Fueled by the climate crisis, the global average temperature soared above the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold for the first time in 2024, intensifying extreme weather.

Experts from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have confirmed that last year was the planet’s hottest on record, reaching 1.55 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, reported UN News.

“We saw extraordinary land, sea surface temperatures, extraordinary ocean heat accompanied by very extreme weather affecting many countries around the world, destroying lives, livelihoods, hopes and dreams,” said Clare Nullis, WMO spokesperson, as UN News reported. “We saw many climate change impacts retreating sea ice glaciers. It was an extraordinary year.”

Four out of six of the international datasets analyzed by WMO showed a global average temperature for 2024 that was higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius, while two did not.

The 1.5 degrees Celsius average is the goal temperature threshold of the 2015 Paris Agreement, with an overall target of temperatures worldwide remaining “well below” two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.

WMO maintained that the Paris Agreement was “not yet dead but in grave danger,” explaining that the long-term temperature goals of the accord were measured across decades, not individual years.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo emphasized that “climate history is playing out before our eyes. We’ve had not just one or two record-breaking years, but a full ten-year series.”

“It is essential to recognize that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet,” Saulo said.

WMO weather experts said the catastrophic and deadly Los Angeles wildfires were made worse by climate change, with rains boosting vegetation growth, followed by more days of warm, dry and windy weather.

Data from the European Union’s Copernicus CIimate Change Service (C3S) showed that the amount of our planet affected by a minimum of “strong heat stress” reached a new annual maximum on July 10, 2024, when a record approximately 44 percent of Earth was impacted by “strong” to “extreme heat stress.” That’s five percent more than the average yearly maximum.

“There’s now an extremely high likelihood that we will overshoot the long-term average of 1.5C in the Paris agreement limit,” said Dr. Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, as reported by The Guardian. “These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people.”

Last year, the average human was exposed to an extra six weeks of dangerous heat, which intensified heat waves across the globe.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the findings by WMO are more proof of global heating, and urged governments to deliver updated national climate action plans in 2025 to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, UN News reported.

“Individual years pushing past the 1.5℃ limit do not mean the long-term goal is shot,” Guterres said. “It means we need to fight even harder to get on track. Blazing temperatures in 2024 require trail-blazing climate action in 2025.”

“There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now,” Guterres added.

Datasets used by WMO in their analysis were taken from NASA, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, the UK Met Office working in collaboration with University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, the Japan Meteorological Agency and Berkeley Earth.

WMO also highlighted a separate study on ocean warming, saying it had played a major role in the record high temperatures in 2024.

“The ocean is the warmest it has ever been as recorded by humans, not only at the surface but also for the upper 2,000 metres,” WMO said, citing the findings, which spanned seven countries and were published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

WMO noted that the ocean stores roughly 90 percent of excess heat produced by global warming, “making ocean heat content a critical indicator of climate change.”

WMO explained that the upper part of the ocean became warmer by about 140 times the planet’s total electricity output from 2023 to 2024.

“This record needs to be a reality check. A year of extreme weather showed just how dangerous life is at 1.5C. The Valencia floods, U.S. hurricanes, the Philippines typhoons and Amazon drought are just four disasters last year that were worsened by climate change. There are many, many more,” said Dr. Friederike Otto, a climate science senior lecturer at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change, as reported by The Guardian. “The world doesn’t need to come up with a magical solution to stop things from getting worse in 2025. We know exactly what we need to do to transition away from fossil fuels, halt deforestation and make societies more resilient.”

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According to a new analysis by the nonprofit organization Oxfam Great Britain (Oxfam GB), the wealthiest 1% of people in the world have already exhausted their annual share of the global carbon budget.

One’s annual share of the carbon budget is the amount of carbon emissions per person that can be added into the atmosphere while remaining within the target for no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to pre-industrial times. 

The richest 1%, which includes 77 million people such as billionaires and millionaires, surpassed their share of the carbon budget in just the first 10 days of 2025. By comparison, someone in the poorest 50% of the global population would use up just their share of the annual global carbon budget in 1,022 days.

“The future of our planet is hanging by a thread, yet the super-rich are being allowed to continue to squander humanity’s chances with their lavish lifestyles and polluting investments,” Chiara Liguori, senior climate justice policy advisor for Oxfam GB, said in a statement. “Governments need to stop pandering to the richest polluters and instead make them pay their fair share for the havoc they’re wreaking on our planet. Leaders who fail to act are culpable in a crisis that threatens the lives of billions.”

