If 1.5C is dead, what happens next?
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Express Employment Professionals is more efficient than recruiting on your own. Find the local office near you at expresspros.com. Thanks for listening and considering Express. Welcome to Xero. I am Akshat Rati. This week, a climate science mystery. One year is out and a new year is here. And if you're observing the broad trends of climate change, that might be enough to worry you. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the past decade.

And 2024 isn't bucking the trend. In December, the European Union's Copernicus unit said that when the final numbers are tallied, it is virtually certain that 2024 will be the hottest year ever. And for the first time, the global average temperature for the entire year is likely to go past the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In his New Year's message, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said this is, quote, climate breakdown in real time. If you've been following this, it might be mind-numbing to hear scientists repeat hottest year, hottest year, hottest year, like a broken record year after year. But it's pretty significant if you go past 1.5C and something worth unpacking.

Because it's going to affect all of us. 1.5C is the goal under the Paris Agreement that all governments agreed on. It's also resulted in corporations tying their net zero goals to the 1.5C target. So this week, I wanted to speak with two Bloomberg Green reporters who have followed this closely. Eric Rosten in New York and Zahra Hirji in Washington, D.C.

Eric, let's start with you, because you and I both know that this 1.5 C breach is important, and yet it is not quite the breach of the Paris Agreement, right? It is significant. There's been so much attention in recent years to the 1.5 degree goal, and there's also been increasing concern as global temperatures are approaching it.

It's important to remember, though, that the Paris goal is understood to be an average. Like over 20 years, they're concerned about a 1.5 degree C temperature rise. And so this is not great, but technically it's not the ballgame.

Still, going above 1.5 degrees Celsius for the entire year is pretty dramatic. But there was also a buildup towards it with phenomena like El Nino contributing to it. Do we know how much of the 1.5 C was climate change and how much was other stuff? It's a great question. And I suppose the answer is no, which is what makes it a great question. Climate change is always adding more heat.

And so when you get an El Nino and global weather is a little hotter than normal, you're more likely to get a record temperature as we did in 2023 and now in 2024 as well. And consequently, when there's a La Nina, which is a cooling phase, you get the warming signal, but there's like a little speed bump. And so those years tend to be like the fifth hottest years ever.

What's concerning this year has less to do with the actual final numbers, 1.5. It has to do with the fact that that simple rule of thumb, climate change plus La Nina, climate change plus El Nino, it doesn't explain what's happening. And scientists can't explain

explain with confidence yet why this year is so much hotter than it has been in the past. And what makes it a kind of whodunit is they've assembled some suspects, but they just can't say which one or which combination is responsible for the numbers they're seeing from 2024.

A scientific mystery. I'm always up for one, but somehow when it comes to climate science, not really. Yeah, well, it's ominous because climate change is bad and we don't want more of it. But it's also concerning because notwithstanding the 2023 and 2024 records,

Scientists are afraid that it could signal an acceleration in warming. And if that's the case, we're not looking anymore at a couple of years that we're in aberration. We're looking at a potential scenario that's worse than the pathway scientists had assumed we've been on.

So acceleration, I mean, there was a period about 10 years ago where people were talking about this quote-unquote hiatus when warming had slowed down. Of course, that turned out to be spurious data. Is there any worry that this acceleration might also be kind of spurious? A number of scientists have told me that what they're seeing now with these faster moving temperatures feels similar to

to that period of the hiatus 10 or 15 years ago. That turned out to be sort of a data artifact, like temperatures just kind of started moving up again. And also there were important updates to the data itself that sort of corrected what turned out to be a kind of bias. I think scientists, a couple of them have told me that they're more concerned about this because they understand it better. All through that hiatus period, one of the things you heard was people

Well, we're not sure what it is, but really you can have like 15 or 20 years of flatline temperatures and still not exit the prediction range for climate change. What's different now is that they have these suspects. And so there's a much stronger physical underpinning to the concerns, even though, again, they're just not sure what's causing the spikes.

Okay, so whodunit? Who are the suspects and what do we know about them and which ones are sort of the highly suspected and which ones we might want to drop out?

So there is, as I said, there's climate change that makes things hotter. There was an El Nino through the spring of 2024, and that made things hotter. The sun has entered the sort of increasing output of its 11-year cycle. And so that adds like a little bit of heat, but sort of a rounding error. The real culprit does have to do with these sulfur aerosols that

humans put out. So nothing is clean in climate change, right? There's no free lunch. And so after years of negotiation, the world shipping industry a few years ago was able to make a pact to reduce the sulfur content of the fuels they use. And that's great because that means less pollution.

Right, because the sulfur pollution causes air pollution, especially at ports, and that's really bad for humans. But there's a climate effect that comes from those sulfur particles too.

