Are we giving up on a 1.5 deg C limit to global warming?
A UN report on minimising global temperature ‘overshoot’ is meant to be a call for action. But it is preaching to a world increasingly incapable of facing up to the climate emergency.
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The spillway (foreground) at Imja Lake in Nepal, an attempt to reduce flood hazard, in June 2025. Melting glaciers and the lakes they leave behind are time bombs.
PHOTO: JASON GULLEY/NYTIMES
The Nepal-China flood is shocking for its sudden, savage destruction and terrible loss of life. Riverside towns were wiped off the map in minutes by a torrent of mud, rocks and debris.
The disaster, sadly, was not unexpected. Climate scientists had been warning for years that rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers could cause the catastrophic collapse of ice fields, triggering explosive floods.