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Earth

Humanity Has Missed 1.5C Climate Target, Says UN Head (theguardian.com) 110

Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned. From a report: In his only interview before next month's Cop30 climate summit, Antonio Guterres acknowledged it is now "inevitable" that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with "devastating consequences" for the world. He urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem to realise that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic "tipping points" in the Amazon, the Arctic and the oceans.

"Let's recognise our failure," he told the Guardian and Amazon-based news organisation Sumauma. "The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.

He said the priority at Cop30 was to shift direction: "It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don't want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don't change course and if we don't make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible."

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Humanity Has Missed 1.5C Climate Target, Says UN Head

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  • Climate change is going to devastate the economy but have you seen the Jeffrey Epstein memorial ballroom? Real classy stuff when there.

    And besides climate change is a myth. Like affordable Health Care and increasingly clean water and electricity.
    • Time to agree to split the nation. One side are total morons who don't trust any experts. Let them charlatanize each other and win all kinds of Darwin Awards, just don't let them rule us.

      Maybe we can build a wall to keep them out and make them pay for it.

      I think Lincoln f$cked up.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @03:52PM (#65756594) Homepage Journal

        I think Lincoln f$cked up.

        That could be interpreted in two possible ways. I'm assuming you meant by bringing the South back in, rather than by freeing the slaves.

        • The people after him did. We only did a little bit of reconstruction before we backed off. After that we let the South do whatever the hell they wanted and be as racist as they want it but for a time we were not going to let them do that.

          Before long you have the daughters of the Confederacy spreading nonsense lies convincing people they weren't bad just because they hated people for the color of their skin. Not to mention the KKK.

          And then along comes 1965 and Barry Goldwater loses and the Republican
      • Na, he was dead before reconstruction was abandoned (or even started, really)

        Blame his successor.
        • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          > Blame his successor.

          But see-saw leadership styles is expected. That's why the war was a bad idea. We could pressure them to abandon slavery via boycotts and tariffs, giving trade breaks to states that abandon it, perhaps incrementally.

          • That's why the war was a bad idea. We could pressure them to abandon slavery via boycotts and tariffs, giving trade breaks to states that abandon it, perhaps incrementally.

            Who attacked Fort Sumter?

            WHO ATTACKED FORT SUMTER?

            That faction is responsible for the war.

            Now... who was that? What side? The fucking donkeys from the south, right?

          • I think probably very few people thought it was a good idea.
            However, shit escalated.

            You're right about the see-saw.
            Reconstruction should not have been abandoned. Johnson should have been removed.
            • Lincoln allowing the Democrat Johnson to be his vice President was a tragic error. There was no need to put in a compromise candidate for VP; Lincoln won in a landslide. Generally, the practice of putting in an inferior VP candidate to gain a particular state's votes or to shield the President from removal from office (Don't remove P, VP is worse!) is a mistake and has lasting bad effects for the country.
  • The 1.5C target and such is all some odd, arbitrary marketing plan that convinced nobody. If anything, the fact that it is in Celsius upset a bunch of hicks and made them run for their lifted diesel dualies to go roll some coal. I don't have an answer, but things are already ugly. Just ask the Jamaicans, mon.

  • ...think about geoengineering our weather. Voluntary restraint isn't working. Paying about 3% of cargo ships to spray sea water behind them to generate more clouds seem to lowest hanging fruit so far.

    It may have unintended side effects such that the major nations and/or biggest polluters will need to contribute to a fund that pays out to nations victimized by the side-effects.

    • The thing with the geoengineering you suggest is that it needs to go on forever.
      A hiccup in global trade would make global temperatures skyrocket. What is the point of a crutch when you go jump off the cliff anyway?

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > The thing with the geoengineering you suggest is that it needs to go on forever.

        Not the worse thing. I expect technology will eventually give us better options anyhow, such as orbiting sun-shades.

        > A hiccup in global trade would make global temperatures skyrocket.

        Actually pollution cooled off during the pandemic. All those ships and planes are a big source of pollution. It's not a reversal, but slows things down. If you mean like WW3, we'd have far bigger concerns than climate.

        • > Actually pollution cooled off during the pandemic. All those ships and planes are a big source of pollution.

          Indeed, and along with desulphurization of shipping fuel in 2020, this is linked to the acceleration of warming in the past few years.

