From The Economist – year end review.
This year has delivered a rollicking ride for climate news. It kicked off with President Joe Biden bringing the United States back into the Paris agreement and launching a new plan to green America and closed with an action-packed COP26 UN climate summit that achieved both a lot and far too little. In between these two bookends came stark warnings about future levels of warming, an onslaught of devastating extreme weather events from fires to floods, soaring carbon markets, a load of net-zero commitments from nations, regions and the private sector, and a global energy crunch. Rather than a blow-by-blow chronological summary of the year, here is a non-exhaustive but indicative list of key numbers to remember the year by.