10 key moments in the fight against climate change

Paris, France:

With the UN climate summit starting in Azerbaijan in a week, here is a summary of the ten most important dates in the fight against global warming.

1988: Establishment of an important UN body

When scientists alerted the United Nations to signs of warming Earth's surface, it set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to investigate.

Two years later, the panel reports that heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” produced by human activities are on the rise and could increase the warming of the planet.

Evidence is accumulating in a number of studies that human activities – the burning of coal, oil and gas; Deforestation of rainforests and destructive agricultural practices – are heating the Earth’s surface, which is the prelude to disruptions to the climate system.

1992: Earth Summit

At an “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was launched with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 1995, so-called “Conferences of the Parties” (COPs) have been meeting to pursue this elusive goal.

1997: Kyoto Protocol

In 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, nations agreed on a time frame from 2008 to 2012 in which industrialized nations should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent compared to 1990 levels.

Developing countries, including China, India and Brazil, are not required to adopt binding targets.

But in 2001, the United States, then the world's largest emitter of CO2, refused to ratify the protocol, which came into force in 2005.

2007: Nobel Prize

The IPCC reported in 2007 that the evidence of global warming was now “clear” and extreme weather events were likely to multiply.

In October 2007, the UN body shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore for her efforts to raise the alarm about climate change.

2009: Collapse of Copenhagen

Participants at the COP15 meeting in the Danish capital Copenhagen failed to reach an agreement for the period after 2012.

Several dozen major emitters, including China and the United States, announce a goal of limiting global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but make it unclear how this goal will be achieved.

2015: landmark Paris deal

In December 2015, nearly all of the world's nations committed to limiting warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In the French capital Paris, a more ambitious upper limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius is also adopted as the preferred target.

2018: Greta Thunberg

In 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg begins skipping school on Fridays to sit in front of the Swedish Parliament and demand more substantive action to combat climate change.

Although she ended her Friday protests in 2023 after graduating, her protest inspires students around the world to skip classes every Friday to demand more effort from global leaders.

2022: Biodiversity Agreement

In December 2022, an agreement on biodiversity will be reached in Montreal, Canada, calling for the designation of 30 percent of the planet's land and oceans as protected areas by 2030 and an end to the extinction of threatened species due to human activities.

2023: “Beginning of the End” for fossil fuels

COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, ends with a groundbreaking agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra calls the deal “long overdue” and says it took almost 30 years of climate meetings to “reach the beginning of the end of fossil fuels.”

2024: hottest year on record

The northern summer of 2024 will bring the highest global temperatures ever recorded.

According to the EU climate monitor Copernicus, the global average temperature at the earth's surface in August 2024 is 16.82 °C.

This will break 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average – the key threshold for limiting the worst impacts of climate change.

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