      • The thing with the geoengineering you suggest is that it needs to go on forever.
        A hiccup in global trade would make global temperatures skyrocket. What is the point of a crutch when you go jump off the cliff anyway?

        It would not need to go on forever, only until we get far enough along on reducing greenhouse gases that we get the Earth back on a path to whatever global temperature is deemed ideal.

        I don't know how global temperatures would "skyrocket" if this geoengineering efforts were to stop. I would expect warming would merely return to the rate of increase that existed before.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The scientific consensus is that we do not know enough and that this is not a 50/50 thing, but more like 99% that we will make things worse without exactly understanding what to do.

      • We apparently have very accurate climate models, so we can know exactly what will happen. Therefore we can be sure before any geoengineering is done.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          We have relatively accurate models for the things that are expected. These are not universal models and cannot be used to predict geoengineering results.

          Some understanding of the topic required ...

          • How do you expect things? How do you know your models are accurate?

            Pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the definition of geoengineering. But you say we cannot predict geoengineering results. A climate catastrophe is upon us, and we know that reducing emissions is not going to happen, is crippling economies, and we don't know the outcome anyway.

            Why are we not studying alternatives to GHG reductions? They may actually work, and the will probably cost a lot less. It's time for all options on t

            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Stop asking questions that only indicate you have no clue and did not do any research.

  • China and India (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 )

    The United States and Europe already lowering carbon emissions. Their charts are going down, which is what we need.

    Asia is the problem. The worst by far is China, followed by India and Indonesia. They continue to increase carbon emissions (as do much of the smaller Asian countries with the exception of Japan).

    Most of the rest of the world is mostly holding steady.

    How did Europe and the US do it? Mature economies that switched to non-fossil fuels. Hydroelectric, wind, solar, etc. China and India are s

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > The worst by far is China

      China has a lower carbon footprint per capita than the US. US doesn't have the high ground to point fingers.

      And much of the pollution is from factories. If manufacturing goes elsewhere, the pollution will follow.

      • Re:China and India (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @04:04PM (#65756628) Homepage Journal

        > The worst by far is China

        China has a lower carbon footprint per capita than the US. US doesn't have the high ground to point fingers.

        China has a much higher carbon footprint per unit of production, though, and that's the real problem. All the folks living in rural areas that bike around everywhere because they don't have cars are interesting culturally, but they're not particularly relevant from a greenhouse gas perspective, because they're also not producing significant economic output.

        Most of the countries with high CO2 per dollar GDP are tiny countries with minimal production. China isn't. The U.S. and India produce 0.26 and 0.27 kg CO2 per dollar of GDP. China produces 0.42 kg per dollar. They are nearly twice as bad pollution-wise.

        If manufacturing goes elsewhere, the pollution will follow.

        Except that this isn't the case. A lot of manufacturing has moved to India, and it still manages to produce barely half the CO2 per dollar that China does. Because India actually has laws on pollution and enforces them. Thailand (another country that is getting a decent amount of new manufacturing) pulls of 0.24 kg per dollar, which is even better than the U.S.

        China talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. They pay lip service to lowering emissions while spewing more and more CO2. The only way this actually stops is if the U.S. and the E.U. impose a carbon tax on imports that makes it cheaper to do the right thing than to continue to pollute. If we do that, the problem will magically fix itself.

        ... which is to say that despite China being the problem from a pollution production perspective, we're the real problem over here on the other side of the world, because we're continuing to support their excessively dirty production by buying goods from them because they're cheaper.

        • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          > higher carbon footprint per unit of production

          If we are including services, this seems a rather indirect metric.

          One issue with China is that they don't have much oil so must import a fair amount. To be self-sufficient in an emergency they are keeping coal around.

        • You're both right.

          We can't reasonably tell China they can't increase their per-capita CO2 output to at least what the Western world is at; it's absurd.
          Of course you're also right- in that manufacturing is vastly more efficient in the west on a per-capita and per-gCO2 basis.

          Do you see any way to tell them that they need to quit fueling their industry with coal while their average citizen uses 12% the power of a western person?
          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Do you see any way to tell them that they need to quit fueling their industry with coal while their average citizen uses 12% the power of a western person?

            That's more a poverty thing than anything else. As people earn more money, you'll see more people wanting cars, air conditioning, etc.

