By Marco Lopez
Sure you’ve heard it before: 1.5°C to Stay Alive. What’s this all about?
Well, the phrase comes from a campaign launched by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) ahead of COP15 in 2009. It was later adopted by small island states globally with the support of AOSIS.
It’s no surprise that SIDS rallied the call to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Coastal communities living in those countries will be (are) the first ones suffering the consequences of human cause climate change.
If the 1.5°C threshold is passed the consequences of climate change will become more difficult for human life and ecosystems.
This is why it matters that for the past 12 consecutive months, the thresholds of 1.5°C and 2°C have been temporarily exceeded.
According to data from Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S) Earth’s global-average temperature reached or exceeded 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era every month between July 2023 and June 2024.
Prior to this, the longest streak of temperature above the 1.5°C limit was for three months in 2016.
This is by no means a breach of the limits set within the Paris Agreement. Only long-term temperature increases are considered by the treaty. We would consider the Paris Agreement goals breached if the global average temperature stays over the 1.5°C limit for a period of 20 to 30 years. Let’s pray that never happens.
The binding international treaty aims to keep “the increase in the global- average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels” by the end of the century.
This trend of months above the threshold, however, is a clear indication that our world is getting warmer at a rate that is approaching 1.5°C faster than ever.
This is why 1.5°C matters. And more so. Why it is important to fast-track mitigation policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC special report, Global Warming of 1.5°C(2018), compare the impacts of a global warming of 1.5°C versus 2°C. At 1.5°C, 6% of insects, 8% of plant life, and 4% of vertebrates would lose over half of their climatic geographic range, the area where they can survive. At 2°C these percentages double.
The report predicts that as vast majority of tropical coral reefs would disappear at 1.5°C. The services these coastal ecosystems have provided to communities for generations would also vanish. These impacts are just the tip of the iceberg.
This is why 1.5°C matters.