Right. So that sulfur pollution is acid rain, right? And so that's what we wanted to get rid of in the West in the 80s and 90s. But there is this cooling effect. So all that shipping pollution actually had a little cooling effect. So when there was an 80% drop off in the sulfur pollution from shipping,

There was no longer these chemicals to sort of reflect heat. And so it got a little warmer, particularly in the North Atlantic. Another thing that that I think people just haven't talked about enough is a really monumental decline in these aerosol emissions from China. So between the shipping regulations in China and further progress in the US and Europe, we're seeing the disappearance of

of these cooling chemicals and that consequently is making things a little bit hotter. But is that a one-time thing? Because like once the aerosols have disappeared and have led to this additional warming, will they continue to contribute to warming like carbon dioxide does, which is a greenhouse gas that keeps on absorbing the heat? It's a short-term phenomenon, right? The atmosphere is catching up. There's conversations about whether we should spray the stratosphere with these chemicals on purpose.

in order to cool the atmosphere. Quote-unquote geoengineering. Yeah. And one of the problems with that is if you ever stop doing that, you'll get a heat spike like we're doing.

Now, a big paper that made a splash and added a lot of explanation to what we've been seeing, a paper came out a month or two ago about how there have been, like, we're missing clouds. Low-lying clouds do us a huge favor because they reflect a lot of sunlight, just sort of in the way that polar ice caps do. And so the fact that we're starting to miss these low-lying clouds is a real red flag for scientists.

Because again, if that's just a blip and they come back, then we're on our warming trajectory we've been familiar with. But if that marks a change in the Earth system itself,

then we could be in line for more warming than we expected. And Zahra, we talk about these temperature goals because, well, they are goals and they are very important, but there are some real-life implications of this level of warming. And particularly in 2023 and 2024, we saw some of the most extreme weather events around the world. So,

Beyond the fact that there is an arbitrary 1.5c goal, why does it matter that we pay attention to these reports?

So I guess there are a couple of reasons. First is, you know, when we think about 1.5 C as a goal and 1.5 C being broken in a particular year, I think something that all of us have heard when we've talked to scientists is like last year was sort of a preview in what a warmer world looks like. So when you have a full year where the temperature is basically above 1.5 C, we saw the impacts of that in terms of extreme weather, at least some of the impacts.

and how destructive and uncomfortable it is. It's a reminder that we don't want to live in that all the time. I mean, when it's really hot, when we're getting devastating hurricanes, when we're getting brutal floods, that's not good. It kills people. It's bad for our economy. I mean, it's not a great way to live, and it's a reminder of what is at stake.

in the long run as these impacts get worse. And so when we think about this goal and passing this goal, because that is the trajectory that we are on, undeniably, and something that's come out of my reporting, you know, this is what we're talking about having to deal with more and more these kind of impacts all the time and how disruptive they are. And

The 1.5C goal, again, is one that we talk about at COP meetings where there are all these countries coming together, wanting to find new ways of addressing the challenge. But we also talk about it at corporate level because a lot of the net zero targets are tied to 1.5C or a lot of the banks are trying to fund things so that they can keep temperatures below 1.5C. How should they be thinking about this?

Perhaps changing their goals, finding new ways, talking about a new goal. Like what is it that they should think about if we have gone beyond 1.5C? 1.5C as a goal is such a tricky thing. And there are so many like caught up emotions in it.

I think a lot of scientists sort of hate it as a goal because in a way it feels rather arbitrary in the sense that there is nothing that is different at 1.49 versus 1.5 versus 1.51c. You know, those small increments, we can't actually tease out a lot of differences there. And so to them, it's just we need to

talk about trying to reduce or keep warming down as much as possible and every tenth of degree matters. But obviously goals are important and 1.5 C has been this rallying cry that we saw really truly drove momentum on climate action. And it is something that, as you said, governments and companies can use. They like to have a number that they can push towards.

One of the things that I think about a lot that has been really important about 1.5C is I was talking with Samantha Gross from the Brookings Institution. And she was saying, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we were on a trajectory of 3C, 4C degree. And now we're not. And that's sort of because...

we set on this goal and people really tried to reach it. But the thing is, the goal was always really ambitious and potentially always out of reach. And now we're sort of

hitting up against that point when it's really becoming clear that we're not going to reach it. And so the question is, does it lose its value as a goal? And do we need to have a new goal? But at the sense, you know, the thing that's tricky about this, and this is something that David Victor, who's a professor at the University of California at San Diego, told me is right now there's no context out there where people

groups can talk about things other than 1.5C and not be accused of backsliding. And I think there are people who would love to discuss a goal that's a little bit different, that seems a little bit more realistic, like a 1.6 or a 1.7 or a 1.75. But at the end of the day,

you still, the actions that you're going to take to meet that goal versus 1.5 are pretty similar in that you need to figure out how you're going to cut your emissions really fast. And companies and governments aren't doing enough of that. So it sort of doesn't matter what their goal is because they need to be doing more. And that's sort of the bottom line.

After the break, more from my conversation with Zahra and Eric. And by the way, if you've been enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps other listeners find the show.

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For all types of jobs and a variety of reasons, choosing Express Employment Professionals is the move to make this year. With more than 860 locations in the U.S., find the one near you at expresspros.com. This is a place where science and politics interacts in interesting ways. So the arbitrary nature of this goal, Eric, the fact that this is 1.5C, not 1.6C, is

Just give us a history. Why is it that we have these goals, 1.5C and 2C?

