A Clash Over Degrees: How Hot Should Nations Allow the Earth to Get?

The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP 27) produced a groundbreaking agreement to create a “loss and damage” fund to help developing nations cope with the impact of climate change.

But the conference, held from Nov. 6 to Nov. 20, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, fell short of a hoped-for agreement to speed reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.