What does 2024 hold in the fight against climate change?

2023 was another record-breaking year in the fight against a changing climate, just not the kind that many had hoped for.

The United Nations World Meteorological Organization’s key messages from its most recent update read that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, greenhouse gas levels continue to increase, sea surface temperatures and sea level rise are at record levels, while Antarctic sea ice has hit record lows.

Charity Save the Children estimates that at least 12,000 people died from floods, wildfires, cyclones, storms, and landslides globally in 2023, 30 percent more than in 2022.

It offers a dire outlook for the year ahead.

In spite of this, the calendar will roll over to 2024, and the global struggle to limit emissions continues under predictions that conditions will worsen as the impacts of El Nino are felt.

In 2024 COP 29 will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, another host staking its economic boom on the export of oil and natural gas. This is despite UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell calling December’s COP 28 summit in Dubai the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era.

How long that timeline is may become clearer, as predictions that the world could edge above the 1.5c degree threshold temporarily on its way to potentially another record-breaking year.