Well, while you're right, while it started out arbitrary, it's become less arbitrary. And that's because the UN diplomatic body that hosts the All Nations to talk about climate change every year, they asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, very specifically in Paris when they were doing the Paris Agreement, to really study

and understand the difference between 1.5 C and 2 degrees C. And that led to a strong

super influential report in 2018 that really, for the first time, put specificity into what 1.5 C means versus 2 degrees C versus 1 degrees C, which is now in the rearview window. So it's somewhere between arbitrary and, you know, it's not a threshold, as Zahra said. You know, it's not a threshold. It's not a cliff. But every ton of CO2 that we put up in the air matters. Right.

But we are also living in 2025, sort of a year after all these elections that happen around the world. And we are seeing many parts of the world, including where you live, Zahra, in the US, put in leaders who are likely to be very hostile to climate policy. So at the exact time that we are in the hottest year, breaching 1.5 CE, we're also getting politicians who are unlikely to be doing much on climate. How should people make sense of this moment?

I'm still trying to make sense of this moment. I mean, I think it's awkward, but it really gets at something we've seen over and over again when it comes to climate politics. And it's really sort of coming to a head, which is that bringing down emissions and dealing with the climate crisis is hard. It costs money and it's scary. I do think it's important to remember that the last time that

Donald Trump was elected president in the U.S., there were some surprising outcomes that sort of led to the we are all in coalition and kind of a bumping up of the 1.5 C rallying cry and people sort of pushing back on that. And so there's always sort of this push and pull movement.

But what's hard about this is there is, you know, you can have climate action from the bottom up and the top down. And I think we've seen that the most effective action really involves that top down. And when you're not having countries setting new regulations, like that's going to

push back progress. And so people recognizing that as much as you have politicians talking and downplaying these issues, they're not going to go away with the type of policies that they're advocating. And they're just

pushing down the road the problems that are going to grow and arise out of this. Eric, you talked about the 2018 report where scientists sort of worked through what 1.5C means. And in some way, scientists are very good at doing that. If you give them a goal, they'll tell you what is needed to meet it. So is 1.5C still possible, even though technically everybody says we are going to breach it? Yeah. So it's

Scientists started talking about overshoot when they realized we may not stay within our carbon budget and temperatures may rise beyond 1.5 C or even higher temperatures. And it became a word that's sort of an impetus to find ways to correct the problem that we've now created.

And so these are technologies like direct air capture, which will remove carbon dioxide from the air. What else is there in this list of dealing with overshoot? The biggest tool in our toolbox, though, is not polluting more. You know, we're still putting up more than 100 million tons of CO2 a day from fossil fuel and cement making. And that is the main thing we need to do to prevent overshoot. You can't address overshoot until you stop making the problem worse.

If we do eventually get serious about these goals and, you know, want to still stay beyond 1.5C, overshoot might be an option. But if the politics is hard right now, how much harder is it going to be when you're trying to convince people you have to do all these weird wacko things that are going to be necessary in a world of overshoot? I mean, I think the assumption is that overshoot is already on the table.

When a lot of people are talking about 1.5 still being alive, they're actually the unspoken part is they are assuming or banking on overshoot this idea that we are going to go above 1.5 and then have the tools necessary to eventually bring it down.

The concern about focusing too much on overshoot is that then we sort of lose sight of the fact that we need to bring emissions now, not just invest in the technologies that can help pull it out of the air and rely on that or overly rely on that because we don't

know a lot about how that will work. And so I feel like the answer is we have to do both. That's not actually a pitch you have to make to people. I think that's just where we are today. And you're sort of starting to see it with the policies that came underway with the Biden administration and how actually a lot of the companies and industries that are going to need or rely on overshoot

are the ones getting tax credits and sort of investing on it. And the problem is you don't want them to overinvest on that versus not actually changing anything to their business. But I think we actually need to talk about it more as something that is on the table now and just dig into a little bit more about what that looks like.

But I don't think it's a matter of if or when. Like, we're here and we're dealing with it. And it's just maybe changing what that means and what we need to do about it. Well, climate change, 1.5 and 2025, it's going to be a messy year. Thank you both for at least setting the stage for what is going to be a messy year. And we'll talk a lot more about it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Zero. And now for the sound of the week, which I should warn you is not a gunshot.

That's the sound of a balloon filled with hydrogen exploding. Now take a listen to what it sounds like when the same size balloon has hydrogen mixed with oxygen exploding. If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate or review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a friend or with someone who likes breaking records. You can get in touch at zeropod at bloomberg.net. Zero's producer is Maithili Rao. Bloomberg's head of podcast is Sage Bauman. And head of talk is Brendan Newnham.

Our theme music is composed by Wonderly. Special thanks to Sharon Chen, Siobhan Wagner, Ethan Steinberg and Jessica Beck. I am Akshat Rati, back soon.