July to reply.
The letter, shared exclusively with the Guardian, reflects growing concern that JPMorgan Chase is watering down public commitments it has made over decades. Campaigners say this poses a structural risk because short-term interests are taking precedence over long-term climate – and financial – stability.
JPMorgan Chase, which has $4tn in assets, has been criticised for making profits while the world burns. The letter notes that the company has financed over $430bn in fossil fuel projects since 2016, more than any other institution on the planet.
Concerns rose earlier this year when Dimon announced a shift in policy that suggested JPMorgan Chase would dilute its environmental goals. In an 8 April letter to shareholders, he indicated the company was “going to use the word ‘commitment’ much more reservedly in the future, clearly differentiating between aspirations we are actively striving toward and binding commitments”.
The senators’ letter said the company reversed its previous promise by pulling out of the Climate Action 100+ and the Equator Principles, which serve as a common baseline for institutions to manage environmental and social risks when financing projects.
Instead of being proactive about the climate threat, Dimon said JPMorgan Chase would wait for “proper government action . . . [that is] not there yet”.
The firm also swapped its clear Paris Climate Agreement goal to reduce its emissions intensity with a blurry new “Energy Mix” target that makes it impossible, the senators say, for an investor to know if JPMorgan Chase is doing anything at all to reduce its oil and gas financing because it now dumps this into a blender with clean energy.
“Your full set of comments indicated JPMorgan was completely abdicating any role in addressing climate change,” says the letter, which is also signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Peter Welch, Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley. “This raises questions about the impact of these policy changes moving forward, and about whether you were misleading investors and the public when you made these commitments.”
Concerns are also growing that other major US banks are sliding away from their promises of climate and biodiversity action. Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo also quit the Equator Principles earlier this year, a move that climate groups condemned as “shocking” and “cowardly”.
At a time of record temperatures and deadly storms, this has led to a public backlash. On the streets, the climate finance movement has staged protests outside several Wall Street institutions, including Citi, Bank of America and major insurers.
Pressure also came in the annual banking on climate chaos report, produced by a coalition of environmental groups, which details the investments of JPMorgan Chase and other majors bankers in climate destabilising projects. BlackRock also limited its involvement.
Last month, the financial watchdog NGO Stand.earth highlighted JPMorgan Chase among five of the world’s biggest banks, whose environmental and social guidelines fail to cover more than 70% of the Amazon rainforest. The report found JPMorgan Chase made $2.4bn in capital available to companies that operate oil and gas projects in the Amazon and its biodiversity protections applied to only Unesco world heritage sites that cover just 2% of the region. By contrast, the study commended the British bank HSBC, which was once a major funder of destructive projects in the region but has not provided any financing since it adopted a 100% Amazon exclusion policy in December 2022.
Ernesto Archila of the Public Citizen’s Climate Program, said banks needed to be brought into line. “They made commitments when it was politically expedient and now they are walking them back. It is really important for senators to call attention to this issue,” he said. “This underlines the need for regulators to take urgent action. Banks should be compelled to take a serious look at their financed emissions, and make effective and transparent plans to address the financial risks associated with climate change. It is clear that a short-term profit motive is driving the behaviour of the banks. It is now up to regulators to step in and prevent those short-term interests from creating structural risks.”
JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on the record. A representative shared materials showing the company is a major financier of clean energy, as well as fossil fuels. On its website, the bank says it has broken down the elements in its Energy Mix Target to show oil and gas financing. A recent op-ed by a senior executive said banks have a role in supporting the energy transition with capital, but stressed that governments need to take the lead: “To transform the energy mix, boost new industrial activity, and build sustainable infrastructure at speed and scale, governments need to lead by setting necessary enabling regulatory frameworks and policy incentives to transform regional and local economies, reskill global workforces, unblock permitting to develop the backlog of necessary infrastructure, and so on.”
Significance
Modern climate change is unprecedented. In recent decades, it has accelerated the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, leading to a rise in sea level. This pole-to-equator mass transport has significantly increased the Earth’s oblateness and length of day (LOD) since 1900. We show that the present rate of increase is higher than at any point in the 20th century. Under high emission scenarios, the climate-induced LOD rate will continue to increase and may reach a rate that is twice as large as at present, surpassing the impact of lunar tidal friction. These findings signify the unprecedented effect of climate change on planet Earth and have implications for precise timekeeping and space navigation, among others.
