Time is running out – additional emissions cuts are vital to stop tipping points

Hausfather = Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist and energy systems analyst at Berkeley Earth

But Hausfather noted that time is running out. “We have a vanishingly small remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5°C,” he said. “There’s a growing consensus in the scientific community that we’ve waited too long to reduce emissions and passing 1.5°C for at least a period of time is pretty much inevitable at this point. What we want to do now is make sure we don’t make the same mistake and come back 15 years from now saying, well it’s too late to avoid 2° because we didn’t limit emissions in the meantime. We should learn from our mistakes here and not waste any more time.”

Beyond the United States, studies show other nations are also acting too slowly. Coal consumption globally is at near record levels, accounting for approximately 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. And worldwide, fossil fuels still account for approximately 80 percent of all energy generation. A just-released United Nations Environment Programme 2023 Production Gap Report affirmed that “governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce  more than  double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to  1.5°C.”

Climate scientists are increasingly sounding the alarm that Earth’s systems are wobbling out of control. In late October, a cohort of 12 internationally renowned scientists released a synthesis report that examined all available data on climate patterns and juxtaposed it with other factors, such as water vapor and El Niño. In their final report, "The 2023 State of the Climate Report: Entering Uncharted Territory,” the authors state that, “Life on planet Earth is under siege” and document the many climate records that were broken this year, including ocean and surface temperatures, sea ice, and the unprecedented wildfire season in Canada that resulted in huge plumes of carbon dioxide emissions. “We are in unchartered territory that humans have never seen before,” William J. Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University and the lead author of the paper, told Sierra. Ripple was also the lead author of "World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice," published in 2017, which featured 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries. He pointed out that “climate change is just a symptom of ecological overshoot”—when industrial demands for resources exceed Earth’s regenerative capacity.

And according to a cohort of 29 internationally renowned scientists, we have now breached six of the nine planetary boundaries that support life on Earth. A previous cohort first introduced the framework of planetary boundaries in 2009, offering a novel method for evaluating those different systems, including biosphere integrity, climate change, and ocean acidification. The authors defined them as nine thresholds and elucidated the ways in which the transgression of these boundaries would implicate a hard exit from the “safe operating space” for human civilization.