– 2024 is a master class in climate destruction, said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the opening of the COP29 summit. The global climate summit is taking place in Azerbaijan, so once again the host is an exporter of fossil fuels, the main source of climate-heating gases.
World leaders are talking about how to accelerate actions to stabilize the climate and, above all, how to find money for it. As annual negotiations continue, hard data shows Guterres is not overreacting.
Towards disaster
To keep climate change at a moderately safe level, we should rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. It is important not only to achieve climate neutrality, but also to cut these emissions year after year now.
Meanwhile, as data from the “Global Carbon Budget 2024” report show, this year emissions will increase once again instead of decreasing. Although the increase is small (0.8 percent), we should go in the opposite direction. 41.6 billion tons of dioxide coalbecause this is how emissions are estimated, is another step towards a more dangerous, unstable climate.
The vast majority of them come from the burning of oil, coal and gas, a smaller (but significant) part – from deforestation, draining wetlands, and chemical processes such as cement production. And we're only talking about carbon dioxide. In addition, we also emit methane and other gases that heat the atmosphere.
China remains the largest single emitter, with emissions increasing slightly (by 0.2 percent). The United States and the European Union managed to reduce emissions by 0.6 and 3.8 percent, respectively. The direction is good, but the pace – especially in the US – is too slow. Emissions from international transport, especially aviation, are growing rapidly.
By how much will the Earth warm?
According to the European climate program Copernicus, 2024 will be the hottest on record, surpassing the record set just last year. This will probably also be the first single year that exceeds 1.5 degrees of warming in the Copernicus data.
This does not mean that we have already exceeded the target set by the global Paris climate agreement. In it, the world's countries agreed to keep warming well below 2 degrees, preferably 1.5 degrees, but this is a long-term average, not a single year.
– It is difficult to clearly determine the date on which the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming will be exceeded, because it is also influenced by factors other than carbon dioxide emissions. There is no doubt, however, that we have almost exhausted the time we had to prevent such global warming, notes Dr. Aleksandra Kardaś, an atmospheric physicist from the Nauka o climatic portal and the Climate Education Foundation.
Fluctuations in various factors are little consolation, because if nothing changes, this ceiling will be broken already in the early 2030s. And the current plans of the world's countries will not allow to stop warming even at 2 degrees. Temperatures will increase towards 3 degrees by the end of the century and further into the next century.
What can we do?
Do all the global negotiations and climate policy achieve nothing? Marcin Popkiewicz, editor of the Nauka o climate website, believes that if there is any positive, it is a certain slowdown in the emission level. Because previously they were growing by several percent a year, and now they are approaching stagnation. And there is a chance that in the coming years we will finally start lowering them at a global level.
– This is related to systemic changes in the global energy system: decline prices energy from renewable sources and electromobility, which are increasingly gnawing at the fossil fuel market – notes Popkiewicz.
Although a choice Donald Trump – an open opponent of climate policy – casts a shadow over the COP 29 summit, countries are not giving up. China is building huge amounts of renewable energy sources and expects its emissions to fall faster than previously expected. British prime minister Keir Starmer announced at the climate summit that the country would cut its emissions by 81 percent by 2035. Brazil also showed new goals.
If we want to keep climate change at a moderately safe level – and avoid more disasters such as floods in Poland, Spain and elsewhere – other countries must also follow a path of rapid transition away from oil, coal and gas. Experts emphasize that the global economy is ready for this.
– Year after year, the growth of renewable energy sources exceeds expectations. Prices fall, markets rise and technological performance improves. What is missing is high ambition and trust from countries whose plans are outdated, says Dr. Katye Altieri from the Ember think tank.
Oil “a gift to God”
Despite a few positives – such as the plans of Great Britain and Brazil, the progress of renewable energy in China – the first conclusions from the next climate summit are bitter. The meetings have been held annually for three decades, and emissions are only slowing down, not falling. Once again, the host of the summit is controversial.
A year ago, the meeting took place in Dubai and was chaired by a director from a fuel company. Now, once again, the host country is a country with high levels of fossil fuel exports and poor green transformation plans. And the country's president, Ilham Aliyev, said it was a “gift from God.”
The BBC describes that a group of experienced experts stated in a letter to the UN that climate summits “have no longer served their purpose.” Although the COP summits have their achievements – such as obtaining the entire world's agreement to stop climate change in the Paris Agreement, and later the declaration of “phasing out fossil fuels” – they are now “out of step with reality.” Therefore, the process should be reformed.
One of the most frequently mentioned problems is the increasing presence of fuel industry lobbyists – according to non-governmental organizations, there are at least 1,773 people at this summit.