This isn't going to be like one of my normal videos. I don't have a script. I don't have any fancy production elements. All I've got is this notebook with some notes in. And that's because this past month has not been normal. The title says it all. Uh I've been doing this job for what, eight years now as a climate communicator. I've been following the climate space for a long time before then. And this is undoubtedly the worst month that I've ever seen when it comes to the climate.
In this video, I want to talk about why this month has been so incredibly bad and then talk a bit beyond that about the information ecosystem, the landscape that surrounds climate change, and where I fit into that and frankly how I've been staying sane over the past month.
And before we get into the news, I just want to be clear that this isn't everything that happened. This is sort of what I think are the most important things that have happened. And I'm only talking about all of the really big negative stuff that happened. There is plenty of positive stuff that also happened this month, but for me, the negatives vastly outweigh the positives.
And the balance between those two is an important thing that we'll talk about a bit later. But for now, let's talk about what the big bad news has been.
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The most sensitive tipping point to temperature was always coral. This was always going to be the first one that we hit.
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So, the first significant headline was that the world has hit a new peak concentration of CO2 in its atmosphere. That itself isn't really news. That's happened every year that I've been alive and for quite some time before then. But what was noteworthy was the jump of the concentration from 2023 to 2024, which was found to be 3.5 parts per million. That's the largest single year jump we've ever seen.
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And that occurred for two reasons. Firstly, humans are putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than they have before. Emissions continue to rise. Though it is important to note that over the past decade or so the rate of increase has been really reduced compared to the previous decade. But at the same time the other factor is that carbon sinks meaning forests, wetlands, algae in the oceans have become slightly less effective at taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
And so an increase in emissions plus a decrease in withdrawals if you like from the atmosphere means that the rate of carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere is faster than it was before. And because climate change is a cumulative problem, the amount of climate change we experience is proportional to the total amount of carbon that's been put into the atmosphere. That means that as the rate of increase of CO2 increases, the rate at which the climate is changing is accelerating.
And whilst this is not unexpected in the slightest, this is what scientists have been saying for a very long time, it's still very bad. It is worrying. And just last week, we heard from Antonio Gutirrres, the Secretary General at the United Nations, that overshooting one and a half degrees of warming is now basically locked in. Something that pretty much anyone who's followed this space for a while would have told you has been the case for a while.
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And actually further to that point in the UK this month the climate change committee advised the government that we need to start planning and preparing for a two deree warmer world as soon as 2050. And the reason why our trajectory is towards this much warming is because we're just not doing enough.
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We're just not doing enough
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The state of climate action 2025 report found that in most areas of the economy we know what the right solutions are and we are implementing them. We are moving in the right direction just not fast enough. In fact, in many areas, we are nowhere near fast enough. And in a couple of areas, like steel, for example, we're moving in the wrong direction.
And I've got specifics here that we could talk about. We could talk about the roll out of renewables, which is amazing and going very, very quickly, just not quite fast enough. We could talk about the rates of deforestation dropping in the previous decade. They've gone down quite significantly compared to 20 years ago, but still not fast enough to be aligned with, for example, a 1.5 degree future. Or we could talk about methane reporting. the fact that this month we learned that methane leaks are increasingly being reported to oil and gas producers and they are starting to respond.
Their response rate has gone up from 1% last year to 12% this year and that's, you know, a big increase; but that's still nowhere near enough.
But to me the most sobering, the biggest bad news story that came out this month was the publication of the global tipping points report from the University of Extter in association with a bunch of NOS's including the WWF.
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And in that report, they basically say that we have now probably hit the first global tipping point, which is warm water corals existing in an ocean that is so warm that they now cannot sustain themselves and they are now going to be in a negative feedback loop. Not towards extinction necessarily, but certainly to huge diminishment. And further that we are close to hitting other tipping points such as the dieback of the Amazon rainforest. Though exactly when you have hit a tipping point is difficult to say. And again this is not at all surprising.
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KE: I asked Merriam Webster online, What is definition of tipping point? It replied:
Tipping point, which we define as “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place,” has achieved a certain degree of cultural ubiquity.
The point beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect takes place,
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If you look at a list of tipping points, there are there are various global tipping points such as the Amazon such as warm water corals. You've got stability of various ice sheets. You've got methane feedbacks in the high latitudes.
