Despite their promises

World still racing toward the edge of the cliff:

The world is still on track for a catastrophic 2.6C increase in temperature as countries have not made sufficiently strong climate pledges, while emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high, two major reports have found.

It’s not so much the absence of strong enough pledges that’s the problem as it is the absence of doing anything.

Despite their promises, governments’ new emission-cutting plans submitted for the Cop30 climate talks taking place in Brazil have done little to avert dangerous global heating for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Climate Action Tracker update.

Surprise surprise. We look around us; we see nothing changing. That could be because submitting plans for climate talks is just that. Talking, planning, submitting, promising – none of that is doing anything.

“A world at 2.6C means global disaster,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. A world this hot would probably trigger major “tipping points” that would cause the collapse of key Atlantic Ocean circulation, the loss of coral reefs, the long-term deterioration of ice sheets and the conversion of the Amazon rainforest to a savannah.

“That all means the end of agriculture in the UK and across Europe, drought and monsoon failure in Asia and Africa, lethal heat and humidity,” said Hare. “This is not a good place to be. You want to stay away from that.”

But you can’t stay away from it, because nobody else is.

Donald Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax”, torn up climate policies at home and agitated for more oil and gas drilling in America and overseas. For the first time, the US has not sent a delegation to a Cop summit, to the relief of some delegates.

Well, look at it from his point of view. He’s not going to be around much longer, so why should he care?

And that applies to everyone else.