When Hurricane Ian struck Florida and Cuba a few days ago, it gave scientists and activists another attention-grabbing moment to tell people that climate change was already having a deadly impact on their lives. Scenes of death and devastation from a Category 4 storm in one of the U.S.’s favourite holiday States forced politicians and policymakers to confront their weak climate record. Scientists see governments and leaders everywhere as doing almost nothing when the threat has arrived at the door.
The instrument ratified by almost all countries to avert dangerous climate change through a phasing down of greenhouse gas emissions is the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The pact of 2015 is now in its decisive decade of action. Its headline goals are clear — firstly, to limit the rise in average global temperature to 1.5 degrees C by the end of the century, and at least peg it well below 2 degrees C; and secondly, to achieve a peaking of man-made emissions as soon as possible. However, individual national pledges of member-countries do not possess the finer details on how they will get to net zero emissions by mid-century.
