When the 29th International Conference on Climate Change (COP-29) convenes three days from now, several new realities will confront the delegates. Some have emerged in the last year, proving that climate science and climate impacts are emerging much faster than the world's climate actions.
Three developments stand out.
First, extreme weather conditions are proving there is no place to hide from global warming. That would seem obvious since the Earth's climate is everywhere, all the time. Nevertheless, some cities have advertised themselves as "climate havens" where people can find safety from floods, wildfires, droughts, rising seas, tornadoes, and catastrophic coastal storms.
For example, several overconfident cities and real estate agents in the United States hope global warming will spur home sales, business development, and tax revenues. One was Asheville, North Carolina, in the Appalachian Mountains, 2,200 feet above sea level and nearly 400 miles from the closest ocean.
Its population of 95,000 has grown because of its temperate climate, beautiful surroundings, low history of wildfires, and apparent safety from the increasingly violent hurricanes that threaten communities along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.
But as Hurricane Helene plowed up the Atlantic coast and southeastern states in October, it leveled inland as well as shoreline communities and killed at least 228 people. It drenched Asheville and surrounding areas with three days of slow-moving rains fed by Helene's tropical moisture. Some parts of the region reportedly received more than 30 inches. Streams and rivers overflowed and crashed into Asheville, destroying businesses, homes, bridges, streets – and the community's reputation as a climate sanctuary.
The reality is that climate havens don't exist. Some places will be less at risk of weather disasters than others, but virtually no place will be entirely safe. The billions of people expected to become climate migrants and refugees in the years ahead will have to pick the type of disaster they prefer and the places that seem ready for it.
Climate migration is the second reality the delegates at COP-29 should confront. One estimate is that 120 million of the world's people have been "forcibly displaced" today, the highest number ever recorded, because of violence, political or economic instability, or climate and other disasters. Half have left their home countries.
At the same time, Far Right extremism, neo-fascism, and nationalism are resurgent in Europe, the U.K., and the United States. "Across the world, particularly in Europe and the U.S., both public opinion and many politicians are not following" international goals for humane treatment of displaced people, according to an important new analysis, Exodus Equator, One Billion on the Move by 2050 by Jonathon Porritt, president of Population Matters, and two colleagues, Robin Maynard and Colin Hines.
They cite a prediction that a fifth of the planet's land area will be outside tolerable conditions for life. Yet, people fleeing these conditions have no legal status in current international conventions regarding refugees. A third new reality is the growing recognition that one of the objectives of the Paris climate accord – achieving net-negative carbon during the second half of this century – may not be a possible or desirable objective.
I'll explain. Because fossil fuels are still the dominant source of the world's energy, because countries continue subsidizing them, because nearly 30 years of COPs have failed to produce an agreement to phase them out, and because atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are still growing steadily, it is unlikely the international community will achieve the Paris agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the Earth's pre-industrial temperature.
Warming above that level is called "overshoot." The response described in the Paris agreement – net-negative carbon – would take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than civilization and nature put in. Earlier science assumed this would gradually bring the Earth's surface temperature down to livable levels.
However, research published last month in the journal Nature questions the practicality and wisdom of this scenario. The technology to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere does not yet exist at scale and may never be economically feasible. In addition, if current emission levels continue, trying to bring the global temperature down to 1.5 degrees would be "the equivalent to running the U.S. energy industry in reverse for around 80 years," an enormous task.
Most importantly, many of the damages caused by overshooting 1.5 degrees, like the Greenland Ice Sheet's collapse or the Amazon rainforest's die-off, would not be reversible on a human timescale. Important species would go extinct. And overshoot could trigger tipping points and feedback loops with permanent consequences for agriculture, industries, and the quality of human life on the planet.
"For many people, the climate that they will experience after overshoot will not be what they had experienced before it – even if global mean surface temperatures return to levels before the overshoot," Nature's editors point out. In a companion article, ocean researcher Nadine Mengis writes, "Considerable uncertainties surround whether and how the Earth could bounce back from a transgression of the temperature limits agreed in Paris. An analysis of overconfidence in models suggests that it might be safer to avoid such a path."
In fact, we can be certain it's safer to avoid such a path. Rather than placing confidence in technologies and processes we do not have, the world must emphasize using the considerable tools at hand to expedite the world's transition to clean energy and heal the ecosystems that naturally absorb CO2. Greenhouse gas pollution is like a rapidly metastasizing cancer: We can't allow it to spread while waiting for doctors to develop a new cure. Research on new technologies must continue, but we must stop procrastinating and avoiding difficult decisions, even if they are disruptive. The money that international lending institutions provide to expand oil, gas, and coal infrastructure and production must be redirected to energy efficiency and clean energy.
At COP-29, nations would take a critical step by agreeing to make their carbon-cutting commitments enforceable and noncompliance punishable under their own laws, regulations, and constitutions. Voluntary compliance is not working.
Without changes like these, COP-30 and subsequent COPs will be little more than worthless jawboning, junkets for oil lobbyists, and exhibitions of greenwashing.