Abstract
The melting of ice sheets and global glaciers results in sea-level rise, a pole-to-equator mass transport increasing Earth’s oblateness and resulting in an increase in the length of day (LOD). Here, we use observations and reconstructions of mass variations at the Earth’s surface since 1900 to show that the climate-induced LOD trend hovered between 0.3 and 1.0 ms/cy in the 20th century, but has accelerated to 1.33
0.03 ms/cy since 2000. We further show that surface mass transport fully explains the accelerating trend in the Earth oblateness observed in the past three decades. We derive an independent measure of the decreasing LOD trend induced by Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) of
0.80
0.10 ms/cy, which provides a constraint for the mantle viscosity. The sum of this GIA rate and lunar tidal friction fully explains the secular LOD trend that is inferred from the eclipse record in the past three millennia prior to the onset of contemporary climate change. Projections of future climate warming under high emission scenarios suggest that the climate-induced LOD rate may reach 2.62
0.79 ms/cy by 2100, overtaking lunar tidal friction as the single most important contributor to the long-term LOD variations.
A surge in new oil and gas production in 2024 threatens to unleash nearly 12bn tonnes of planet-heating emissions, with the world’s wealthiest countries – such as the US and the UK – leading a stampede of fossil fuel expansion in spite of their climate commitments, new data shared exclusively with the Guardian reveals.
The new oil and gas field licences forecast to be awarded across the world this year are on track to generate the highest level of emissions since those issued in 2018, as heatwaves, wildfires, drought and floods cause death and destruction globally, according to analysis of industry data by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).
The 11.9bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – which is roughly the same as China’s annual carbon pollution – resulting over their lifetime from all current and upcoming oil and gas fields forecast to be licensed by the end of 2024 would be greater than the past four years combined. The projection includes licences awarded as of June 2024, as well as the oil and gas blocks open for bidding, under evaluation or planned.
Meanwhile, fossil fuel firms are ploughing more money into developing new oil and gas sites than at any time since the 2015 Paris climate deal, when the world’s governments agreed to take steps to cut emissions and curb global heating.
The world’s wealthiest countries are economically best placed – and obliged under the Paris accords – to lead the transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. But these high-capacity countries with a low economic dependence on fossil fuels are spearheading the latest drilling frenzy despite dwindling easy-to-reach reserves, handing out 825 new licences in 2023, the largest number since records began.
... ... ...
It is a delusion to believe that the world’s climate is being pushed to the brink solely by undemocratic petrostates such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. The truth is that about half of all planned oil and gas developments between now and 2050 will be sanctioned by wealthy governments that position themselves as climate leaders: the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK.
What explains this egregious state of affairs? The capture of our politics by the oil and gas industry is one explanation. We hear politicians repeating the industry’s talking points – “change will only come by driving down demand, not cutting off the supply” – knowing that the industry has fought tooth and nail to delay measures that would reduce demand for their product. They say that oil and gas profits are needed to fund the transition to clean energy, all the while knowing that oil and gas companies account for only 1% of clean energy investment globally. They point an accusing finger at oil- and gas producing-countries in the Gulf, while they continue to approve new oil and gas projects despite having highly diversified economies, driven by several other industries.
In Norway, the government is desperate to draw attention to the number of electric vehicles on its roads, but there is no distracting from its voracious appetite for oil and gas drilling. Its state-owned oil company, Equinor, is also pushing forward massive new projects in other countries, such as the Rosebank oilfield off the coast of Scotland (which my organisation, Uplift, is challenging in the courts alongside Greenpeace). All wealthy countries think they will produce the last barrel of oil, profiting until the very end.
Here in the UK, a movement has sprung up to loudly defend the public interest and weaken the power of the oil and gas industry. Supported by calls from scientists, health experts, MPs and even ex-oil and gas CEOs, this movement is challenging the dominance of the industry and its reheated arguments. It successfully halted the Cambo oilfield in 2021; framed the terms of the debate in Westminster and put pressure on politicians over new oil and gas licensing rounds; and is now focused on stopping the biggest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea at Rosebank.
Rosebank is a compelling case study in the folly of new oil and gas production in the UK. It will produce oil for export that will do nothing to strengthen our energy security nor lower household bills; it will receive billions in tax breaks while the profits flow to the Norwegian government via Equinor; and the emissions from burning its reserves are the same as running 56 coal-fired power stations for a year.
