World leaders meet this week for the COP29 climate conference, gathering in Azerbaijan under the shadow of President designate Donald Trump, who has pledged to withdraw the United States from international climate commitments.
Trump’s stunning comeback aside, countries are under pressure to ramp up their action on climate change given that 2024 risks being the warmest year on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
As the world seeks to strengthen action, Trump has promised to quit the Paris climate agreement and his advisors have even floated the idea of leaving the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that launched the COP negotiations.
Dubbed the “finance COP”, representatives from nearly 200 nations are gathering in the Azerbaijani capital to pledge funds that will help developing nations take climate action, such as by accelerating their transition to clean energy.
Here’s what you need to know about efforts underway to tackle climate change on the world stage:
What are countries doing about climate change?
Adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement gave countries a goal: to limit global average temperature rises to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial times while “pursuing efforts” for a tougher ceiling of 1.5°C (2.7°F).
Instead, the world is set to warm up by as much as 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 Fahrenheit), risking devastating fallout on people and nature, according to the UN Emissions Gap report.
Countries are cutting emissions in myriad ways, such as deploying more wind and solar to replace coal as the top generator of electricity by early next year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
But scientists say more must be done and faster, especially the phase-out of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.
Despite this urgency, countries have missed more than half the UN deadlines to submit updated climate plans under the Paris Agreement, according to London think tank the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Has there been progress?
Yes. Future temperature rises are expected to be less extreme thanks to commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - providing they are implemented - according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In 2010, global temperature rises were forecast to be 3.7°C to 4.8°C in 2100 above pre-industrial times, but that projected range had dipped to 2.4°C to 2.6°C due to new pledges made in 2022, the IPCC found.
This, however, is still well above the 1.5°C target that scientists say is a crucial point when impacts from heatwaves to droughts to floods become ever more frequent and severe.
The IPCC says meeting the 1.5°C goal would require cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 from 2019 levels.
To get on track demands dramatic action, from halting deforestation to transforming how humans travel, work and eat - be it reducing plane travel or eating less meat, experts say.
Is extreme weather normal now?
Scientists are becoming increasingly adept at joining the dots between extreme weather events and climate change.
Recent floods in eastern Spain that killed more than 200 people, for example, were twice as likely in today’s climate against pre-industrial times, according to analysis by the World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists.
A UN report last year calculated the annual global cost for vulnerable people to adapt to an ever more extreme climate was US$215 billion to US$387 billion a year up to 2030 - 10 to 18 times more than the US$21 billion provided in 2021.
Will we ever solve the climate crisis?
The window of opportunity is narrowing to cut greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to slow the planet’s warming and stay within the 1.5°C limit, scientists and UN officials say.
Breaching it could lead to points of no return - such as the collapse of ice sheets that could turbo-charge sea-level rise, or the mass death of tropical coral reefs in warming oceans.
But there are positive tipping points, too.
Given protection, forests, peatlands and other ecosystems can help absorb human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.
Solutions to the crisis exist but require unprecedented changes at a new scale and pace, the IPCC says.
And even if global warming does exceed 1.5°C in coming years, it adds, every fraction of a degree impacts the level of harm and makes it easier to pull temperatures back to safer levels.
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