COP24: The biggest immediate opportunity for countries to step up climate action

The alarming report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month made it crystal clear that every country, business and person in the world will need to step up climate action if the world is to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C (2.7°F). Breaching this temperature threshold would bring catastrophic impacts the world has never seen—from even more extreme weather events to coral reef die-off to food insecurity. The upcoming climate change conference in Katowice, Poland in December (COP24) is the single-biggest immediate opportunity for countries to show they’re taking the 1.5°C report seriously.

What countries say and do in Poland will determine climate efforts for years to come. It will either bring the world closer to meeting the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°-2°C or push action further down the road—making it harder and more expensive to respond to climate change. It is critical for COP24 to set us on path to enhance collective ambition and close the emissions gap over the coming two years—namely through the submission of revised national climate plans, or “Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” in 2020.