This is the second in an occasional series of reflections on updating the climate content in Terra.do’s Learning for Action course. To start at the beginning, go here.
The climate is meaner than it was a few decades ago. Extreme events like heatwaves, droughts, storms, and floods have grown more frequent and more severe. And absent sweeping changes, this problem will keep getting worse.
That’s one takeaway from our classes on impacts, which may feel harder to stomach in 2025. Not that Terra.do fellows have historically relished the gritty reality of this part of the course, but perhaps it was easier to take when the political winds were broadly headed in the right-ish direction, amid passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and hopeful signs global emissions of heat-trapping gases would soon peak and start plummeting. Argh.
Updating these two classes has always been a challenge—there are always new disasters we could write about, new records broken, new takes on what might be in store. There’s also the challenge of keeping the content engaging: If you, dear reader, feel so pummeled by bleakness that you check out, then have I, the writer, done you any real service? The last thing we want to do is immobilize you, after all.
Still, part of the vital work of meeting this moment is understanding the climate crisis. Here, let’s unpack some ways our discussion of climate impacts in the Learning for Action program has continued to evolve.
One major shift has been around the 1.5 C temperature goal.
Some background: Based on temperature records going back to the 1800s, the planet now averages more than 1 degree C (2 degrees F) hotter than before industrialization. That might not sound like much, but no one lives at the global average, and it makes a big difference in terms of extreme weather events.
As part of the Paris Agreement a decade ago, 195 countries pledged to do their parts to stop warming before it hits 2 C above that 1800s benchmark, and ideally keep it under 1.5 C. But almost all have been slow to act, and even the most optimistic scenario now puts us on a path to more like 1.9 C, per Climate Action Tracker.
From a climate communications standpoint in 2025, this is a mess. By some measures, 2024 already averaged some 1.55 C above pre-industrial levels. That’s based on six international datasets, though not all clocked in above 1.5 C last year due to varying methodologies. Some key context from the World Meteorological Organization:
It is important to emphasize that a single year of more than 1.5°C for a year does NOT mean that we have failed to meet Paris Agreement long-term temperature goals, which are measured over decades rather than an individual year,” says the WMO’s Celeste Saulo. “However, it is essential to recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet.
So the rather tangled upshot is something like: 2 C would be good, and 1.5 C would be better, but it kinda looks like we’re past 1.5 C now, but there’s some scientific fussiness about the specifics there, but anyway even if 1.5 C is blown let’s still go for 2 C even harder. Got that? (Again, from a climate communications standpoint: Blergh.)
Still, the 1.5 C target has been central to international climate conversations and planning for years. Whether or not you see this goal as moot now, it remains crucial context for climate policy discussions going forward.
This brings us to another big shift…
Carbon budget? What carbon budget?
There was a time when it seemed realistic to imagine cutting heat-trapping CO2 emissions a little each year, progressing in thoughtful and deliberate increments toward a future where those emissions reach net zero, thereby stopping the planet from getting any hotter.
In this scenario, you’d make strategic choices about what emissions to cut first. Perhaps you’d start with straightforward options like phasing out coal in rich countries and working to decarbonize ground transportation. This would leave room to more gradually phase down emissions in other sectors or places. How much time you had, and how much carbon you could stand to emit—those would all factor into something called a carbon budget.
That time has nearly passed for 1.5 C. The whole amount of carbon that climate wonks once talked about budgeting, measured in billions of tonnes of CO2, is rapidly dwindling. And things aren’t looking rosy for 2 C, either. The missed opportunity this points to is maddening.
The main thing to know is that there is no safe amount of carbon we can keep burning. Anything we can do to curb emissions is worth doing now, not later. Lastly, there’s a case that a carbon budget was never a great metaphor anyway. Better, perhaps, to talk about our carbon debt.
One problem, many solutions
The latest round of tweaks to these classes included many small updates, but one I can’t get out of my head is that 2024 saw some 58 billion-dollar weather disasters. That makes it second only to 2023, which saw 73. There were deadly wildfires and heat waves, along with devastating flooding in China. Researchers say in the U.S., climate change worsened the economic damage of Hurricanes Helene and Milton by tens of billions of dollars.
We have the means to stop this problem from getting worse. That’s what the rest of the course is about: solutions from clean energy to climate finance to communications to many others. I’ll unpack what’s new and different in those classes as this series continues.