Titanic struggle for the climate

March 26, 2025

The World Meteorological Organisation’s just-published ‘State of the Global Climate 2024’ report makes sobering reading.

While the world is not yet beyond the possibility of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees, achieving this will need a co-ordinated global effort. The report shows many climate risk markers at dangerous levels. The WMO say that they ‘are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large be more resilient to extreme weather and climate’.

At the same time, as Bruce Thom reported, Donald Trump is reversing American climate policies, “downsizing” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, destroying climate research online, and is now waging a campaign to interrogate all US-funded research overseas to defund any that focusses on climate.

We have a UN body of global scientific integrity seeking to strengthen our ability to build our climate resilience and secure a habitable world, while the man who governs the most powerful nation in that world drives to weaken our climate defences. This confrontation happens as the climate juggernaut strengthens daily. The environmental stakes have never been higher.