But there are promising signs that the tide is turning. The flawed environmental calculus that enables governments to approve new oil and gas fields has recently been corrected by courts in the UK and Norway. Governments must now consider the emissions caused by burning the oil and gas extracted from fields when they assess a project’s environmental impacts, not just the much smaller emissions created by the extraction process. This is a crucial step towards a fairer, more transparent environmental governance. In the aftermath of the supreme court ruling in the UK, the government has dropped the defence to a legal challenge over the creation of a new coalmine in Whitehaven and reversed its decision to allow oil drilling in Lincolnshire.
Together with its commitment to end new exploration licensing, our new government is starting to grasp the urgent imperative to curb new production, as well as the huge opportunities presented by the transition to renewable energy. Unlocking these opportunities will require a properly funded and comprehensive just transition, and an industrial strategy designed with the interest of workers and ordinary people at its heart. But the reward for getting it right is thousands of good, long-term jobs; new sources of prosperity in parts of the country that need it most; and more affordable energy for all. And the biggest prize of all: averting climate disaster.
Climate change? Just someone else's problem!
The SPIEGEL editorial by Gerald Traufetter
The Germans are sweating and still pretending that climate change hasn't long been a reality. Sure, otherwise we would have to act.
It's not as if there is a lack of scientific knowledge about climate change. Last year went down in history as the world's hottest since temperature records began. On 21 July this year, the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Programme reported that Sunday was the hottest day ever recorded. The average temperature on Earth was 17.09 degrees.
Climate researchers warn that temperatures in Europe have already risen more than in many other regions. Currently, the continent is already close to a plus of 1.5 degrees Celsius. In other words, a value that scientists consider to be the limit of what humanity should expect from the planet.
And the Germans? They are sweating. When the sun is at its zenith at midday today, a peak temperature is likely to be measured here once again, followed by heavy rainfall. But at the end of the day, when the coolness of the evening once again fails to materialise, will the realisation that climate change is a really urgent problem take hold?
Hardly.
After all, the Germans have long been pretending that global warming is a phenomenon that only affects other parts of the world. Africa, for example, where deserts are growing. The Caribbean, where hurricanes are getting stronger. Or Asia, where the floods are getting higher and higher. For us, it has so far been the climate change of others.
In Germany, we're doing a good job of suppressing the problem. Maybe it's because we live in temperate latitudes, where we can get the impression that a few more degrees won't make that much of a difference. It's different in hotter regions. People there have always lived at the limits of what is bearable and they are just beginning to realise what it feels like beyond that.
Not so in Germany. There, people are not even in a hurry to adapt to the extreme weather. On the contrary. Germans love to convert attics in cities. Even in spring, they are only habitable with air conditioning. It's as if previous generations thought nothing of storing furniture in the pointed roof. But then, there were no air conditioning systems in DIY stores.
It's similar with rock gardens. They are terribly low-maintenance, but at night they radiate the heat stored during the day just as mercilessly. More and more areas are being sealed instead of being planted with greenery. This would alleviate the heat and retain water, which is falling ever more heavily from the sky. Construction continues in flooded areas as if the Ahr flood had never happened.
Gap between knowledge and action
In addition, retirement homes and hospitals, where the heat causes a particularly high number of premature deaths, are not sufficiently equipped to deal with the high temperatures. Not even in 2024, after more than thirty years in which the nation has been discussing climate change. The gap between knowledge and action only widens when it comes to fighting the cause of the problem. In other words, saving CO₂.
Despite rising temperatures, the willingness to act is even declining. In politics, there is now a race to outdo each other in presenting climate protection as the green-obsessed programme of naive do-gooders. The CDU/CSU is doing this with increasing fervour, as is the FDP as the opposition in the government. The AfD only talks about ecodictatorship anyway. The narrative is dangerous. It says that climate protection is expensive and inconvenient.
Many companies are beginning to postpone their climate targets. People are increasingly acting against the interests of future generations. Sales of electric cars are collapsing, as are those of heat pumps. Instead, sales of oil heating systems are up by almost twenty per cent, as the heating installation industry recently reported.
Attentivism in the country is coming up against a coalition government that is not pursuing a climate policy that the governed are prepared to follow. All three coalition partners have to put up with this accusation. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck of the Greens, for example, has achieved some successes in the expansion of renewables, but has caused major damage to the country with a botched heating law. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) is lulling drivers into a false belief with his commitment to e-fuels and against the ban on combustion engines.
