Chart of the day: Damning picture of climate inaction as Paris target breach looms within years

Résumé détaillé

Leaders aren't flocking to COP31 because they know they'd be shamed by the failure of governments to act. At least Albanese is facing the music – sort of.

At least Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese bothered to show up at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, given that Andy Burnham, his United Kingdom counterpart, will be the only Group of 7 leaders to address the event.

Royce Kurmelovs, who is filing for Renew Economy on the gathering, tells us Albanese declared that “[w]hile the Paris Agreement is under pressure, its call to arms can still be heard.”

No mention of “fossil fuels,” alas, perhaps because Australia is one of the world’s top four exporters of the main source of greenhouse gases that are cooking the planet.

In any case, Europe’s main climate service, Copernicus, provides us some useful tools to track how that Paris “call to arms is going.”

Back in 2015, when the Paris accord was signed at COP21, here’s how the world’s prospects looked, in terms of keeping global warming to the agreement’s lower end of the range, 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

At the end of 2015, literally as the ink was drying on that Paris agreement and the cheers were dying down at the Paris-Le Bourget Exhibition Centre, the world had warmed about just over 1°C.

And, on the warming projection, we had until about March 2042 – or about 26 years – before the planet would nudge past 1.5°C, based on a 30-year warming trend.

Fast forward to the latest data, from August 2026 by Copernicus – there’s been records broken since – and the breach date has advanced dramatically.

As of August, global warming had already reached 1.44°C, and that 1.5°C “barrier” will be crossed in about 26 months – not years – from now.

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