A new report finds that efforts to slow climate change are working, but not fast enough

At 10 Years since signing on Paris AgreementAs the backbone of international climate action, humanity has made impressive progress. Renewable energy It has become increasingly cheap and reliable, while Electric vehicles It gets better every year.

However, by all the major metrics used to measure progress, we are still lagging behind where we need to be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, according to a new report. The report was released on Wednesday By a coalition of climate groups – and we no longer have time to right the ship.

“All systems are flashing red,” Clea Schumer, a researcher at the World Resources Institute, one of the organizations involved in the report, said last week on a call with reporters. “There is no doubt that we are largely doing the right things, but we are not moving fast enough.”

The Paris Agreement aims to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. To measure progress towards this goal, the report looks at emissions from 45 different sectors of the global economy and environment, measuring everything from electricity construction to coal use in the energy sector to global meat consumption.

Sadly, none of the indicators the report measures are where they need to be to keep the world on track to meet the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Six of the 45 indicators are “off track” – progress is being made, but not fast enough – while nearly 30 indicators are “off track”, meaning progress is too slow. Meanwhile, five of them are going in the “wrong direction,” meaning the situation is getting worse, not better, and needs an urgent turn. (The report says there is not enough data to measure the remaining five indicators, which include peatland degradation and restoration, food waste, and the share of new buildings that are carbon-neutral.)

One indicator that has been consistently off track has been global efforts to phase out coal, which is one of them, experts said largest shareholders of greenhouse gas emissions. While coal’s share of global electricity generation declines slightly in 2024, total coal use actually stands at Record high Last year thanks to increasing demand for electricity, especially from China and India. Schumer said the dirty energy grid has “huge impacts” on other indicators of progress such as decarbonizing buildings and transportation.

To get on the right track, Schumer said, the world needs to increase the pace of phasing out coal tenfold. She added that this would require closing more than 360 medium-sized coal-fired plants every year, and canceling all coal-fired power plants that are currently being developed around the world.

“We simply will not limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees if coal use continues to break records,” Schumer said.