Humanity is failing to meet its climate change goals. Here's what experts say we can still do

Last month the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an organization run by the European Union to monitor global heating, revealed that Earth was on track to surpass the 1.5º C threshold. Many people understand the stakes: climate change threatens to kill billions of humans and wipe out millions of species, pushing the definition of “habitability” to the brink. The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates humanity’s overuse of fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change, as doing so releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In general, it appears like humanity has failed to make limiting greenhouse gas emissions a priority, according to Tom Knutson, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, said that it appears humanity as a species has not “decided that strongly limiting future emissions of greenhouse gases is a top priority goal that should be pursued and treated as a critical ‘pass or fail goal.’” Knutson, who has contributed to the scientific efforts behind reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, views his job as providing relevant scientific information rather than offering policy prescriptions. “Maybe that is part of the explanation for the recent changes.” Citing his 2016 paper for Nature Communications on possible future trajectories for global mean temperature, Knutson said that this “suggests to perhaps just be patient for now to see if the recent acceleration we have seen is just a temporary effect of internal variability or temporary forcing change, or if it really does represent an accelerated long-term warming rate, relative to the trend we've been on since about 1970.” He added that these are his personal views and do not necessarily represent those of NOAA or the U.S. government.