Ahead of the 2025 “Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” (COP30), heaving read e.g. the fantastic contributions “UNEP – Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off target. Continued collective inaction puts global temperature goal at risk” and the “WMO – State of the Climate Update for COP30“, I miss one probably simple but in my view most important insight to all the data and discussions around global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity:
There is a ca. 30 years time gap between “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions and actual temperature rise
Politics failed to manage the key performance indicator (KPI) for mitigating global warming – global GHG emissions – according to the “UN Paris Agreement” and according to the “climate tipping point” of 1.5°C average global temperature rise (in comparison to the average from 1850-1900).
With all the greatest respect and acknowledgment, COP30 will be another chapter for this greatest political failure in human history, much greater than the “2nd World War“, and with (not thousands, not millions, but) billions of people losing their livelihoods and/or lives (cf. our trans- & interdisciplinary global warming scenario).
All the current so called “extreme weather events” resulting into storms, floods, wildfires, heat- & cold-waves, droughts, landslides, etc. are caused by the GHG emissions from ca. 30 years ago, so from around 1995.
Since than, the annual global GHG emissions increased from ca. 40 billion t to ca. 55 billion t, this means an increase of ca. 35% or ca. 1/3 and continue to increase (cf. “What happens after reaching the “1.5°C climate tipping point” in 2029?“).
Politics will continue to fail without explaining this ca. 30 years time gap
Unfortunately, I do not see this reflected in any of the publications I have read and any of the speeches I have heard so far.
In my view, this is one of the reason, why current politics fails and will continue to fail, unless they succeed on focusing the discussions around global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity to this most deadly ca. 30 years delay within the inert & dynamic climate system of our mother planet Earth (cf. “Global warming is like a shark attack“).
Please mind, in my view, mitigating global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity is too big to fail.