COP29: The Gap Between Political Action and the Accelerating Pace of Catastrophic Climate Change Is Terrifying

Too many of our political and business leaders talk up their commitment to climate action while hiding the stark reality of the crisis. Unless things change, fast, we will miss every benchmark set out by climate scientists as necessary to have a hope of maintaining a habitable climate. 

Political leaders still talk about reaching net zero emissions by 2050 – 26 years hence – as a means to keep temperatures below 1.5C. 

In reality we hit 1.5C, the supposedly ‘safe’ level of temperature rise, this year. Yet the COP29 venue is emblazoned with banners which read ‘Mobilizing funds and enabling action to keep 1.5C within reach’, maintaining a fiction that may be comforting, but certainly isn’t real. 

The need for action just became much more urgent. Climate scientists did not expect us to reach 1.5C so quickly. Temperatures had been rising incrementally, largely predictably, year on year for decades. Then in 2023 the rise went far beyond any prior year, taking temperatures way above what was expected. 

The rise was no blip: temperatures have stayed at record levels throughout 2024. It is all but certain they made this year’s ‘natural disasters’ in the US, Spain, the Philippines and beyond more likely, frequent and severe than they would otherwise have been. 

Scientists hope temperatures will come down slightly next year, given last year’s El Niño likely played a part in the unprecedented rise. But El Niño was not the only driver. Other short term changes – like the cut in shipping sulfur emissions – do not tell the whole story either. 

Scientists are worried that nature – which to this point has absorbed about half of all human emissions, protecting us from the worst consequences of our fossil fuel addiction – has stopped or slowed down its ability to take in more carbon. 

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It is too soon to say whether this is a temporary blip or evidence that the systems driving nature’s ability to absorb ever larger amounts of carbon have hit their limit. But the signs are not good. 

“In the northern hemisphere, where you have more than half of CO2 uptake, we have seen a decline trend in absorption for eight years,” says Philippe Ciais, researcher at the French Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences. “There is no good reason to believe it will bounce back.”

If natural reserves do not return to previous levels of carbon removal every climate model will have to be recalculated. Countries will need to go further and faster to cut emissions. 

Meanwhile glaciers, predicted to melt over decades or even centuries, are disappearing far more quickly. Tropical glaciers have shrunk to their smallest size in more than 11,700 years. Thwaites Glacier, seen as a tipping point because its loss would imperil the whole West Antarctica Ice Sheet, is melting far faster than expected, fuelling calls for urgent emissions reductions and even geoengineering. 

Glacier loss reduces the reflectivity of land, increasing warming. It imperils millions of people: 1.9 billion people rely on the water that flows from Himalayan glaciers alone, whether for drinking, agriculture, energy, or other purposes. As the region warms, critical rivers and groundwater sources could eventually dry up. 

As the crisis continues warmer oceans imperil marine life and make severe storms more likely. Other regions will face drought. People are more likely to be displaced, suffer food or water shortages or face resource-loss driven conflict. 

Climate change will also make economic growth hard to impossible to achieve. The climate crisis is “fast becoming an economy-killer”, said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell to world leaders in Baku last week. 

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“Climate impacts are carving up to 5% off GDP in many countries. The climate crisis is a cost-of-living crisis, driving up costs for households and businesses. Worsening climate impacts will put inflation on steroids unless every country can take bolder climate action.” 

Recent modelling suggests the crisis will reduce global economic growth by a third. Many scientists believe this to be far too optimistic, arguing there is no chance the global economy can continue to function at anything like normal levels if climate change is not held back. 

Scientists believe global temperatures will rise by 2.7C this century on current trends, the same estimate they gave in 2021. It’s not that no action has been taken since then – renewables have been rolled out at huge scale in China, Saudi Arabia and beyond – but gains have been all but cancelled out by renewed fossil fuel extraction, increased energy use for AI and rising living standards in middle income countries. 

This is the context of COP29 and any action (or inaction) that follows. The emissions reductions required to stabilise temperatures at 1.5C or anything below 2C are gigantic: a recent report for example calls for China to cut its emissions by 66% below 2023 levels by 2030, and 78% below 2023 levels by 2035. Such cuts hardly seem credible, yet it is scientists’ job to communicate the facts and call for governments to act. They must continue. 

Change is possible. EU greenhouse gas emissions fell by 8.3% in 2023 compared to 2022. EU greenhouse gas emissions are now 37% below 1990 levels. Over the same period EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 68%, proving that reducing emissions and economic growth are compatible. It also confirms that the EU remains on track to reach its goal of reducing emissions by at least 55% by 2030. 

But the EU is an outlier. Globally emissions are at peak levels. Most political leaders talk up climate action while doing little, or actively pursuing fossil fuels. 

As COP29 enters its final days there is still no agreement on crucial climate finance, while at the concurrent G20 summit in Rio the leaders’ statement made no direct mention of the need to transition away from fossil fuels, escalating fears that Donald Trump’s election victory has put the brakes on climate action. 

This is not an argument to give up hope or ambition. There are political leaders, as well as activists, scientists, renewable energy innovators and regular citizens doing all they can to turn things around. Some countries are going further and faster than the rest. They deserve our support and our partnership. 

But if the dramatic change that must happen this decade is to have a hope of coming to pass governments must be forced to act, and soon.