The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn. But that looks to be where we’re heading under today’s derelict political administration.
By the final year of the decade, our Earth had surpassed its 2010 temperature record six times. Hurricanes devastated New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. Floods swamped the Midwest and Bangladesh. Southern Africa still is seared by dire drought. Australia and the Amazon are afire.
Though we know the cause – global and unsustainable carbon emissions – those emissions are expected to hit an all-time high this year, putting us on track to cross the red line for tolerable warming within just one more generation.
Coincidentally, 2010 was the same year the United Nations released its first “emissions gap” report detailing the disparity between commitments made by nations to reduce greenhouse gases and what is needed to protect our future. It estimated countries should be curbing emissions about 3% per year. Most countries missed it – even with the 2015 Paris climate accord – the first-ever global agreement to limit warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius.” That’s the same Paris climate accord out of which Donald Trump pulled America.
Now scientists are acknowledging that their earlier warnings didn’t go far enough. Now we know more, and are learning more, yet we’re doing less. Scientists now say that to get on track to achieve a less disastrous temperature rise, nations must nearly halve their emissions by 2030. Instead, we’re so off-track that global temperatures now are on pace to rise as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius – that’s 7 degrees Fahrenheit – by the end of the century, according to the 2019 U.N. “emissions gap” report.