Warming has Reached 1.5°C Featured

What Does that Mean for Climate Advocacy?

Solar Reflection Climate Science Impacts Future Warming Ice Melt Advocacy Targets

As global temperatures continue to rise faster than expected, the adequacy of current climate goals is increasingly in question. Emerging evidence suggests that prevailing targets and strategies may underestimate the scale, speed, and systemic risks of planetary warming, requiring new solutions.

Paper Summary

Global warming has hit 1.5°C and is accelerating toward 3°C+.
Emissions cuts alone may not slow warming in the near term due to aerosol loss.
The 1.5°C target is not a safe threshold or guarantee against tipping points.
Overshoot strategies rely on unrealistic assumptions about restoring Earth systems.
A safer pathway requires zero emissions, carbon drawdown, and safe, short-term cooling research.

Global warming has already reached 1.5°C and is accelerating, with current trajectories pointing toward 3°C or more of heating. The so-called aerosol “Faustian bargain” means that cutting emissions may not immediately slow warming, as the loss of cooling aerosols can temporarily intensify temperature rise. Despite continued commitment to the Paris 1.5°C target, this threshold is not a true safety boundary: it does not prevent tipping points, nor does it guarantee Earth system stability.

Current climate strategy often defaults to “triage politics,” implicitly deciding what can and cannot be saved, while relying on risky assumptions about overshoot and future restoration of damaged systems. A safer alternative would aim to return to Holocene-like conditions of below 0.5°C warming. Achieving this would require a three-lever strategy: rapid zero emissions, large-scale carbon drawdown, and research into safe, temporary cooling interventions.

Warming has already hit 1.5°C, yet global emissions keep rising, fossil-fuel giants are backtracking, and policy commitments are collapsing — the world is careening toward 3°C while scientists foresee famine, conflict, and mass displacement.

David Spratt

Research Director and Climate Analyst

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