The carbon budget that Oxfam GB used in the analysis is based on the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which noted that maintaining under 1.5 degrees Celsius warming would allow for a median of about 24 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030, at which time population is estimated to be around 8.5 billion. As Oxfam GB reported, this total divided by the 8.5 billion people gave the estimated carbon budget per person per year to be around 2.1 metric tons.

Not only are the ultra-wealthy using well beyond their share of the carbon budget, but the ways that they are emitting are not providing economic benefits to society. According to a separate report by Oxfam GB titled Carbon Inequality Kills, just 50 billionaires took 184 flights on private jets in one year, emitting the same amount of carbon an average person outside of the 1% would in 300 years. One year of private yacht use by this group of the world’s wealthiest individuals emitted the same amount of carbon an average person would in 860 years, the report found.

In total, the use of luxury private jets and super-yachts, alongside polluting investments, led the 50 richest billionaires to emit more carbon in 2.78 hours than it takes for an average person in Britain to emit in their entire lifetime.

Previous research from Oxfam GB found that in 2019, the wealthiest 1% were responsible for 15.9% of all carbon emissions, while the lower 50%, totalling 3.9 billion people, accounted for a total of 7.7% of global emissions that year. A separate study similarly found that the bottom 50% of earners has been responsible for only 16% of all global emissions since 1990, while the top 1% are responsible for 23% of all emissions in that timeframe.

Another study published in 2023 found that the wealthiest 10% of people in the U.S. made up 40% of the country’s total emissions.

In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the wealthiest 1% of people globally need to reduce their emissions per capita by 97% by 2030. However, Oxfam GB found that the 1% is currently on track to reduce emissions by only 5%.

As The Guardian reported, the wealthiest 1% are surpassing their share of the global carbon budget, yet they have the resources to escape the worst impacts of climate change through amenities like air conditioning and climate-resilient housing. Meanwhile, people earning the lowest incomes globally hardly contribute to emissions while facing the worst of extreme heat, flooding, poor air quality, and other harmful and deadly effects of climate change.

“As global temperatures continue to climb, the UK must show how it will generate its own share of new, fair funding to meet the escalating climate finance needs and fight inequality — significantly higher taxes on polluting luxuries like private jets and superyachts is an obvious place for the Government to start,” Liguori said. 

According to Oxfam GB, if the UK taxed luxury vehicles such as private jets and yachts fairly, the country could have generated up to £2 billion ($2.44 billion) to put toward climate action.

At the latest COP29 United Nations Climate Conference, the wealthiest countries in the world further refused to pay a more equitable share toward climate resiliency, offering $250 billion to lower-income countries to split among themselves for climate action. Experts have noted that developing countries would require at least $1.3 trillion per year, if not $5 trillion or more, by 2030 for adequate climate adaptation and resiliency.

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A quarter of all freshwater animals, including crustaceans, fish and insects, face a high risk of extinction from threats like pollution, farming and dams, a new study has found.

Rivers, lakes, wetlands and other bodies of freshwater cover a relatively small amount of Earth’s surface — less than one percent — but are home to more than 10 percent of the planet’s known species, including a third of vertebrates and half of fish, reported AFP.

“Freshwater ecosystems are highly biodiverse and important for livelihoods and economic development, but are under substantial stress. To date, comprehensive global assessments of extinction risk have not included any speciose groups primarily living in freshwaters,” the authors of the study wrote. “Here we present the results of a multi-taxon global freshwater fauna assessment for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species covering 23,496 decapod crustaceans, fishes and odonates, finding that one-quarter are threatened with extinction. Prevalent threats include pollution, dams and water extraction, agriculture and invasive species, with overharvesting also driving extinctions.”

Roughly 30 percent of decapods — like crabs, shrimp and crayfish — were found to be at risk, compared with 16 percent of odonates such as dragonflies, 23 percent of tetrapods like reptiles and frogs and 26 percent of fish, AFP reported.

Since the year 1500, 89 freshwater species are known to have become extinct, with an additional 178 suspected to have ceased to exist. The study’s authors said the figures are likely underestimated since there is so little information about certain species.

“Most species don’t have just one threat putting them at risk of extinction, but many threats acting together,” said Catherine Sayer, an International Union for Conservation of Nature zoologist who was co-author of the study, as reported by The Associated Press.

The study said that, between 1970 and 2015, 35 percent of wetland area had been lost.

There “is urgency to act quickly to address threats to prevent further species declines and losses,” the authors wrote in the study.

