Planet-heating pollution to hit all-time high, dashing hopes it would start to drop in 2024

Global levels of planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels will hit record levels this year, according to new projections, dashing hopes 2024 would be the year they plateau or fall.

Fossil fuel pollution is set to rise to 37.4 billion metric tons this year, an increase of 0.8% from 2023, a report found. Global emissions from coal, oil and gas are all projected to increase.

The news comes as global leaders gather at the COP29 UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan — talks which have been overshadowed by anxiety over what a new Trump administration will mean for global climate action. The urgency is clear, however, this year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest on record, and has seen back-to-back hurricanes, catastrophic flooding, devastating typhoons and severe drought.

“The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate professor at the University of Exeter, who led the study, published Tuesday by the Global Carbon Project, a consortium of scientists.

While fossil fuels make up the bulk of planet-heating pollution, the other main source is land-use change, including deforestation. Those emissions are also set to go up in 2024, according to the report, exacerbated by this year’s severe droughts and fires.

There was some more positive news: emissions are set to decline in the US and Europe, and China’s emissions are slowing, and could even see a decline this year, the research projected. But that progress is offset by increases in much of the rest of the world, including India.

Total global climate pollution will reach 41.6 billion metric tons this year, up from 40.6 billion metric tons last year, according to the report.

The increase may not seem huge, but it puts the world way off track for tackling the climate crisis.

A UN report published in October said global carbon emissions were slowly plateauing and had raised the possibility they could fall this year.

Fossil fuel pollution needs to roughly halve over this decade to keep global warming lower than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a threshold countries have pledged to try to stay below in the Paris climate agreement.

Climate change is already having catastrophic impacts. But scientists warn that at 1.5 degrees, it begins to exceed the ability of humans and the natural world to adapt — including potentially triggering devastating climate tipping points.

Humanity has already lived through 12-month periods above this critical climate limit but scientists are more concerned about longer timeframes. Tuesday’s study estimates that at current rates of emissions, there is a 50% chance the world will breach 1.5 degrees consistently in about six years.

Some companies and governments have emphasized carbon removal as a key way to bring global temperatures down, but current technology is only removing around one-millionth of the carbon pollution produced by fossil fuels, the report found.

“Time is running out,” Friedlingstein said, adding, “world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions.”

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