His party colleague and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner is proud to have cancelled the environmental bonus for electric cars and thus stifled the sale of electric vehicles. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), on the other hand, refuses to raise the price of carbon dioxide emissions and push through the climate money for citizens. All three of them have slashed the Climate Protection Act, which would have obliged the government to meet its targets, each minister individually. The Federal President signed it in July, just in time for the temperatures.
Climate policy has degenerated into pure expediency. If nobody cares, as is the case now, then nothing much happens. Yet it is a task that requires perseverance, political skill and the realisation that everyone has to do something about it. Germany must protect itself from the climate, and it must protect the climate. If you want to know why, all you have to do today is switch off the air conditioning.[/i]
Scorching temperatures in Mediterranean countries and north Africa already causing increase in premature deaths
The “heat dome” causing scorching temperatures across western Europe and north Africa, and boiling athletes and spectators at the Olympic Games in Paris, would have been impossible without human-caused global heating, a rapid analysis has found.
Scientists said the fossil-fuelled climate crisis made temperatures 2.5C to 3.3C hotter. Such an event would not have happened in the world before global heating but is now expected about once a decade, they said. Continued emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will make them even more frequent, the researchers warned.
“Climate change crashed the Olympics on Tuesday,” said Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London and part of the World Weather Attribution group behind the analysis. “The world watched athletes swelter in 35C heat. If the atmosphere wasn’t overloaded with emissions from burning fossil fuels, Paris would have been about 3C cooler and much safer for sport.”
Numerous athletes, including the gymnastics superstar Simone Biles, have suffered in the heat, with one tennis player having called it “crazy” and sailing competitors having worn ice vests to keep cool. Fans watching the beach volleyball near the Eiffel Tower were sprayed with hoses, while misting fountains have been set up at skateboarding and other venues and millions of bottles of water have been handed out at train and Métro stations.
“However, many people across the Mediterranean do not have the luxury of ice-packs, air conditioning or cooling breaks at work,” she said. “For these people, extreme heat can mean death.”
The analysis assessed the dangerous heat in July that sent temperatures soaring past 40C in many places, increasing the spread of wildfires in Portugal and Greece and worsening water shortages in Italy and Spain. In Morocco, temperatures reached 48C, with one hospital reporting 21 deaths.
The heat will have caused many more people to die prematurely across the region. But assembling the required data, where it exists, takes time. Extreme heat in the European summer of 2022 is now known to have led to 61,000 early deaths.
Dr Mariam Zachariah, a research associate at Imperial College London, said: “[Our new] analysis helps people understand that climate change is not a distant threat, but an immediate one that is already making life on Earth much more dangerous.”
Heat action plans, which involve early warning systems, water and first aid stations, and changed hours for outdoor workers, have been implemented in France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but not yet in Morocco.
The July heatwave was caused by a large-scale high-pressure ridge, often referred to as a “heat dome”. It occurred after 13 months of extreme heat globally, with each of the last 13 months being the hottest ever recorded.
The climate crisis is making all heatwaves hotter, longer and more frequent around the world. The scientists assessed the impact of human-caused global heating on the extreme July heat by comparing how these events have changed between today’s climate, with about 1.3C of global heating, and the cooler preindustrial climate.
The analysis built on studies of heatwaves in the Mediterranean region in April and July 2023, which used weather data and computer climate models. This foundation meant that only weather data was needed for the new analysis, allowing it to be produced almost immediately.
Many hundreds of these attribution studies have now been completed, covering heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods and storms. They include a growing number of otherwise impossible events and demonstrate how human-caused heating has already supercharged extreme weather across the globe.
“As long as humans burn oil, gas and coal, heatwaves will get hotter and more people will die premature deaths,” said Otto. “The good news is that we don’t need some magic solution to stop things from getting worse. We know exactly what we need to do and have the technology and knowledge needed to do it – replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and stop deforestation. The faster we do this, the better.”
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said last week: “I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries.” He spoke a day after the Guardian revealed a surge in fresh oil and gas exploration in 2024 with countries such as the US and the UK leading the charge, handing out a record 825 oil and gas licences in 2023.
A critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents could collapse as early as the 2030s,
new research suggests
A vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents that influences weather across the world could collapse as soon as the late 2030s, scientists have suggested in a new study — a planetary-scale disaster that would transform weather and climate.
Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change.
But the new research, which is being peer-reviewed and hasn’t yet been published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could collapse, suggesting a shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064.
This research suggests it’s more likely than not to collapse by 2050.
“This is really worrying,” said René van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and study co-author.