According to the findings, approximately a third of rivers more than 620 miles long are no longer free-flowing throughout their full length.

“Until recently, the freshwater realm has not been given the same priority as the terrestrial and marine realms in global environmental governance,” the authors wrote.

Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist who did not contribute to the study, called the findings “hugely important,” The Associated Press reported.

“Almost every big river in North America and Europe is massively modified” by dams, which put freshwater species at risk, Pimm said.

South America’s Amazon River ecosystem is under threat from deforestation, illegal gold mining and wildfires, Charvet said. Forest clearing through illegal burning produces ash that ends up in the river, while mercury gets dumped into the water by unlicensed goldminers, Charvet explained.

Wetlands and rivers “concentrate everything that happens around them,” Charvet added. “If something goes really wrong, like an acid or oil spill, you can threaten an entire species. There’s nowhere else for these animals to go.”

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In 1979, when President Jimmy Carter famously unveiled 32 solar panels on the White House roof, he remarked, “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

Despite his reputation as an often ineffective president, he had an enormous effect on the environment as an advocate for clean energy, protecting lands and regulating toxic chemicals.

Jimmy Carter was an early adopter of clean energy in an effort to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil following the oil crisis that preceded his presidency. Four years before Carter took office, the member nations of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries placed an oil embargo on the U.S. and several other western nations in response to their support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. As a result, the price of oil rose by more than 300%, while American dependence on foreign oil was simultaneously rising. 

After Carter took office, he responded by creating the U.S. Department of Energy. One of Carter’s major goals for the agency was to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels by pushing for the domestic production of energy. While this push wasn’t perfect — part of his solution for the complex crisis included propping up domestic coal power — it was also a first-of-its-kind endorsement for clean energy, championing sustainable sources like solar and nuclear. “No one can embargo the sun,” Carter once said. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute our air or poison our waters. The sun’s power needs only to be collected, stored and used.”

In 1979, a second oil crisis hit, this time spurred by the decline in oil trade in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Carter responded by laying out plans to expand renewable energy sources and made a pledge that 20% of American energy would be produced by renewable sources by 2000, but was voted out of office before many of these plans could come to fruition. 

Carter also protected far more land than any U.S. president in history. In 1978, he advocated for the National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA,) which aimed to protect vast amounts of Alaskan wilderness from commercial use and destruction. After the bill failed due to a last-minute filibuster, Carter used executive authority to protect more than 56 million acres of Alaskan wilderness, designating those lands as National Monuments. This action alone would more than double the size of the National Park system.

Snowcapped mountains in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. In 1978, President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act into law, creating 10 new national parks and preserves including this one, the largest U.S. national park. National Park Service

In December of 1980, roughly six weeks before Carter left office, ANILCA was debated again in Congress, and passed. Upon Carter’s signature, the law became the most expansive federal protection of American lands in history, granting protection to more than 157 million acres of Alaskan wilderness, which included further protections for much of the land Carter had protected two years prior. Of those 157 million acres, it also designated nearly ten million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System, more than nine million acres to the Wilderness Preservation System, and more than three million acres to the National Forest System.

He was the first president to take notable action against federal water projects, arguing that building dams in the American West would harm river health. This stance was an extension of his conservation efforts as governor of Georgia, when, according to Stuart E. Eizenstat, his own domestic affairs advisor, he became “the first governor to block a Corps of Engineers dam,” and during his presidency was “the most consistently pro-environmental president since Theodore Roosevelt.”

Today, many rivers throughout the American West suffer from major droughts. 

While it’s difficult to directly measure the impact his stance on these federal water projects had, these rivers would have surely been even worse off if it weren’t for Carter.

After Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring brought pesticides to the forefront of the public eye a little more than a decade earlier, Carter took broad steps to regulate pesticides. He passed major amendments to the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIRFA) in 1978, requiring stricter registration of pesticides, and in 1976, he passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, giving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the authority to require reporting, testing and record-keeping of toxic chemicals. 

Of course, Jimmy Carter is nearly as famous for his exceptional post-presidency as his actual presidency. Likewise, his impact on the world outlives his time in the Oval Office. He and his wife, Rosalynn, famously worked with Habitat for Humanity, personally helping to build, repair or renovate about 4,400 homes, according to the organization’s website, for instance.