            The thing is, they're also in the best position to take advantage of green tech to solve their power problems without horrible levels of emissions. Most of the technology is being physically built there, and they don't have two centuries of power plant infrastructure and steel smelting built around coal and coke. They're building up their industry *now*, in an era when it

            • Perhaps they are doing the right thing?

              https://www.americanprogress.o... [americanprogress.org]

              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Repeat after me: There is no such thing as clean coal.

                Note that China's coal production continues to grow [ceicdata.com].

                Want to see what actual reduction in coal use looks like? U.S. coal production is down 50% since 2008. Coal's percentage of the power mix is down from 50% to 15%.

                No, China is not doing the right thing. Like I said, they're paying lip service to reducing coal use, but the reality is that every year, they produce more coal than the year before. And whether that is being entirely used in China or expo

            • That's more a poverty thing than anything else. As people earn more money, you'll see more people wanting cars, air conditioning, etc.

              Sure, it is... to an extent.
              Some of it is lifestyle that we call poverty. You're not going to get a 60 year old pig farmer to use any more electricity just because you plugged him into the grid.

              I do like the idea of mix-dependent-tariffs.

              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                That's more a poverty thing than anything else. As people earn more money, you'll see more people wanting cars, air conditioning, etc.

                Sure, it is... to an extent. Some of it is lifestyle that we call poverty. You're not going to get a 60 year old pig farmer to use any more electricity just because you plugged him into the grid.

                I mean, yeah, those changes do also tend to be somewhat generational, to be fair. But the point is that people who don't have the means definitely won't do that, while some percentage of people who can will.

                Also climate is a factor. In a warmer area, give that 60-year-old pig farmer a single-room air conditioner vented through the window, and watch the power use jump up quite a bit — not just for that person, but for every other person in the area who experiences it on a hot summer day, as a whole b

            • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

              > As people earn more money, you'll see more people wanting cars, air conditioning, etc.

              But there can be incentives to keep using public transportation and car pooling.

              > They're building up their industry *now*, in an era when it is possible for them to build it cleanly.

              As I mentioned elsewhere, they have to rely on coal to a degree because they don't have many oil deposits. During a war or international emergency they could end up fuel starved without coal.

              We'd do the same in their position.

          • The problem is the per capita use is the WRONG metric. By far. You do not get to just pick the one that makes them look good. That would be like saying New York City is doing the best in polar bear attacks.

            China is a country that can be divided into two sections - a huge number of poor that make 1% of the C02 and the elite, that make far MORE coal than the average western person.

            You should not get a free pass for your elite because you mistreat your poor.

            China is the world's largest emitter in total.

            • The problem is the per capita use is the WRONG metric. By far. You do not get to just pick the one that makes them look good. That would be like saying New York City is doing the best in polar bear attacks.

              Bullshit.

              China is a country that can be divided into two sections - a huge number of poor that make 1% of the C02 and the elite, that make far MORE coal than the average western person.

              Bullshit.

              You should not get a free pass for your elite because you mistreat your poor.

              The same can be said for us.

              China is the world's largest emitter in total. They produce 35% of the total carbon emissions. Merely because you also have a bunch of poor people doing nothing does not excuse you abusing the crap out of the atmosphere.

              And that is the most wrong metric you can use, period, full stop.
              China is a polity representing that amount of people. We don't get to tell those people how they allocate their global share of CO2 emissions.

              More importantly, if all the westerners you compare them to are doing better every year while they are doing worse, then THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.

              Again, bullshit.
              Their CO2 usage is a fraction of ours, per person, and you want them to reduce it further?

              No, you are not a rational person.

            • China is a country that can be divided into two sections - a huge number of poor that make 1% of the C02 and the elite, that make far MORE coal than the average western person.

              Wait a second, that is a deliberately skewed metric. You suggest comparing the worst CO2 producer in China to the average CO2 producer in the west. To be fair metric, you want to compare the worst CO2 producer in China to the worst CO2 producer in the west. Say, compare the top 1% highest CO2 emitters in China to the 1% highest in the US.

              If you have those measurements, I'd like to see them. Failing that, though, you would want to compare the average American to the average Chinese person. In that measuremen

            • China is a country that can be divided into two sections - a huge number of poor that make 1% of the C02 and the elite, that make far MORE coal than the average western person.

              I'm sure this is true for many countries. Personally, I think it's reasonable to "judge" people on CO2 output and judge a country on the policies it uses to lower those emissions. This means per capita is a useful metric for how well those policies are doing.

