Current Status of Earth Systems

WMO and NASA

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)'s provisional 2023 State of the Global Climate report, which includes climate data through October,  "2023 is set to be the warmest year on record," about 1.4 °C "above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline." In its 2022 report, the WMO found that “the planet was 1.15 ± 0.13 °C warmer than the pre-industrial (1850-1900) average, making the last 8 years the warmest on record” (“State of the Global Climate in 2022”). We have, stated the WMO in 2022, a “50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years," that is, 2022-2026. Indeed, “[t]he annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2022 and 2026 is predicted to be between 1.1 °C and 1.7 °C higher than preindustrial levels (the average over the years 1850-1900).” WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas has stated: “This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” that is, the scientifically derived consensus that global warming must be limited to 1.5 °C [see "The Paris Agreement," "adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015"].

Check out NASA's revealing visualization, Time Series: 1884 to 2002. [“Dark blue shows areas cooler than average. Dark red shows areas warmer than average.”]

According to NASA, "2022 effectively tied for Earth’s 5th warmest year since 1880, and the last 9 consecutive years have been the warmest 9 on record." "[G]lobal temperatures in 2022 were 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.89 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980)."

UNEP

“[T]he international community is falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place," reports the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in its Gap Emissions Report 2022. "Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster.” Looking at the gap between world nations' voluntary climate pledges (NDCs, or Nationally Determined Contributions) and their actual emission reductions, UNEP finds that, "[w]ithout additional action, current policies lead to global warming of 2.8°C over this century." NDC conditional and unconditional scenarios in 2022 (before this year's COP28) would reduce this to only "2.6°C and 2.4°C respectively” (xxi). UNEP concludes: “To get on track for limiting global warming to 1.5°C, global annual GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions must be reduced by 45 per cent compared with emissions projections under policies currently in place in just eight years, and they must continue to decline rapidly after 2030, to avoid exhausting the limited remaining atmospheric carbon budget.” (xvi).

Timothy M. Lenton, lead author of the study “Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming,” published in Nature Sustainability in May 2023, likewise warns:

Despite increased pledges and targets to tackle climate change, current policies still leave the world on course for around 2.7 °C end-of-century global warming above pre-industrial levels—far from the ambitious aim of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. Even fully implementing all 2030 nationally determined contributions, long-term pledges and net zero targets, nearly 2 °C global warming is expected later this century.

Principles of Transformative Climate Justice

Transformative climate justice attends to intergenerational, intragenerational, and interspecies justice.

• Intragenerational justice: What does justice demand of those of us who are privileged citizens of the U.S., the global north and/or privileged sectors of the global south, as we transition away from the very fossil fuels that have enabled the accumulation of wealth and domination? 

• Intergenerational justice: What are we called on to do now, by those who have come before us and will come after us? 

• Interspecies justice: How do we repair the harms done to ecosystems by ideologies of human exceptionalism and extractivism?

Transformation climate justice draws clarity and commitment from, and is in solidarity with, Indigenous and environmental justice movement (EJM) activists. “Instead of seeing the environment as separate from people and communities," writes scholar Giovanna Di Chiro, "EJM activists, who are predominantly low-income women and women of colour, define the environment as the places in which we live our lives, build our communities, and have a chance for earthly survival.”* In “A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy," the Climate Justice Alliance observes:

Indigenous Peoples, as members of their Indigenous sovereign nations, Asian and Pacific Islander, Black, Brown, and poor white marginalized communities must be heard, prioritized, and invested in if we are to successfully build a thriving democracy and society in the face of intersecting climate, environmental, economic, social, and health crises. A just and equitable society requires bottom-up processes built off of, and in concert with, existing organizing initiatives in a given community. It must be rooted in solutions for a healthy future and a Regenerative Economy from the lens of the people. These solutions must be inclusive—leaving no one behind in both process and outcome. Thus, frontline communities must be at the forefront as efforts grow to advance a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy.

Transformation climate justice centers the knowledge and experience of frontline communities, defined by organizers Hilary Moore and Joshua Kahn Russell as those "directly impacted communities who have been able to collectively name the ways they are burdened and are organizing for action together.” As Moore and Russell observe, "The communities most directly impacted on the frontlines are not only dealing with the brunt of the problem, but are also best equipped with the knowledge and skills to chart the way forward.”**

Recognizing with the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, International (WECAN) that "[t]he age of economic expansion has produced more material wealth and technological innovation than humanity has ever seen, but has simultaneously compromised our most basic life support system: planet Earth," transformation climate justice foregrounds the knowledge and experience of feminist and womanist thinkers and change makers. WECAN argues that we must reject “the root injustices that undergird and perpetuate environmental destruction today”:

These forces—a capitalist, neoliberal economic model, extreme inequality in political and economic power, and the corruption of our democracy—drive a fossil fuel-reliant economy that exploits workers and Indigenous Peoples, sacrifices community health and the environment for profit, perpetrates violence and militarization, reproduces patterns of racial and gender oppression, and prevents people worldwide from living healthy and empowered lives.***

Transformative climate justice advocates for the rights of nature, adopting principles outlined by The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN)(What are the Rights of Nature?), for example:

Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights of nature acknowledges that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles. And we – the people – have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems. [. . .] For indigenous cultures around the world, recognizing rights of nature is consistent with their traditions of living in harmony with nature. All life, including human life, are deeply connected. Decisions and values are based on what is good for the whole.

Transformative climate justice considers not only safe earth system boundaries but also just earth system boundaries, as argued by Timothy M. Lenton et al in their study “Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming": 

The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, but this raises ethical issues. Here we express them in terms of numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche. By end-of-century (2080–2100), current policies leading to around 2.7 °C global warming could leave one-third (22–39%) of people outside the niche.

Our actions matter, especially if we are among the most privileged members of global northern nations and fossil fuel exporting countries in the global south. Our commitments to fossil fueled consumption, neoliberal deregulation and globalization, the ongoing privatization of the commons, and Gross Domestic Product as the chief measure of the thriving of nations and peoples has and will continue to do harm at ever faster rates. “Exposure outside the [human climate] niche," warns Lenton et al, "could result in increased morbidity, mortality, adaptation in place or displacement (migration elsewhere).” But every fraction of a degree beyond the lower limit of global warming stated in The Paris Agreement--no more than 1.5 °C--increases harm; every fraction of a degree provides opportunities for mitigating harm. “Reducing global warming from 2.7 to 1.5 °C results in a ~5-fold decrease in the population exposed to unprecedented heat (mean annual temperature ≥29 °C)," conclude Lenton et al.****

Works Cited

*Giovanna Di Chiro (2008), “Living environmentalisms: coalition politics, social reproduction, and environmental justice”, Environmental Politics, 17:2, 276-298, quotation from 286-87.

**Hilary Moore and Joshua Kahn Russell, Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the Climate Crisis, PM Press Pamphlet Series no. 0011, Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011, quotations from pg. 12. 

*** Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, International (WECAN), Women's Climate Action Agenda  (lead authors Osprey Orielle Lake, Claire Greensfelder and Elaine Colligan).

****Timothy M. Lenton et al, “Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming,” Nature Sustainability, 22 May 2023.