Climate Change Is Speeding Up. So Should We.
New Studies Strengthen Case for Climate Action
According to several recent analyses, the pace of climate change is accelerating and deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions must therefore be made to minimize rising temperatures.
In a study published last week in Geophysical Research Letters, climate scientists find that the Earth is warming by 0.35°C per decade - a significant acceleration since 2015 and twice the rate of the 1970s. This figure is slightly contested by others who believe the accurate value is a bit lower. But nearly all climate scientists agree that the Earth is getting hotter faster than in the past.1
The single largest culprit is almost certainly a reduction in air pollution from global shipping. On January 1st, 2020, new International Maritime Organization (IMO) rules came into effect that reduced the level of sulfur in shipping fuels. This form of pollution has cooling effects that had hitherto been masking warming for decades. This repressed warming is now unleashed.
Part of this acceleration may dissipate over time, as the shipping aerosol termination shock fades into the past. But some of it may stay with us into the future. Other sources of aerosols exist, for example, and are likely to contribute to warming when finally phased out. And feedback loops fed by the recent acceleration - such as albedo loss from melting ice - may also persist.
The accelerating warming trend should put paid to the notion - slovenly fêted by centrist elites after Donald Trump’s reëlection in 2024 - that left-wing parties in Western democracies should slow-walk climate policy for the sake of political expediency. Even if this strategy were effective - and this point is much disputed - the risk/reward ratio is no longer reasonable.
Ignis in abdito latet
Rather, world governments should double-down on their efforts to combat climate change. Three technologies in particular are most important for this moment, as they are closest to reaching escape velocity and require comparatively modest investments to transform them into decarbonization superstars.
First, electric vehicles (EVs) need to be universalized. Road transport represents roughly 12% of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2025, 25% of all new vehicles sold worldwide were electric.2 But given it takes many years for the vehicle fleet to fully turnover, EVs represent only about 5% of vehicles on the road. Getting EVs to 100% of new vehicle sales should be done as quickly as possible, so the fleet can be almost entirely electric by 2040.
Second, governments must support green steel. Steel is usually made via a process that uses coal, and this method represents around a tenth of all greenhouse gas emissions. Several companies - including Stegra in Sweden and Boston Metal in the United States - are working to commercialize alternative, low-carbon steel, but have suffered significant setbacks in recent months. Given the enormous public benefit of eliminating steel emissions, we should help these companies over the valley of death into commercialization.
Third, governments should make a massive bet on new geothermal technologies that promise to revolutionize energy production. Historically, geothermal energy has been limited to a small set of tectonically active geographies - like Iceland or Kenya - where hot water is found close to the Earth’s surface. New Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) promise to provide cheap, 24/7/365, low-carbon electricity and heat to a much wider swath of the world.
At present the EGS industry is limited to a few innovative (chiefly North American) startups, who are either digging test wells or building their first commercial-scale plants. Governments should pursue aggressive interventions to grow this nascent industry to terawatt scale - including direct subsidies for clean firm generation, preferential tax treatment, public procurement, or even geothermal portfolio standards.
Geothermal can fill in the gaps left by wind and solar’s intermittent generation profile - allowing more wind and solar to be built, and hastening the retirement of the world’s coal and fossil gas generation fleets. Going all-in on geothermal is the single most under-invested decarbonization policy option and its exercise would go furthest to meet the challenge of an increasingly warming Earth.
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