Climate Change, Energy, Sustainability Op-Ed: Is there still time for COP27 to hold back climate catastrophe?

Following a year of horrific and deadly heat waves, floods, droughts and storms, global leaders will converge this week on Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The looming question for COP27 is whether nations will strengthen their pledges enough to get us on a path that averts catastrophic climate disruption.

It’s worth a reminder that the goal of the original convention, first signed in 1992 and ratified by enough nations to hold the first COP in 1995, was to prevent “dangerous human interference with the climate system” — an aim that has clearly not been met. As billions of people worldwide can attest, human-caused climate disruption has passed the “dangerous” threshold. What was a serious problem in the 1990s has snowballed into a full-blown crisis of extreme weather, displacement and destruction. What we must now strive to avoid is climate catastrophe.

While there is no precise warming level that defines “catastrophe,” climate scientists have reasonably concluded that warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) would lock in devastating and irreversible climate impacts. The Paris agreement incorporated that threshold in 2015, and time is running out to avoid crossing it.

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