At the UN climate summit COP26, governments made a collective commitment to bring forward 2030 targets this year that are in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature goal. This policy brief outlines six key policy recommendations for this June’s G7 summit that, if adopted, would demonstrate the ambition and leadership needed to keep the 1.5°C limit in sight and to maintain the momentum that was developed at COP26.  

We combine the benefit of CO2 sequestration of Afforestation/Reforestation (A/R) with the additional incentive or penalty of local BGP induced cooling or warming by translating the local BGP induced temperature change to a CO2 equivalent. We then include this new aspect in the land-use model MAgPIE via modifying the application of the price on greenhouse gases (GHG).  

In this work we present two unit-level decommissioning schedules that are aligned with a Paris Agreement compatible CO2 emission reduction pathway. Both of these schedules require 4.2 GW of coal capacity to be retired each year, and units currently under construction would only be able to operate for four years at the most.  

The study calculates the impact of an additional half degree of warming between 1.5°C and 2°C for hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, a region that is already experiencing lethal heat events. It finds that governments can virtually halve exposure to potentially lethal temperatures if global efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C are successful.  

Germany will have to boost its national targets and implement appropriate measures if it is to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals, and this will place considerable demands on the transport sector, according to this study commissioned by Agora Verkehrswende. The EU’s most populous country will also have to support the bloc in increasing its climate action.  

Deutschland wird seine nationalen Ziele verstärken und geeignete Maßnahmen ergreifen müssen, um die Ziele des Pariser Klimaabkommens zu erreichen. Dies wird laut der Studie von Climate Analytics, im Auftrag von Agora Verkehrswende, erhebliche Anstrengungen im Verkehrssektor erfordern. Auch das bevölkerungsreichste Land der EU wird sich seiner Verantwortung stellen müssen.  

Climate change will be the greatest threat to humanity and global ecosystems in the coming years, and there is a pressing need to understand and communicate the impacts of warming, across the perspectives of the natural and social sciences. Hoegh-Guldberg et al. review the climate change–impact literature, expanding on the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They provide evidence of the impacts of warming at 1°, 1.5°, and 2°C—and higher—for the physical system, ecosystems, agriculture, and human livelihoods. The benefits of limiting climate change to no more than 1.5°C above preindustrial levels would outweigh the costs.