Climate Evidence

Hope

There were a few climate stories that came out recently that were, well, not great news. 

First there was the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) report on Sept. 2 that found we will overshoot the 1.5 C threshold set out by the Paris Agreement within the next few years. That threshold aims to limit the dangerous impacts of a warming world.

Then, on Sept. 4, the federal government released its second edition of Canada’s Changing Climate Report, which found that the country could face an average 5 C of warming by 2081 to 2100 relative to 1850 to 1900. 

These stories sound dire, and, to be fair, they are. They are an indication that, as we continue to pump fossil fuels into the atmosphere, we will continue to warm.

But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. 

Just because we will surpass 1.5 C doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. And just because Canada could face 5 C of warming by the end of the century doesn’t mean it has to.

Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute, welcomed the UNEP report, but, in a news release, said he was concerned that it didn’t do a good enough job of explaining that there is a way out, and that the report risks turning "into a call to apathy rather than a call to arms."

I was intrigued with that statement and decided to reach out to him.

"I think that's the main message that … if we just treat this fatalistically, that, oh well, we busted through one-and-a-half, we're going to have to learn how to cope with three degrees — I don't think that's going to work. I think that that's a recipe for apathy. It's very fatalistic," he told me.

"The message needs to be that we can still rescue this 1.5 limit. We can still get back below it. But it's going to take urgent action and in particular on fossil fuels."

Government regulations on greenhouse gas emissions or creating green projects are big ways that change can happen. But what happens when people elect someone who they believe will make those changes but doesn't?

"I think people need to think about what they do next time when they vote," he said.  

If you don’t follow climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe — who is the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University — you should. She is a big advocate of climate action, not climate doom. 

She says most people don’t realize that we’ve already made a difference. 

"When the Paris Agreement was signed, we were heading for four- to five-degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Now we're heading to a 2.7-degree warming by the end of the century, globally, if we just continue on our current pathway," she told me. 

Following its report, UNEP director Inger Andersen told journalists that even if we’re currently on track to pass 1.5 C of warming, that it "is still the goal," as reported by Euractiv, a European media network.

"But now, we need to approach it differently, from above," she said, saying there would need to be "rapid and deep cuts" to fossil fuel emissions. 

After that, she said, we can aim for "net negative emissions," meaning we remove more greenhouse gases than we emit.

So we don’t have to remain at 1.5 C. We can move the dial backward. And if more urgent action is taken — climate scientists and UNEP say — there is hope.

"For me, the definition of hope is, if we do something, will it make a difference?” Hayhoe said. “And the science says, yes, if you do something, it will make a difference."

FIRES, HEAT and STORMS Ravenous fires. Searing heat waves. Freakish storms. The summer of 2026 has already shattered meteorological records in several European countries. On a continent that has weathered centuries of upheaval — ruinous wars, deadly pandemics — it’s the weather that now has Europe feeling close to a breaking point. It has displaced more than 300,000 people in France and Spain, where the largest fires in those countries’ modern histories have led to their largest peacetime evacuations. It has left millions desperate for relief from temperatures that routinely soar above 40 degrees Celsius.

One Earth One Chance 

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