Cryosphere reports highlight irreversible damage of fossil fuels
Comment on two reports on overshoot and the cryosphere, published 2 November by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and UN Environment Programme
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Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, made the following statement in response to publication of State of the Cryosphere 2026: The Cost of Overshoot and Overshoot and the Cryosphere: Averting Global Meltdown, both published 2 November by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and UN Environment Programme:
“Every government minister and every fossil fuel executive who’s ever succeeded in watering down climate action can look at this report and see how their actions have fundamentally damaged the world we live in.
“Ice-sheets melting six times faster than 30 years ago, sea ice and mountain glaciers disappearing at record speed, sea levels inexorably rising, the life-giving polar oceans acidifying: all irreversible now on human timescales, all laden with worldwide consequences, and all taking climate impacts past limits of adaptability.
“Coming in the week before this year's UN climate summit, this has to be a wake-up call. We know how to minimise overshoot and return global warming back well below 1.5°C by the end of the century: cutting fossil fuel use is front and centre of the solution, and so the central job of the twin COP31 Presidencies, Türkiye and Australia, is to make sure the summit meaningfully accelerates the transition away from fossil fuels." [1]
[1] Rescuing 1.5°C: new evidence on the highest possible ambition to deliver the Paris Agreement
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