              You should not get a free pass for your elite because you mistreat your p

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Around 67% of Chinese people live in urban areas, but what's more important is that their emissions have peaked this year. They are never, ever going to reach the per-capital levels that the US and Europe did, even as their economy continues to grow and their output continues to increase.

          We got where we are the dirty way, by emitting massive amounts of CO2 and other pollution. China is far from "clean", but has proven that CO2 emissions are not a necessary part of industrialization or prosperity and the Wes

      • Per Capita measurement is obfuscating pollution with overpopulation. Two wrongs don't make a right.

        China is the largest polluter. They are making huge progress towards changing that.

        India is a huge polluter. They are not making much progress on changing that.

        The USA is huge polluter. This is changing, but... well... those changes are subject to change.

        The EU is many nations. They are making various progress on changing their pollution outputs.

        • My only gripe about per capita energy use is how it's measured and mixed. Search "global average household electricity use" on DDG and ask the AI, it sources wiki and another. It quotes 3,788 kWh per year or 315KwH per person. That seems crazy high when I think of my single 1 bedroom apartment solo occupant is about 45% lower. I can't see how the average is that high.

          It must be in how they calculate per capita. If you take a countries total usage and just divide it by person, it includes business/AG and jus

          • But since we're trying to save the world here.

            Sure, we can compare notes.

            How about we ban air-travel (it's gluttonous) except for military and safety/rescue/fire.

            That's not happening. How about sustainable aviation fuel instead? There's been plenty of developments on this recently. As I see it it would take only a bit more development and the slightest rise in fossil fuel costs to get the lines to cross on $/gallon, at which point sustainable aviation fuel is at price parity with fossil fuels. After that point is reached then the prices on both will be locked tightly in the markets and it's a slow and steady shift away from fossil fuel

            • I've always leaned your way on most of your energy ideas, so I'm sure were could find reasonable compromise there.

              Your input on yachts is interesting and I did not realize what you wrote.

              Mansions, or otherwise the size of a persons home, can most certainly be regulated and already is. Zoning is a real thing and often times controlled locally or possibly by the state. Enforcement is merely not giving out permits. People will always try to find loop holes but put up enough burden and many won't bother. I'm qu

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        US doesn't have the high ground to point fingers.

        The US always points fingers because accepting responsibility and looking at facts is not something generally done there. Just look at the clown they elected as their current leader.

    • Part of that solution was that the US and Europe outsourced their manufacturing to Asia. So the emissions are counted as Asia's, but they are for producing goods for US and European companies that will be shipped back to those markets.

      China in particular has increased their coal usage, but they've also substantially increased their renewable energy. The solar capacity added just this year in Asia is more than the total solar output of North America. China's mix of energy is cleaner now than before, but tota

    • Although it's nice to be able to blame someone else, there really is no "us" or "them" in this issue. The only "us" that matters is all of humanity, and we (humanity) are failing badly.

      Emissions from the US are down from their peak in 2007 [statista.com], but given how high they were then, it's not saying a lot. Europe is doing better, but also still has a long way to go. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. In 2023 US per capita emissions were 17,608 kg CO2 equivalent, compared to 7264 for the EU. But that's still

    • How did Europe and the US do it? Mature economies that switched to non-fossil fuels. Hydroelectric, wind, solar, etc.

      By "etc." are you including nuclear fission? France has such low CO2 emissions per capita, per GDP, per kWh, per a lot of things, because they use so much nuclear fission for power. Recent news implies other nations will make an attempt to catch up. There's plenty more to see on the shift to nuclear fission, here's one recent news article I could find with a quick search as a place to start: https://www.news.com.au/nation... [news.com.au]

      Germany seems intent on maintaining their nuclear phaseout though: https://www.eu [euronews.com]

  • Fuck you all very, very much
  • Hu-Manity...it's close but I don't see how you get China and India into that word. I'd have gone with Chindia or Indo-China.
  • Because telling humans to do something, and do it this very moment has always worked well. Especially when it concerns things that require grave sacrifices to our lifestyle and freedom.

  • Soylent green is the future.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Population is dropping in "mature" nations. Maybe India will have to go Soylent.

      • Is India having a rapid growth in population? I'm not seeing it.