The Carter Center, his own nonprofit, has also had a significant impact globally. When the organization assumed leadership in the global fight against Guinea Worm in 1986, there were 3.5 million cases in Africa and Asia, according to the Carter Center. By 2022, that number had dropped to thirteen. It is currently on track to become the second human disease to be eradicated in history, following only smallpox.

Some of the Carter Center’s other achievements include:

• Rallying against other diseases, like trachoma, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and malaria;
• Increasing healthcare access in thousands of impoverished global communities;
• Pioneering “new public health approaches to preventing or controlling devastating neglected diseases in Africa and Latin America;”
• Observing elections in dozens of countries in an effort to strengthen democracies; and
• “Furthering avenues to peace in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, the Korean Peninsula, Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Middle East.”

Jimmy Carter has had a profound impact back in his hometown too. In 2017, nearly four decades after he had solar panels installed on the White House roof, Carter leased ten acres on the land he used to farm peanuts to build a 1.3-megawatt solar farm that’s been powering half of his hometown of Plains, Georgia ever since. Rather than a road not taken, it represents the life of a man who has perhaps paved too many roads to count. 

The post What Is Jimmy Carter’s Environmental Legacy? appeared first on EcoWatch.

Wildfires fueled by strong winds in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, California, have scorched a quickly growing area of Los Angeles County, killing at least two people.

The fierce and unpredictable fires have forced roughly 70,000 evacuations and destroyed approximately 1,000 buildings and homes, reported the Los Angeles Times.

“We woke up to a dark cloud over all of Los Angeles, but it is darkest for those who are most intimately impacted by these fires,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, as the Los Angeles Times reported. “It is difficult to process the immensity of the destruction and loss, and we extend our hearts and every resource we have to all of our impacted residents.”

The Palisades fire has burned over 5,000 acres all the way to the Pacific Coast Highway, destroying many homes, said LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone during a Wednesday morning news conference.

“Extreme fire behavior, including short and long-range spotting, continues to challenge firefighting efforts for the Palisades fire. Winds gusts up to 60 MPH are expected to continue through Thursday, potentially aiding in further fire activity and suppression efforts,” according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

The Eaton fire has charred over 2,200 acres near Pasadena and Altadena, fanned by wind gusts as high as 99 miles per hour, reported the Los Angeles Times. The fire has claimed two lives and caused serious injuries, with over 100 structures destroyed, Marrone said.

A third fire, the Hurst fire, spread rapidly overnight when high winds whipped up in Sylmar, burning more than 500 acres.

Red flag warnings were in effect for both LA County and large areas of Ventura County until at least Thursday, as officials warned of a “life threatening, destructive and widespread windstorm.”

Weather forecasters predicted winds would ease during the day on Wednesday, but remain through Friday.

In the San Gabriel Mountains, Hollywood and Beverly Hills and coastal areas alongside the Santa Monica Mountains, Sepulveda Pass, eastern Venturn Valley and Malibu, the National Weather Service warned of a “particularly dangerous situation.” 

A red flag warning of this nature is expected to be issued by the National Weather Service an average of about once in three to five years, rather than the three times it has this fire season alone.

“We are absolutely not out of danger yet,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley, adding that “these fires are stretching the capacity of emergency services to the maximum limits.”

LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said evacuation orders had been given to 32,500 residents in areas affected by the Eaton fire, with an additional 37,000 evacuated due to the Palisades fire.

“When we looked out the window there was this giant orange glow, so we went outside to see what it was and when looked to the left we saw this smoke plume coming from the Pacific Palisades,” said Marika Erdely, resident of the Topanga neighborhood in Pacific Palisades, as reported by CNN. “When I got the evacuation notice my cousin and I quickly put our things into bags and laundry baskets and left. The northbound lane was completely full, and first responders were trying to get through. Just the sounds and everything were very scary. It felt apocalyptic.”

Lack of winter rains has extended the Southern California fire season, the Los Angeles Times reported. Downtown Los Angeles has received just 0.16 inches of rain since the start of the water year on October 1 — a fraction of the average 4.64 inches it normally gets.

“Southern California has experienced a particularly hot summer, followed by almost no precipitation during what is normally our wet season,” said Alex Hall, UCLA Center for Climate Science director, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. “And all of this comes on the heels of two very rainy years, which means there is plenty of fuel for potential wildfires.”

Jim McDonnell, chief of the LA Police Department, advised residents to stay vigilant, whether they’re currently in an evacuation area or not.

“These are unprecedented conditions, but also unpredictable,” McDonnell said. “As the fires continue to spread and pop up in different locations, none of us know where the next one is going to be.”

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