2024 Was the Year We Broke 1.5C

Current conditions: A sinkhole threatens to swallow up Ecuador’s large hydroelectric power plant • Air quality is poor in Delhi where dense smog has caused travel chaos • Nearly 40,000 customers are already without power in Texas as a winter storm rolls in.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Biden directly links LA fires to climate change

At least 10 people are known to have died in the Los Angeles fires, and some 10,000 structures are believed to have been destroyed. Five blazes continue to burn. The Palisades fire, the largest in the city’s history at 20,000 acres, remains just 6% contained. The Eaton fire has consumed 13,700 acres and is 0% contained. While lower wind speeds have helped firefighters make some progress over the last 24 hours, the Santa Ana gusts were expected to peak at 75 mph last night. “We are absolutely not out of this extreme weather event,” Los Angeles fire chief Kristin M. Crowley said in a news conference.

Charred homes in Pacific Palisades. Mario Tama/Getty Images

President Biden sent more than 30 government helicopters and planes to fight the flames, and said federal funding would cover the costs of the fire response for 180 days. (An early estimate from AccuWeather puts the cost of the disaster at more than $50 billion.) Biden also connected the emergency to climate change. “All has changed in the weather,” he said. “Climate change is real. We’ve got to adjust to it, and we can, it’s within our power to do it. But we’ve got to acknowledge it.”

2. Last year was warmest on record, surpassing 1.5C threshold

Some of the world’s leading weather research organizations are releasing data today showing that 2024 was the hottest year on record. The World Meteorological Organization, the European Copernicus Climate Change Service, the UK Met Office, Berkeley Earth, NOAA, NASA, and others “have made a concerted effort to coordinate the release of their data, highlighting the exceptional conditions experienced during 2024,” Copernicus said. The service is one of the first to roll out its findings, showing that the global average temperature last year was 59.18 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15.10 degrees Celsius. This is 1.60 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average, making last year the first full calendar year during which the 1.5C warming threshold has been breached.

Copernicus

Oceans also were exceptionally warm, with sea surface temperatures reaching new record highs. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions also increased. “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,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

3. BlackRock leaves Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative

BlackRock yesterday announced its departure from the UN Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. The decision is “a remarkable U-turn for a company that was once a poster child of the environmental, social, and governance investing movement,” said The Wall Street Journal. Asset managers participating in the initiative pledge to support the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. BlackRock’s departure is significant because it’s the largest asset manager in the world, but so far it “has not prompted others to follow,” Reuters reported. More than 325 signatories managing more than $57 trillion are still signed on to NZAMI. BlackRock is currently being sued by 11 Republican-led states over ESG investing practices.

“Climate change poses one of the greatest risks to our global economy and the long-term investments BlackRock’s clients rely on,” said Ben Cushing, campaign director for the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign. “Membership in voluntary alliances sets an important baseline, but to truly fulfill its fiduciary duty to long-term investors, BlackRock must support real-world decarbonization through stronger shareholder voting and by directing capital toward industries that mitigate systemic climate risks. If BlackRock won’t do that, its clients should find a different asset manager that will.”

4. Biden expected to release short-term guidance on clean fuel tax credits

Coming later today (probably): President Biden will release short-term guidance on clean fuel tax credits, two sources told Reuters. But the final rules will be left to the incoming Trump administration, meaning “biofuel companies and their legislative backers will have to wait to see if Trump will back the plan on the highly anticipated guidelines on new clean fuel production tax credits aimed at the airline and biofuel industries.” The tax credits were supposed to come into effect on January 1 to help spur on production of sustainable aviation fuels.

5. China reportedly planning large space solar station

China is reportedly planning to build a massive solar power station in space to harness the sun’s energy and beam it back to Earth. A Chinese scientist told the South China Morning Post that super-heavy rockets will be launched to build the station, which will be “another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth.” Space-based solar power is a “tantalizing” way to generate clean energy from the sun around the clock, and many countries are investing in R&D on the idea. The European Space Agency estimates sunlight is 10 times more intense at the top of the atmosphere than on Earth’s surface, but “in order to generate optimal, economically-viable levels of solar power, the required structures need to be very large, both on Earth and in space.” NASA noted that researchers would need to figure out how to build these large structures in orbit, then make sure they can operate autonomously. Plus, manufacturing costs would be extremely high. “Moving all that mass into orbit would require many sustained missions to carry infrastructure into space,” NASA said. China’s electricity demand rose by 6.4% in 2023, and the country is leading in clean energy investments. According to the International Energy Agency, China commissioned as much solar power in 2023 as the entire world did in 2022.

THE KICKER

“While it would take an act of God far stronger than a fire to keep people from building homes on the slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains or off the Pacific Coast, the city that rebuilds may be smaller, more heavily fortified, and more expensive than the one that existed at the end of last year. And that’s just before the next big fire.” –Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin on the economic devastation of the LA fires