In 2018, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report predicted we would probably hit the dangerous global average temperature threshold of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures sometime between 2030 and 2052. In 2020, Carbon Brief estimated it might happen between 2026 and 2042. In early 2023 AI modeling predicted it might happen in the early 2030s. 

Even those predictions turned out to be optimistic.  Last year was likely the first calendar year that global temperatures averaged over 1.5°C above pre-industrial. Once we pass the 1.5°C threshold, the long-feared climate tipping point of 2°C can’t be far behind.  

In 2013, NASA projected we’d reach it by 2040. In 2018 a study by scientists from the UK and the Netherlands revised that, warning we’d reach the “point of no return” for 2°C by 2035, and that we needed strong climate action before then.  A 2023 Carbon Brief report found “five major tipping points are already at risk of being crossed due to warming right now and three more are threatened in the 2030s as the world exceeds 1.5C global warming.”  

The most recent prediction says atmospheric CO2 levels could reach the critical 425-450 ppm range as soon as next year, and that climate impacts – storms, droughts, wildfires, melting permafrost, loss of Antarctic ice, sea level rise — bad as they are now, will double over the next five years. 

The banking industry is already betting we’ll blow right past the 2°C threshold. Banks are now “banking” on 3°C of warming and investing in ways to profit from it. Fossil fuels and GHG emissions continue to ramp up. 

But we aren’t locked into this trajectory.  We can change direction, decrease global temperature rise significantly, and stabilise the climate in the next few decades if we cut methane emissions aggressively, starting now.