“All the negative side effects of anthropogenic climate change, they will still continue to go on, like more heat waves, more droughts, more flooding,” he told CNN. “Then if you also have on top of that an AMOC collapse … the climate will become even more distorted.”
Like a conveyor belt, the AMOC pulls warm surface water from the southern hemisphere and the tropics and distributes it in the cold North Atlantic. The colder, saltier water then sinks and flows south. The mechanism keeps parts of the Southern Hemisphere from overheating and parts of the Northern Hemisphere from getting unbearably cold, while distributing nutrients that sustain life in marine ecosystems.
The impacts of an AMOC collapse would leave parts of the world unrecognizable.
In the decades after a collapse, Arctic ice would start creeping south, and after 100 years, would extend all the way down to the southern coast of England. Europe’s average temperature would plunge, as would North America’s – including parts of the US. The Amazon rainforest would see a complete reversal in its seasons; the current dry season would become the rainy months, and vice versa.
An AMOC collapse “is a really big danger that we should do everything we can to avoid,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a physical oceanographer at Potsdam University in Germany who was not involved in the latest research.
Ocean temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef are now the hottest in at least 400 years and are an “existential threat” to the planet’s unique natural wonder, according to new scientific research.
Scientists analysed long-lived corals in and around the reef that keep a record of temperature hidden in their skeleton and matched them to modern observations.
The research, published in the prestigious journal Nature, used climate models to find the extreme temperatures of recent decades could not have happened without the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused mostly by burning fossil fuels.
The “existential threat” to the reef from the climate crisis was “now realised”, the scientists wrote, and without ambitious and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions “we will likely be witness to the demise of one of the Earth’s natural wonders.”
The research comes two weeks after the World Heritage committee decided not to place the reef, which covers an area larger than Italy, on its list of sites “in danger”, saying it would consider the question again in 2026.
Abstract
Mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia between 2016 and 2024 was driven by high sea surface temperatures (SST)1. The likelihood of temperature-induced bleaching is a key determinant for the future threat status of the GBR2, but the long-term context of recent temperatures in the region is unclear. Here we show that the January–March Coral Sea heat extremes in 2024, 2017 and 2020 (in order of descending mean SST anomalies) were the warmest in 400 years, exceeding the 95th-percentile uncertainty limit of our reconstructed pre-1900 maximum. The 2016, 2004 and 2022 events were the next warmest, exceeding the 90th-percentile limit. Climate model analysis confirms that human influence on the climate system is responsible for the rapid warming in recent decades. This attribution, together with the recent ocean temperature extremes, post-1900 warming trend and observed mass coral bleaching, shows that the existential threat to the GBR ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realized. Without urgent intervention, the iconic GBR is at risk of experiencing temperatures conducive to near-annual coral bleaching3, with negative consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems services. A continuation on the current trajectory would further threaten the ecological function4 and outstanding universal value5 of one of Earth’s greatest natural wonders.
Fossil fuel companies are running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” so that countries will slow down the adoption of renewable energy and the speed with which they “transition away” from a carbon-intensive economy, the UN has said.
Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, said that talk of a global “backlash” against climate action was being stoked by the fossil fuel industry, in an effort to persuade world leaders to delay emissions-cutting policies. The perception among many political observers of a rejection of climate policies was a result of this campaign, rather than reflecting the reality of what people think, he added.
“There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive,” he said. “It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction.”
He contrasted the perception of a backlash with the findings of the biggest poll ever conducted on the climate, which found clear majorities of people around the world supporting measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The survey found 72% of people wanted a “quick transition” away from fossil fuels, including majorities in the countries that produce the most coal, oil and gas. Green parties and plans may have suffered reverses in some parts of the world, he said, but in others they have gained seats, and seen policies that would once have been considered radical enter the mainstream.
Governments must take note, said Hart, who acts as special adviser on climate to the UN secretary general, António Guterres. “This should alert political leaders – those that are ambitious are not only on the right side of history, they’re on the side of their people as well.
“Climate appears to be dropping down the list of priorities of leaders,” he said. “But we really need leaders now to deliver maximum ambition. And we need maximum cooperation. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that at the moment.”
He warned that the consequences of inaction were being felt in rich countries as well as poor. In the US, many thousands of people are finding it increasingly impossible to insure their homes, as extreme weather worsens. “This is directly due to the climate crisis, and directly due to the use of fossil fuels,” he said. “Ordinary people are having to pay the price of a climate crisis while the fossil fuel industry continues to reap excess profits and still receives massive government subsidies.”
