The climate crisis in 2023

This year is set to be one of the hottest on record, prompting fears that the next 12 months could be crucial in tackling the climate crisis.

According to the Met Office, the average global temperature for 2023 is forecast to be between 1.08C and 1.32C above the average for the pre-industrial period, making this the tenth year in succession that temperatures have reached at least 1C above those historic levels.

As a new year began, it was “harder to discern” whether the climate picture amounted to “an inspiring account of aggregated national ambitions” or a “satire of efforts falling short”, said Bloomberg.

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What legislation could there be this year?

A significant chunk of climate progress in 2023 could take place in courtrooms. “Hearings and judgments across the world” are “poised to throw light on the worst perpetrators, give victims a voice and force recalcitrant governments and companies into action”, said The Guardian.

In June, a group of children and young people between the ages of five and 21 will “square off” against the state of Montana, said the paper. They will argue that the US state is failing to protect their constitutional rights, including the right to a healthy and clean environment, by backing an energy system dominated by fossil fuels.

“Never before has a climate change trial of this magnitude happened,” said Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney with Our Children’s Trust, which is behind the case.

There are also other key verdicts due in other US states, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Therefore, said The Guardian, 2023 “will be a watershed year for climate litigation”.

Will there be further investment in the private sector?

The economic uncertainty caused by the Ukraine war could have an upside as it “may trigger new ways of thinking about how businesses can do more with less”, wrote Dr James Robey, global head of environmental sustainability at Capgemini, for Edie. He speculated that “increased costs and potential shortages of some resources will prompt thinking on moving more quickly towards circularity as well as encourage more restrained (reduced) resource use”.

Noting that just 53% of people around the world trust business to do what is right on climate change, according to the recent Edelman Trust Barometer report, he also forecast that 2023 will see “greater scrutiny of corporate claims, with companies responding by taking steps to publicly clarify approaches and milestones to reach carbon reduction targets”.

Meanwhile, said Reuters, the World Bank is “seeking to vastly expand its lending capacity to address climate change and other global crises”. According to an “evolution roadmap”, the bank will negotiate with shareholders before meetings in April to discuss the proposal.

However, the news agency warned, a build-up of lending for climate change and other needs “may require a capital increase to boost the capacity of the World Bank’s middle-income lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development”.

Who will lead the fight on a global level?

This will be the first year that the US government has a policy to “meaningfully address climate change”, said New Scientist, in the shape of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The “nearly $370 billion the law puts towards climate and energy-related programmes” will “accelerate the race to reduce carbon emissions in the US and will influence climate action across the world”, it added.

Researchers expect that the law’s climate-related provisions will help bring US greenhouse gas emissions to between 32 and 42% below 2005 levels, and that these changes “should start to become apparent in 2023”.

“Historically the world’s biggest polluter, the US is finally gearing up for its biggest realignment yet on climate change,” said climate change reporter Rebecca Leber in Vox.

She suggested a series of further “doable” steps the US could make to take a lead, including slashing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, putting heat pumps, induction stoves and electric vehicles into the mainstream, and delivering on global climate financing.

Meanwhile, the president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is calling for more global support for the new Brazilian government’s environmental efforts, reported DW.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has pledged to make climate protection a priority for his term in office, wants to reduce deforestation in the Amazon to zero by 2030. The German government released €35m for the Amazon Fund, but conservation campaigners have warned that it is a “drop in the ocean” and support is needed from elsewhere.

What about climate protests?

Extinction Rebellion (XR) said it has decided to “temporarily shift away from public disruption” as a tactic to highlight climate change. The divisive group admitted “very little has changed” as a result of the tactics used over the past four years and said it would switch to new methods in 2023.

However, this might not signal the end of disruptive climate activism, said Sky News, because Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain – two groups which spun out of XR – “have given no hints that they intend to follow suit and place a greater emphasis on dialogue over disruption”.