        There's varied ways to measure rate of population growth but the one that makes the most sense to me is average number of births per woman. I found a chart that shows a slow decline since 1964:
        https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org]

        If the average number of births per woman is 2.0 then that's a slow decline in population. Depending on the rate of illnesses, Darwin award winners, and so forth a stable population is had with a fertility rate between

    • Birth rates are falling. There wont be enough soylent green.
  • We didn't have a choice, this isn't something that the people of the world really did, almost all of this CO2 was produced by companies, sometimes on the behalf of things we use but we have zero control to change it. There are no signs this is going to stop, we will fly past 2C in under a decade.
    • Yes, there was nothing we could do.

      /me loads up the Dominoes app and turns the A/C down to 69.
      This wasn't a demand-side problem, it was supply-side!
    • almost all of this CO2 was produced by companies

      If our production came from home forges and family workshops pollution would be worse. Economies of scale apply to pollution as well as finance.

  • by glatiak ( 617813 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @04:16PM (#65756666)

    Given the pushback against doing anything that many politiicans in North America have been offering, there is no surprise here. Heck, unlike many parts of the world, Nporth America is still destroying trains and public transit -- so if you cannot afford a car and fuel, walking is becomming your only option. And while some folks are calling for emergency geoengineering to address the issue, I for one am terrified that some rich fool will make it possible. Its not like we have a planet B to move to, even some of us, if they really screw it up. Some parts of the world are already pushing the habitable limits and it is not impossible to visualize extreme weather in a lot more places. In those places that can afford it, preparation for high winds and heavy rain might be reasonable. And low lying coastal areas... etc. Sad part is that there are huge areas in the world that could be more comfortable over time. But our leaders are already stringing the barbed wire and suggesting folls look elsewhere. Ain't going to be pretty... and I hope some of us survive. But one thing is certain, by avoiding doing anything we are finding the most expensive way possible.

    • I've noticed a substantial surge in the use of electric bicycles.

      The use case for trains in the U.S. is pretty poor, otherwise they'd be more profitable. If they were more profitable people would be building more, not abandoning them. Trains have severe limitations on where they can go, they need fairly flat land: central US, coastal plains, and adjacent to river beds. Passenger trains, being mass transit, are uneconomical if there aren't enough people going along a particular corridor all day long. Passeng

  • Capitalism outright prevented humanity from meeting that target.

    • You have to remember how many deaths global poverty used to cause though. Millions and millions.
    • Production of goods and energy causes pollution regardless of the economic system in which the production takes place. There's more pollution (other things being equal, which they're not) because capitalism allows more production. The alternative is less production, which means less wealth, which means more poverty.
  • The issue is not that the climate has changed - it has, and it will continue to do so - but what we're going to do about it. No matter what the crisis, the solution always seems to be greater government control. Usually at the cost of our way of life.

    What part of NO do you not understand?

    ...laura

    • by PatKa ( 1043990 )
      If your way of life is killing because you smoke, that is a decision you take. If your way of life is killing you and everyone else, that is no longer your decision alone. The non-sense argument "climate has always changed" aside. there is a point where you will no longer be able to adapt. If your body is no longer able to control the temperature because the environment is too hot you will die. There is no way of reversing that. The protein in your body will clot and then it is game over. Like a boiled egg
  • Bill Gates Claims Climate Change Won't Destroy Humanity After All https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And if you believe that, you have given up on reality. Well. You would be in bad but large company. Most people never get a real understanding what reality is.

    • Bill Gates Claims Climate Change Won't Destroy Humanity After All

      This reminds me of some show on the History Channel or something where it was 5 ways the world could end, or something to that effect. As I can recall there was a rogue planet pulling Earth from its orbit, a science experiment creating a black hole, something, something else, and global warming. This was something like 10 years ago and the global warming entry seemed out of place as the world didn't "end", it just made life suck for humans for a long time. It was kind of a let down after all the build up

  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @07:12AM (#65758132) Journal

    Histrionics don't convince anyone anymore.
    Screaming that the sky is falling for 30y when it patently isn't just means people stop listening.

    • Of course it is. It's just falling at an astronomical timeline and not at a human attention span timeline. Most people can't think a couple weeks into the future, let alone 50-100 years.

  • This news is close to the message that says OpenAI plans to spent 20 billion per week on datacenters. Brace yourself, in a couple of years we will also miss the 2.0C goal and from there things will start to fuel themselves further. I usually try to be optimistic but I think we should enjoy the time we still have as life as we know it will come to an end in the not too distant future. We will burn the planet with GPUs. Who would have thought?

"I am your density." -- George McFly in "Back to the Future"

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