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Experts warn two years left of carbon budget to meet 1.5C targets

We only have two years left to lower our global carbon emissions if we want to meet the 1.5C of warming target, experts have warned.

More news about the climate crisis this week and, unfortunately, it’s not exactly positive.

Scientists are warning that the globe has only two years left of carbon budget if we are to keep worldwide temperature increases below 1.5C. This means that we can still emit carbon at our current rate for 24 months and still keep to our targets.

If we do not lower our activity in that time – and it is basically guaranteed that we won’t – then more extreme weather will become increasingly common and deadly.

When this carbon budget is breached, we will then need to rely on sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in order to restore a stable climate.

As The Guardian points out, the current weather patterns and temperatures we operate within have helped our modern civilisation to develop over the past 10,000 years. Any change in this balance will be devastating for many people around the globe.

Even worse, emissions actually reached a record high in 2024 and are increasing each year. Despite all the talk at COP summits, climate meetings and supposed net zero targets, it seems that not enough is being done.

Scientists were eager to stress that we must still try to lower global temperatures in any way possible, as every small reduction will be important for human life and our chances of a stable future.

This update was written by an international team of climate scientists and was published in the Earth System Science Data journal.

They found that human emission are having a compound effect on our climate. Sea levels have risen by more than double in the past ten years and will cause serious flooding at even 1.5C of global heating.

All this doom and gloom can be frustrating and deflating, but it’s important to remember that the vast majority of the public desperately wants to see more done about climate change.

As we wrote recently, studies suggest that 89% of us feel not enough is being done.

This is also reflected in climate change lobbying, with European countries increasingly engaging with concrete policies and action. There is growing momentum in parts of the world, and we’ll no doubt see even greater urgency as the impacts of carbon emissions become more apparent and immediate.

COP30 will take place from the 10th – 21st November 2025 in Belém, Brazil.

We should expect these targets and our two-year budget to be brought up and scrutinised, though we need more action and less words at such a late stage in the climate crisis.

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