Global problems in the world

GLOBAL PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD

When it comes to climate change, 2022 was a split screen: As the world took several important steps to curb the climate crisis, its impacts continued to worsen. Our climate and environment experts take stock of the progress that’s been made and look ahead to the work that remains to be done.
2022 delivered important progress in the climate change fight. The United States enacted its first-ever climate legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act will inject an unprecedented $369 billion of public spending and tax credits into the U.S. economy to boost clean energy, clean infrastructure, and climate resilience over the next decade.
Australia elected a pro-climate-action government that quickly raised the country’s climate targets and enacted legislation to match. In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won on a platform that included halting and reversing Amazonian deforestation. And at COP 27 in Egypt, countries agreed to develop new funding arrangements that can mobilize resources to help developing economies suffering directly — and disproportionately — from the impacts of climate change.
At the same time, however, the climate crisis has grown even more acute as emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate. There were daily reminders this year of the increasingly severe and irreversible consequences that will ensue if we allow the world to break the 1.5°C warming threshold over preindustrial times — from catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and China, to record-breaking heat waves in the U.S. and Europe, to severe drought in Africa and record ice melt at the poles.
It is clearer than ever that climate change is interwoven with other great crises the world is facing by fueling them and playing a critical role in how we work to resolve them. Take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is causing Europe to pay the economic and security consequences of its own fossil fuel dependence and is forcing near-term decisions that will have long-term impacts. Those decisions will determine whether the continent’s transition away from fossil fuels accelerates or slows by locking in more dirty infrastructure in its pursuit of quick relief from soaring energy prices. This has, in turn, triggered a global food security crisis. The combination of rising energy prices, climate-fueled droughts, and the curtailment of Ukrainian agricultural exports pushed a perilously stretched global food system to the brink.
Here’s a closer look at the state of play as we exit 2022, and what it means for climate action in 2023.

Built atop small lagoon islets, Venice, Italy, has been a victim of both subsidence and, more significantly, global sea level rise fueled by climate change. The Italian government has funded construction a series of floodgates to close the lagoon entrance before exceptionally high tide phenomena known as acqua alta. Photo: Adam Sébire