THIS time next year, you may be living in the same house, driving the same car and doing the same job. But in one fundamental way, life on Earth could have shifted irrevocably. Spiking worldwide temperatures, boosted by a transition to an El Niño climate pattern, could make 2024 the year that global warming exceeds 1.5°C for the first time. It may not sound like much, but scientists warn it will be a totemic moment for the planet.
Undoubtedly, breaching 1.5°C is a sign of political failure. Just eight years ago, almost every nation agreed to a binding treaty promising to hold the global temperature rise to a maximum of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Blowing past that threshold so soon will bring huge political fallout and unleash reactionary forces that could turbocharge – or cripple – the climate movement. “All hell will break loose,” says Jochem Marotzke at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany. “That is something I’m very sure of.”
