Climate scientists warn about ‘perilous times’ ahead despite imminent emissions peak

Scientists are sounding the alarm about the Earth’s climate trajectory as the world remains on a path to 2.7ºC warming – despite reports that 2024 could bring peak energy emissions.

There is good news and bad news in the climate world this week. The International Energy Agency (IEA) Renewables 2024 report shows that renewable energy is on course to meet nearly half of the world’s power demand by 2030, with 5 500 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity to be added between now and the end of the decade.

For consultancy DNV, “2024 is the year that the global energy transition has begun”, and it could also be the year that power-related emissions could peak.

But for climate scientists, this progress remains insufficient: the 2024 State of the Climate report warns that “we are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster”, with current policies putting us on track for approximately 2.7°C peak warming by 2100.

The dangers of a climate overshoot

This ‘overshoot’ from the global goal of keeping the temperature rise to 1.5ºC or even below 2ºC is dangerous territory, even if the Earth’s temperature drops again after the end of the century. A new scientific paper published yesterday in Nature suggests that future cooling “might be of limited relevance for adaptation planning today”, since even a temporary overshoot could trigger damaging feedback mechanisms on the planet.

“This paper does away with any notion that overshoot would deliver a similar climate outcome to a future in which we had done more, earlier, to ensure to limit peak warming to 1.5°C,” commented Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of integrated climate impacts group at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis and scientific advisor at Climate Analytics, who led the study.

“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages,” he added.

According to the study, some climate impacts are unlikely to be reversed in the case of a temperature overshoot: they include changes in the deep ocean, marine biogeochemistry and species abundance, land-based biomes, carbon stocks and crop yields, but also biodiversity on land. Sea levels are also likely to continue to rise “for centuries to millennia”, even if long-term temperatures decline.

Such warnings highlight the importance of climate adaptation efforts – an increasingly relevant aspect of the Chief Sustainability Officer’s work.

‘Abrupt climate upheaval’ ahead

For the authors of the 2024 State of the Climate report, we are already in the danger zone, “witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world”. 

Analysing recent temperature trends and 16 climate disasters that happened between November 2023 and August 2024, they warn that fossil fuel consumption remains roughly 14 times greater than solar and wind energy consumption, and that the recent growth in the renewable share of electricity generation “mostly covered increased demand, instead of replacing fossil fuels”.

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In addition, both the human and ruminant population are still growing, and per capita meat production continued to increase in 2023, bringing forth more and more emissions. “Decoupling the growth in all of these variables with greenhouse gas emissions may be difficult.”

Towards a ‘post-growth’ economic framework

Similarly to the paper on the climate overshoot, the report notes that “each 0.1°C of global warming places an extra 100 million people (or more) into unprecedented hot average temperatures”, and blames the slow progress partly on “stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system”.

The scientists call for global action from policymakers and the corporate world to rapidly phase down fossil fuels – which can be supported by a sufficiently high global carbon price – drastically reduce overconsumption and waste, stabilise and gradually reduce the human population “through empowering education and rights for girls and women”, reform food production systems to support more plant-based eating and adopt “a post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice”.

“In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion.”

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