Editorial - 1.5 degrees more affects everyone

Flames have ravaged Los Angeles – images of burning villas and desperate people have gone around the world. These are the most destructive vegetation fires the city has ever known. Emotional interviews with people who have lost everything can be read in every paper. Climate change is once again showing its full brutality – and how helplessly we are at its mercy. Even the most affluent are now feeling the hardship of a world that is 1.5 degrees warmer than in the pre-industrial age.

Because this is the world we live in. A few days ago, the Copernicus earth observation programme announced that 2024 was the first calendar year in which the average temperature was more than 1.5 degrees higher than in the comparable period. Even if temporarily exceeding the 1.5 degree mark does not yet mean that the Paris Climate Agreement target has been missed (the threshold must be exceeded for a period of 20 years), it is nevertheless an alarming turning point.

Extreme weather events have become part of the international and national news in recent years, to which we have almost become accustomed. In 2024, there were catastrophic floods in Kenya, Spain and Nepal, a record number of hurricanes in the USA and many people died as a result of severe heat. In Saudi Arabia, to name just one example, around 1,300 pilgrims died in June during the Hajj in Mecca in temperatures of over 51 degrees in some places.