The most sensitive to temperature was always coral. This was always going to be the first one that we hit. And based on the trajectory that we are on, we were pretty much always going to hit this. But that doesn't make it any easier to see. We have now warmed the planet to a point where a fundamental red line on a global level has been crossed.
And the loss of those species of coral and attendant species in their ecosystem matches a broader pattern. We learned in this was last year actually from the WWF state of nature report that since 1970, global wildlife populations have decreased by 73%. Now if you look at this on a graph, the rate at which we have lost members of species, not species, but the actual populations, the rate at which populations have decreased has mercifully started to shallow out. But just look at how much we have lost since 1970.
And yet there's still more negative things to talk about. We could be talking about the net zero banking alliance collapsing under pressure from the Trump administration. Though how many of those banks were really going to hit their targets anyway? They didn't have plans. You could argue this one's how much has really changed. We could talk about the International Maritime Organization having their carbon tax negotiations torpedoed by the Trump administration. That was going to be a groundbreaking tax where international shipping would be taxed for the amount of emissions they produced and the revenue from that tax would go towards decarbonizing the sector. It was going to be groundbreaking and a really positive thing. And then the Trump administration threatened low-lying island states with tariffs if they supported it. Those island states, I should point out, being very vulnerable to rising sea levels.
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And most recently, it's actually ongoing as of the time I'm recording this, Hurricane Melissa just passed over Jamaica as a category 5 storm. The most powerful storm in the history of the Atlantic at this time. And we know from early attribution analyses, it's got to be very careful about what we can and cannot say about the influence of climate change on an ongoing event, but we know that the waters that made Hurricane Melissa so powerful were made warmer because of climate change. We know that the intensity of this storm was made such- I think it's 500 to 900 times more likely because we're living in a world that's nearly one and a half degrees warmer.
And like I say, this isn't even everything. We we could talk about more, but I think that's probably those are the big big news stories. And and with all of these, I can't tell if it's better or if it's worse. That none of this is surprising. Almost nothing that's happened this month is surprising to scientists who have been saying this stuff for decades.
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This is unquestionably the worst month for climate news of my entire career.
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I've been a full-time science communicator specializing in in climate since I finished my PhD at the end of 2017. I've been following the climate space for much longer than that. And this is unquestionably the worst month for climate news of my entire career.
It has never been this bad.
And to get ahead of a comment that I probably would have myself left maybe 10 years ago referencing the Simpsons movie that this is actually the best month for climate news for the rest of your life. That simply isn't true. We could talk about when CO2emissions are likely to peak and thus when the maximum increase of CO2 in the atmosphere in a given year will take place. Or we could talk about the uh solutions becoming more and more aligned with a two deree trajectory because the technology moves further along the scurve.
But frankly, the big thing is that you only pass the first red line of the climate space, the first global tipping point once, and that's what's happened this month.
This is a milestone moment in the history of our species where we have officially pushed a global system past its breaking point.
I am very aware that the most frequent criticism of my work is that I can present too optimistic a take on climate change. And those people that leave those comments might look at this video and say, "He finally gets it. He's finally on board." And with all due respect, that isn't the case.
I've been following the climate space for a very long time. I've actually been writing a monthly newsletter summarizing the latest news in the climate space for the past 3 years. If you're not aware, there'll be a link down there in the description. The reason that I make content in the vein that I do is because of where I fit in the broader climate information ecosystem.
Climate change is the largest news story in the world or at least it should be and it is covered from so many different angles by so many different people and most of those people are constrained by human psychology and the effect that that has on the market.
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I actually made a pair of shorts demonstrating this point recently. There is plenty of evidence that humans are drawn towards negativity and that negative news headlines receive more attention than positive news headlines. And in an issue like climate change where there is a mix of positive and negative at any one time, if you only focus on the negatives and how bad the situation is, you end up with a situation where people just think, well, there's nothing good happening. There's nothing we can do. It's hopeless. Let's just stop trying. And that's not helpful.
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Climate change is the largest news story in the world or at least it should be
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I also don't think it's helpful to exclusively talk about the good side of things and where there is cause for optimism. What I try to do is provide contextualized optimism, saying, "Hey, here is a solution to one part of climate change, which by the way is a hugely serious problem. And this solution on its own is inadequate, but it is part of a broad suite of solutions that work and we are rolling out and it is making a difference.
But by the way, it's still not enough. We need to do more."
