Climate risks: Global collective action needed to protect the planet

Last year was the hottest in history, with record-breaking temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans acting like fuel for extreme weather around the world.
World Weather Attribution, experts on how global warming influences extreme events, said nearly every disaster they analysed over the past 12 months was intensified by climate change.
That was tragically evident in June when more than 1,300 people died during the Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia where temperatures hit 51.8C (125F).
Extreme heat — sometimes dubbed the ‘silent killer’ — also proved deadly in Thailand, India, and the US.
Conditions were so intense in Mexico that howler monkeys dropped dead from the trees, while Pakistan kept millions of children at home as the mercury inched above 50C.
Climate change isn’t just sizzling temperatures — warmer oceans mean higher evaporation, and warmer air absorbs more moisture, a volatile recipe for heavy rainfall.
In April, the UAE received two years worth of rain in a single day, turning parts of the country into a sea, and hobbling Dubai’s international airport.
Four million people needed aid after historic flooding killed more than 1,500 people across West and Central Africa. Europe — most notably Spain — also suffered tremendous downpours that caused deadly flash flooding.
Afghanistan, Russia, Brazil, China, Nepal, Uganda, India, Somalia, Pakistan, Burundi and the US were among other countries that witnessed flooding in 2024.
Major hurricanes pummelled the US and Caribbean, most notably Milton, Beryl and Helene, in a 2024 season of above-average storm activity.
Some regions may be wetter as climate change shifts rainfall patterns, but others are becoming drier and more vulnerable to drought.
The Americas suffered severe drought in 2024 and wildfires torched millions of hectares in the western US, Canada, and the Amazon basin — usually one of Earth’s wettest places.
Between January and September, more than 400,000 fires were recorded across South America, shrouding the continent in choking smoke.
The World Food Programme in December said 26mn people across southern Africa were at risk of hunger as a months-long drought parched the impoverished region.
In terms of economic losses, Zurich-based reinsurance giant Swiss Re estimated the global damage bill at $310bn in early December.
As of November 1, the US had suffered 24 weather disasters in 2024 with losses exceeding $1bn each, government figures showed.
Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming surpassing 1.5C (2.7F), to avoid its most severe consequences.
Despite the proliferation of governments’ and companies’ climate targets, CO2 emissions remain stubbornly high.
Over the last few years, an ecosystem of climate pledges, groups and models has expanded on Wall Street in a bid to cut — or appear to cut — the financial industry’s role in global warming.
But many of those efforts have had a limited impact on thwarting the damage inflicted by climate change, according to researchers at Columbia University.
Almost $200tn of investment is needed by 2050 to reach net-zero emissions, according to a BloombergNEF estimate in 2023.
In 2024, talks to halt plastic pollution, protect biodiversity and end desertification all failed. Meanwhile, a deal at the COP29 summit left developing nations unhappy with the amount of money agreed upon to help them battle global warming and avoided mentioning the need to move away from fossil fuels.
Protecting the planet is a global endeavour that only works if countries agree to take collective action. Judging by how the most important climate negotiations went last year, things aren’t going well.
Climate change sparked a trail of extreme weather and record heat in 2024, the United Nations said on Monday, urging the world to pull back from the “road to ruin”.