Yet the world has never been better equipped to tackle climate breakdown, Hart added. “Renewables are the cheapest they’ve ever been, the pace of the energy transition is accelerating,” he said.
Governments should also take care to ensure that their climate policies did not place unfair burdens on those on low incomes, as poorly designed measures could hurt the poor, according to Hart. “Each country will really need to ensure its transition is well planned to minimise the impact on people and vulnerable populations, because a lot of the so-called pushback comes when there’s a perception that the costs on poor and vulnerable persons are being disproportionately felt,” he said.
For that reason, the UN is calling for new national plans on the emissions reductions required under the 2015 Paris agreement, in which governments must set out clearly not just their targets but how they will be achieved through policy, and what the probable impacts are.
The new national plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), should be “as consultative as possible so that whole segments of society – young people, women, children, workers – will be able to provide their perspective on how the transition should be planned and well-managed, and how it will be financed”, he said.
“Despite everything we see [in the form of extreme weather], we’re still not seeing the level of ambition or action that the world desperately needs.”
Abstract
Climate change contributes to the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires globally, with significant impacts on society and the environment. However, our understanding of the global distribution of extreme fires remains skewed, primarily influenced by media coverage and regionalised research efforts. This inaugural State of Wildfires report systematically analyses fire activity worldwide, identifying extreme events from the March 2023–February 2024 fire season. We assess the causes, predictability, and attribution of these events to climate change and land use and forecast future risks under different climate scenarios. During the 2023–2024 fire season, 3.9×106 km2 burned globally, slightly below the average of previous seasons, but fire carbon (C) emissions were 16 % above average, totalling 2.4 Pg C. Global fire C emissions were increased by record emissions in Canadian boreal forests (over 9 times the average) and reduced by low emissions from African savannahs. Notable events included record-breaking fire extent and emissions in Canada, the largest recorded wildfire in the European Union (Greece), drought-driven fires in western Amazonia and northern parts of South America, and deadly fires in Hawaii (100 deaths) and Chile (131 deaths). Over 232 000 people were evacuated in Canada alone, highlighting the severity of human impact. Our analyses revealed that multiple drivers were needed to cause areas of extreme fire activity. In Canada and Greece, a combination of high fire weather and an abundance of dry fuels increased the probability of fires, whereas burned area anomalies were weaker in regions with lower fuel loads and higher direct suppression, particularly in Canada. Fire weather prediction in Canada showed a mild anomalous signal 1 to 2 months in advance, whereas events in Greece and Amazonia had shorter predictability horizons. Attribution analyses indicated that modelled anomalies in burned area were up to 40 %, 18 %, and 50 % higher due to climate change in Canada, Greece, and western Amazonia during the 2023–2024 fire season, respectively. Meanwhile, the probability of extreme fire seasons of these magnitudes has increased significantly due to anthropogenic climate change, with a 2.9–3.6-fold increase in likelihood of high fire weather in Canada and a 20.0–28.5-fold increase in Amazonia. By the end of the century, events of similar magnitude to 2023 in Canada are projected to occur 6.3–10.8 times more frequently under a medium–high emission scenario (SSP370). This report represents our first annual effort to catalogue extreme wildfire events, explain their occurrence, and predict future risks. By consolidating state-of-the-art wildfire science and delivering key insights relevant to policymakers, disaster management services, firefighting agencies, and land managers, we aim to enhance society's resilience to wildfires and promote advances in preparedness, mitigation, and adaptation. New datasets presented in this work are available from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11400539 (Jones et al., 2024) and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11420742 (Kelley et al., 2024a).
Countries in south most at risk, with rise likely to outstrip fall in cold-related deaths if global heating hits 3C or 4C
Heat deaths in Europe could triple by the end of the century, with the numbers rising disproportionately in southern European countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, a study has found.
Cold kills more people than heat in Europe, and some have argued that climate change will benefit society by reducing those deaths. But the study, published in the Lancet Public Health, found that the death toll would respond slowly to warming weather and may even rise through people growing older and more vulnerable to dangerous temperatures.
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Deaths from warm weather could kill 129,000 people a year if temperatures rise to 3C above preindustrial levels. Today, heat-related deaths in Europe stand at 44,000. But the yearly death toll from cold and heat in Europe may rise from 407,000 people today to 450,000 in 2100 even if world leaders meet their global warming target of 1.5C, the study found.
