Almost exactly 10 years ago, a remarkable thing happened in a conference hall on the outskirts of Paris: After years of bitter negotiations, the leaders of nearly every country agreed to try to slow down global warming in an effort to head off its most devastating effects.
The core idea was that countries would set their own targets to reduce their climate pollution in ways that made sense for them. Rich, industrialized nations were expected to go fastest and to help lower-income countries pay for the changes they needed to cope with climate hazards.
So, has anything changed over those 10 years? Actually, yes. Quite a bit, for the better and the worse. For one thing, every country remains committed to the Paris Agreement, except one. That’s the United States.
We wanted to help you cut through the noise and show you 10 big things that have happened in the last 10 years.
1. Emissions have come down, but there’s still far to go.
Call this good-ish news. Lower emissions mean the arc of temperature increase has curved downward over the past 10 years. If countries stick to current policies, the global average temperature is projected to rise by 2.5 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That’s a significant improvement from where we were 10 years ago: In 2015, scientific models said we were on track to increase the global average temperature by up to 3.8 degrees Celsius.
Global greenhouse gas emissions and expected warming
But none of the world’s biggest emitters — China, the U.S., the European Union, India — have met their Paris promises. And every degree of warming matters. A one-degree increase in average temperature, for instance, raises malaria risk for children in sub-Saharan Africa by 77 percent.
2. The last 10 years were the hottest on record.
We started burning coal, oil and gas on a large scale roughly 150 years ago. As a result, global temperatures have been rising ever since, and the last 10 years have been the hottest 10 on record.
Global temperatures compared with late-19th-century average
The most scorching was 2024. That year, extreme heat killed election workers in India and pilgrims on the hajj in Saudi Arabia. This year, it forced the temporary closure of the top of the Eiffel Tower at the peak of tourist season and shuttered schools in parts of the United States.
3. Solar is spreading faster than we thought it would.
Solar power has been the largest source of new electricity generation for the last three years. Most of this new solar infrastructure is coming up inside China, and Chinese companies are making so much surplus solar equipment — cells, modules and everything that goes into them — that prices have plummeted.
Forecasts keep underestimating solar growth
Today, solar panels hang from apartment balconies in Germany and cover vast areas of desert in Saudi Arabia. Solar and onshore wind projects offer the cheapest source of new electricity generation. Little wonder, then, that in India’s electricity sector, more than half of the generation capacity now comes from solar, wind and hydropower.
4. Electric vehicles are now normal.
The way the world moves has changed. At the time of the Paris Agreement, Tesla had just unveiled its luxury electric SUV. Fast forward to last year: Worldwide, one in five cars sold was electric.
In the United States, 265,000 children ride electric buses to school. In Kenya, electric motorcycle taxis ferry commuters to work. Chinese carmakers are assembling E.V.s abroad, including in Brazil, Indonesia and, soon, in Saudi Arabia, a petrostate.
World
United States
Electrifying transportation is important because it’s one of the biggest sources of emissions globally. Currently, electric vehicles are displacing 2 million barrels of oil demand per day, roughly equal to Germany’s total daily demand, according to BloombergNEF.
5. Rich countries have put relatively little money on the table.
One of the key tenets of the Paris Agreement was an acknowledgement that countries had different responsibilities. Wealthy industrialized countries were supposed to pony up money to help poorer countries do two things: transition to renewable energy and adapt to the problems brought on by a hotter climate.
Last year, countries agreed that a total of $1.3 trillion would be needed every year by 2035 to help developing countries manage climate harms, including $300 billion a year in public monies from rich countries. That’s far more than what rich countries have thus far made available. Where that money will come from is still uncertain.
Public climate finance from developed countries would need to increase substantially
Meanwhile, some of the poorest countries are getting clobbered by extreme weather. They’re falling deeper into debt as they try to recover.
6. Coal is in a weird place.
The growth of coal is slowing worldwide. That matters because coal, which powered the modern industrial economy, is the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Coal is waning in wealthy countries, including the United States, despite President Trump’s efforts to expand its use. Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, closed its last coal plant in 2024. That year, more than half of Britain’s electricity came from renewables. But coal is still growing in China, which, despite its pledge to clean up its economy, has gone on to build more coal plants than any other country, ever.
In America, coal demand fell faster than expected…
…while in China, it grew faster than expected
7. Natural gas, a planet-warming fossil fuel, is ascendant thanks to America.
Over the decade since the Paris Agreement was signed, the United States has rapidly become the world’s leading producer and exporter of gas.
Liquid natural gas opened up an export boom
Mr. Trump, in his second term, has supersized that ambition. He appointed Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, as the U.S. energy secretary, and he has used the sale of American gas as a diplomatic and trade cudgel. That matters because, while gas is cleaner than coal as a source of electricity, it stands to lock the world into gas use for decades to come.
8. Forests are losing their climate superpower.
Fires are increasingly driving forest loss worldwide. That’s because rising temperatures and more intense droughts are making forests burn more easily and also because people are setting fire to forests to clear land for agriculture.
The world’s forests are absorbing less carbon dioxide
That’s limiting the ability of many forests to store planet-warming carbon dioxide. In fact, it’s pushing parts of the Amazon rainforest, often called the lungs of the planet, to a startling tipping point. Parts of the Amazon are releasing more carbon than trees and soil are absorbing. One recent study found the same pattern in the rainforests of Australia.
9. Corals are bleaching more often.
Since 2015, two separate global bleaching events have stretched over six years. They’re happening much more often than before, and affecting more reefs, because the oceans are heating up fast.
Percent of the world’s coral reefs affected by each bleaching event
Corals are important because they support so many other creatures, including fish that millions of people rely on for nutrition and income. About a quarter of all marine species depend on reefs at some point in their life cycle.
Many reefs have been ravaged, but some coral species are turning out to be more resilient to marine heat waves than we had thought. That’s good-ish news, too.
10. U.S. electricity demand is soaring, in part because of A.I.
Power demand had always been expected to increase worldwide. More than a billion people still need access to electricity, and billions of others around the globe are buying air-conditioners and plugging in electric vehicles. But a big surprise came from the United States.
American electricity demand was pretty flat in the 2010s but is now rising significantly and is projected to climb for at least another decade. One reason: energy-hungry A.I. That raises a critical question for Big Tech: Will its A.I. ambitions heat up the planet faster?
After two decades of slower demand growth, energy needs are rising.
What does all this mean for the world’s 8 billion people?
The physical damage inflicted by global warming costs the global economy around $1.4 trillion a year, according to BloombergNEF.
It means we are being forced to adapt to new conditions on a climate-altered planet. Many already are, especially the most vulnerable among us. In India, a women’s union has created a tiny new insurance plan to help workers cope when it gets dangerously hot. In China, a landscape architect has persuaded cities to create porous surfaces to let floodwaters seep in. In the United States, school playgrounds are adding shade to protect kids on exceptionally hot days. In California, an app developer created a tool to help his neighbors track the path of wildfires. In Malawi and Uganda, people are experimenting with growing different crops.
A big problem is, there’s very little money to help them, and even that has declined in the last couple of years.
