Size does matter

It seems like we’ve been hearing about 1.5°C for our entire lives. Depending on who you ask, what happens if we miss this target vary wildly from “meh - we could do with some more sun in England” to “ahhhhhhh no everything will burn”.

Unfortunately, science seems to be on the latter side of this argument. See - this 1.5°C thing is misunderstood because it’s an average. Some places won’t see temperatures change much at all - or in fact, might actually see average temperatures decline.

Global warming is actually just poorly branded - it’s actually “Global changes in temperature where some places get hotter others get cooler but on average temperature increases and that leads to weird climate events” but that doesn’t have the same sense of impending doom to it.

What happens if we miss this 1.5°C target? What if average warming is 2°C instead?

The short answer? Bad things happen.

The longer answer? Well the U.K. Met Office published a study that found 1 billion people could face heat stress (fatal levels of heat and humidity). Beyond this, some entire islands are at risk of being submerged. It’s why a group of them banded together to create the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS - gotta love an acronym) and advocate for more aspirational targets. Nothing more motivating than existential risk.

With mottos like “1.5 to stay alive”, AOSIS is the primary reason the 2015 Paris Agreement targets limiting global warming to below 1.5°C, rather than 2°C which was the initial plan - but with COP28 coming up later this year, meeting the 1.5°C target seems further away than ever.