We have just five years to stop the world burning

Editorial: Saving the planet will prove vastly expensive and the clock is ticking – but it still lies within our grasp

There remains the hope that, as Sir David Attenborough has always stressed to us in recent years, the pace of the climate crisis can be slowed before it becomes an unpredictable, irreversible threat to life on Earth. But time is running out.

The latest report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), a United Nations agency, suggests that there is a two-thirds probability that the world will pass a crucial global temperature threshold within five years. It is as stark as that – more likely than not. As things stand, the next president of the United States will likely preside over the point of no return.

It is a sobering thought that the world has only a one-in-three chance of keeping the rise in the Earth’s average temperature down to 1.5C, as compared to pre-industrial levels. No wonder so many view it as a climate emergency.