COP27, the latest UN climate change summit which was held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, has been condemned for failing to summon an adequate response to the escalating climate crisis. Negotiators did manage to preserve a commitment made in Paris in 2015 to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which rose by 1% globally in 2022, mean the temperature at which Earth will eventually stabilise is slipping out of humanity’s control.
“The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5°C, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold,” says Peter Schlosser, a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Arizona State University. “Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen.”
