TAOS, New Mexico (AN) — As snowpacks in the western United States and glaciers in Europe and Asia show decades of decline, few nations offer climate plan targets – reducing the Paris climate accord to a weak pulse.
Japan's adoption of new decarbonization targets on Tuesday made it just the 15th government to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement's requirement of submitting climate action targets for cutting greenhouse gases by 2035.
That means barely 8% of 193 U.N. member nations offer climate targets for the next decade, according to Climate Action Tracker, a research group. Along with Japan, those include Andorra, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Singapore, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingom, United States, Uruguay and Zimbabwe.
Most of the world’s major air polluters, including China, India and Russia, missed a United Nations deadline last week to submit updated climate targets, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, that are commitments to limit emissions that cause warming.
Under former U.S. President Joe Biden, the United States also submitted its 2035 target – which Biden's successor, U.S. President Donald Trump, says he will ignore while also pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty.
Japan's climate action plan aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70% from 2013 levels over the next 15 years, and it relies on making greater use of nuclear power to meet the goal while serving a growing demand for power.
The U.K. aims to cut emissions by at least 81% by 2035 compared to 1990 emissions, and to phase out new internal combustion cars that rely solely on gasoline and diesel by 2030. Brazil plans to make emission cuts from 59% to 67% by 2035 compared to 2005 emissions, and heavily emphasizes its efforts to achieve climate justice and fight deforestation.
U.N. Climate Chief Simon Stiell said meeting the deadline was important, but the quality and ambition of the plans are paramount – and most countries promised to produce their plans this year. “Taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense,” he said.
Spring snowpacks in the western U.S. declined as much as 81% since 1955, according to government figures. Globally, the ice thickness of glaciers declined by 14 meters on average since satellite records began in 1976, according to Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
And over the next two decades, the Earth’s heating could exceed the Paris climate treaty's upper 2° threshold.
The landmark accord signed by 195 countries aims to hold global warming well below 2°, with an aspiration to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° above the pre-industrial average by reducing the human-caused greenhouse gas emissions that are the main driver of climate change.
New studies published in the journal Nature, however, find last year’s global record heat signaled the Earth likely entered a 20-year warming period marking the world's inability to fulfill the 2015 treaty's key goals.
Climate scientists use 20-year temperature averages to determine if the Earth has become permanently hotter. While a single year of record heat – such as we saw in 2024 – doesn’t mean the Earth has crossed the threshold, climate models suggest that if current policies continue, one hot year is often an early warning sign of a long-term climate shift.
“If true, the occurrence of the first single year at 1.5° warming would imply that the 20-year period that reaches the Paris Agreement’s lower goal has already started and that the expected impacts at a 1.5° warming level will start to emerge,” the study's authors say.
Earth in 'danger zone'
Should the pattern hold, 2024's record-breaking heat could mean the Earth already entered a long-term 1.5° warming phase. If that’s the case, we are now in the danger zone where climate risks like extreme heat, rising seas, and ecological disruptions will be far more severe.
In an article published this month in the journal Environment, climate scientist James Hansen – whose 1988 congressional testimony was instrumental in raising awareness about global warming – reports that since 2010, the heating accelerated significantly.
Hansen and his colleagues say the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, may have underestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions.
Lacking significant mitigation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could cause global temperatures to exceed 2° above pre-industrial levels by 2045, the outer limit of the Paris agreement, and a threshold previously not expected to be reached until later in the century, Hansen says.
This accelerated timeline raises concerns about triggering tipping points like the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which would impact weather patterns and sea levels.
“Global emissions will remain high and climate will pass the 'Point of No Return,' if the atmosphere continues to be a free dumping ground for fossil fuel emissions,” the Hansen study says.
Point of no return
Persistent global warming will lock in sea level rise of many meters and other worldwide climate-change impacts, such as stronger and more frequent storms, extreme flooding, heat waves and droughts.
Hansen, who has called the 1.5° goal “deader than a doornail,” attributes the acceleration in warming in part to the cleaner fuel now used by the international shipping industry. The newer fuel produces fewer aerosol emissions; while a plus for public health, these tiny particles aid in cloud formation over the oceans which has a cooling effect.
Hansen’s study advocates for several major policy changes, including a global carbon fee, more investment in nuclear energy and research into geoengineering solutions to counter warming.
Hansen’s and the other studies were done before Trump announced he would withdraw the United States, a major greenhouse gas emitter with China, India, Russia and the E.U., from the Paris climate treaty. The withdrawal process takes a year to complete. It is the second time that Trump has done so; Biden reversed the move the first time around.
The 'Trump tornado'
In Europe, far-right extremists are falling into lockstep behind Trump’s regressive climate policies, advocating for a turn away from environmental regulation in favor of more traditional economic priorities and values.
Their movement was on full display earlier this month in Spain’s capital at the 'Make Europe Great Again' rally with right-wing leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, praising Trump’s pro-fossil fuel policies while criticizing the E.U.’s clean energy initiatives.
“Our friend Trump, the Trump tornado, has changed the world in just a couple of weeks. An era has ended,” Orbán said at the Madrid gathering.
