In 2015, all but two countries agreed to make an effort to keep global temperatures from reaching 1.5° C above pre-industrial readings. Since then, most of the world has largely treated what they signed on to as aspirational, and one of the largest emitters (the US) has alternately withdrawn and recommitted to the agreement. Meanwhile, the planet has responded as expected to steadily rising carbon emissions and appears to be practically at the 1.5° limit.
On Wednesday, for the first time, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) acknowledged that reality, and conceded that the goal of keeping warming below 1.5° was no longer a viable one. Instead, its new goalposts focus on keeping both how long we exceed that limit and how much we exceed it by, at a minimum. Doing that will require both dramatic emissions cuts now and the removal of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the century is out.