In other words, I'm aware of my place in the choir of voices talking about climate change. And I think the most constructive use of my voice is to provide that contextualized optimism. I know that if I were to make videos that had sensationalized headlines and and thumbnails and titles that I would get more views and I would get more clicks….
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And, you know, I'm not a a businessman. I'm not a manager. I'm trained as a scientist. I'm I'm learning how to do this job really quickly. All while all of this awful news is happening. All while I'm still working out how to be a dad. And frankly looking at the future that my child is going to grow up into and trying to square a circle. It's just felt this this past month has felt completely overwhelming.
George Marshall wrote a book called Don't Even Think About It talks about why our brains are uniquely poorly wired to deal with climate change because of various psychological biases. One of which is the problem is so vast and so overwhelming that we can't hope to grapple with it. And these biases lead many people to just shut down and say it's too difficult. The world has warmed too much. The processes are all against us. there's no point even trying to do anything and we're cooked.
But one of the other things we do as humans is we reduce the climate to a binary. It's either the climate that we evolved to survive in or it's not. And that's an unhelpful binary because a world that is one and a half degrees warmer than the climate we evolved to survive in looks nothing like the climate that is 3° warmer than the one we evolved to survive in.
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And the displacement from that climate is nonlinear. In other words, the difference between a 1and a half degree world and two degree world is not as large in terms of its impacts on humans as the difference between a two degree world and a two and a half degree world. And certainly not as large as the difference between a two and a half and a three degree world.
And that fact combined with the fact that climate change is a cumulative problem means that at no point is throwing your hands up and saying there's no point even trying to do anything. At no point is that the responsible course of action and at no point is that the thing that's actually going to make the future better.
So, you may ask, why make this video with this framing and talking about how bad things are right now? You know, I previously talked about my place in the choir of voices and trying to effectively be a balancing agent. And this past month, as I said, has been really tough for me as a person. And I'm using this moment using my voice to mark the severity of the situation and how I have felt I guess processing it.
But it is not the lens with which I'm going to view things going forwards because that's not helpful. And this is a marathon not a sprint. And anybody who's ever received really awful news, like a parent receiving a cancer diagnosis, will tell you that you've got to take time to process what's happened. And you've just got to keep moving. There's no option to just stop because that's not helpful. That's not going to get you anywhere.
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Warm water corals exist in an ocean so warm they cannot sustain themselves and they are now going to be in a negative feedback loop. Not towards extinction necessarily, but certainly to huge diminishment.
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And we're all in this together. And this is the most important thing that we could possibly be talking about and working towards, the survival of our species. and the survival of life as we know it on this planet. We just got to keep moving. And for me, taking time at the moment to process and stay sane has meant playing a lot of a game called Planet Crafter. It's a game where you're terraforming a planet from absolutely nothing….
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And this might surprise you, but of all the things that I talked about, the thing that keeps me up at night the most is biodiversity lossb both because it represents an existential threat to our survival being, I would like to remind you part of nature, not separate from it, and in fact deeply dependent on it, but also because it means that the world that we leave to the next generation is just poorer.
There are many planetary boundaries that you can cross and then rein back in. But with biodiversity loss, when a species goes extinct, that's it. You can't bring them back. It's why at the point of maximum stress right now, the conservation of individual species and entire habitats and ecosystems is so vital. But it can feel impossible to make a difference with these things. As an individual, there's only so much you can do. But as a group, as a community, we can make a tremendous difference.
And a community that I've recently joined is called Planet Wild. And I've actually partnered with them for this video. Planet Wild is a community of nearly fifteen thousand people who collectively every month fund a new carefully selected project to protect or restore biodiversity. It's crowdfunding but for nature. They document all of their projects right here on YouTube in video form so we the community can see what our contributions have achieved.
And on their app, you can see all of the projects that have been funded to date, ranging from enabling indigenous communities to protect the Amazon to funding beehive fences in Tanzania that act as natural barriers between elephants and humans, protecting both. And I really like that they explicitly show you who they are working with on the ground and what exactly the funding has accomplished. And that extends beyond the initial 30-day period. goes to the one-year video update showing you what's been accomplished over a year. And you feel part of a community with these projects. You can contribute as much as you want per month…
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Thank you for watching this video. This has been a difficult one to make, a bit cathartic, but overall, I'm quite glad to be moving out of this month. Thank you again for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
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[KE: To hear his promotional pitches, click on the video and go to his YouTube channel page. This blogger is so broke, I don't want to raise money for other people when I don't even have food stamps this month.]
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