The European Union’s climate change monitoring service, Copernicus, has revealed a staggering statistic – each of the past 12 months has ranked as the warmest on record when compared to the same months in previous years. This alarming announcement coincided with a powerful speech by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in which he called for a global ban on fossil fuel advertising.
According to Copernicus, the average global temperature for the 12-month period leading up to the end of May was a scorching 1.63 degrees Celsius (2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average. This makes it the warmest such period since record-keeping began in 1940, further underscoring the urgency of the climate crisis.
It is important to note that this 12-month average does not necessarily mean that the world has surpassed the 1.5°C (2.7°F) global warming threshold outlined in the Paris Agreement. This threshold refers to a temperature average over decades, beyond which scientists warn of increasingly extreme and irreversible climate impacts.
In a separate report by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the sobering reality is that there is now an 80 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will mark the first calendar year with an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This probability has increased alarmingly from a 66 percent chance just a year ago.
Addressing these findings, Secretary-General Guterres emphasised the urgency of the situation and how rapidly the world is heading in the wrong direction, moving away from stabilising its climate. “In 2015, the chance of such a breach was near zero,” he stated in a speech marking World Environment Day on June 5.
With time running out to reverse course, Guterres urged a 30 percent cut in global fossil fuel production and use by 2030. He lambasted the fossil fuel industry, referring to them as “the godfathers of climate chaos” who “rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies.”
Drawing a comparison with many governments’ restrictions on advertising for harmful substances like tobacco, Guterres made a bold call, “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies, and I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”
The need for such drastic action is evident when considering that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels – the main cause of climate change – hit a record high last year, despite global agreements designed to curb their release and a rapid expansion in renewable energy.
The latest climate data show that the world is “way off track” from its goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C – the key target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. “We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather, and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity,” Barrett warned.
While Barrett described the expected cooling effect of La Nina weather conditions later this year as “a mere blip in the upward curve” of global temperatures, the data indicate that at least one of the next five years is likely to be even warmer than 2023, which registered as the warmest calendar year on record at 1.45°C (2.61°F) above pre-industrial temperatures.
Scientists at Copernicus acknowledged some surprising developments, such as the steep loss of Antarctic sea ice in recent months, but stated that the overall climate data were in line with projections of how rising greenhouse gas emissions would continue to heat the planet.