The climate as we know it may be in the rear-view mirror, and there is precious little time to change course before careening past a dangerous threshold for global warming. That was the sentiment expressed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres during fiery remarks, which followed new data released today by the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
5 degrees of warming. That carbon budget is now down to 200 billion metric tons of pollution, Guterres said today. That’s actually a small number considering global carbon dioxide emissions reach about 40 billion metric tons a year. At those numbers, we have about five years left of business as usual before that Paris target is out of reach. And while there’s much political wrangling about what it would take to avoid 1.