Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering
The planet’s remaining carbon budget to meet the international target of 1.5C has just two years left at the current rate of emissions, scientists have warned, showing how deep into the climate crisis the world has fallen.
Breaching the target would ramp up the extreme weather already devastating communities around the world. It would also require carbon dioxide to be sucked from the atmosphere in future to restore the stable climate in which the whole of civilisation developed over the past 10,000 years.
The carbon budget is how much planet-heating CO2 can still be emitted by humanity while leaving a reasonable chance that the temperature target is not blown. The latest assessment by leading climate scientists found that in order to achieve a 66% chance of keeping below the 1.5C target, emissions from 2025 onwards must be limited to 80bn tonnes of CO2. That is 80% lower than it was in 2020.
Emissions reached a new record high in 2024: at that rate the 80bn tonne budget would be exhausted within two years. Lags in the climate system mean the 1.5C limit, which is measured as a multi-year average, would inevitably be passed a few years later, the scientists said.
