05/09/2026

The 1.5°C Breach Is Coming and Australia Is in the Room - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

UNEP confirms Earth will breach the 1.5°C climate threshold
within years amid Australian fossil fuel expansion
Key Points
  • A landmark UNEP report finds global warming will cross 1.5°C within years, with the safest pathway peaking at 1.8°C.[1]
  • Australia is the world's third-largest fossil fuel exporter and will oversee COP31 negotiations from November.[6]
  • The Great Barrier Reef suffered its fifth mass bleaching event since 2016, the largest ever recorded in extent.[3]
  • Scientists warn Australia records some of the world's highest natural catastrophe losses per capita, a trend rising since the 1970s.[5]
  • Greenpeace says the International Court of Justice has ruled 1.5°C is a legally binding climate obligation.[4]
  • Nearly 100 campaign groups have urged Australia to end new coal, oil and gas approvals before COP31.[6]

On Masig Island in the Torres Strait, retreating shorelines and rising king tides already reshape daily life for residents. Elders now watch the tides creep steadily closer to family homes with every passing wet season. Their long-held concern anticipated a stark warning delivered this week by the United Nations.

The UN Environment Programme now confirms global average warming will exceed 1.5°C within just a few years. 

Its landmark report, titled Limiting Overshoot, marks the first time the agency has framed the breach as effectively unavoidable. 

Even the most optimistic modelled pathway still peaks at 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels.[1]

The Limiting Overshoot Report and the 1.5°C Threshold

UNEP attributes the impending breach to a collective global failure to curb fossil fuel emissions quickly enough. Nations continue approving new coal, oil and gas projects despite explicit Paris Agreement commitments. 

The persistent gap between promised climate action and delivered emissions cuts has proven decisive for this outcome.[1]

Earlier UNEP assessments still framed 1.5°C as achievable given sufficient global ambition and cooperation. Limiting Overshoot instead accepts that the original threshold is now effectively out of reach. Its focus shifts toward managing how high and for how long temperatures remain elevated.[2]

The report projects Earth will officially cross 1.5°C within the next few years. Independent scientific analyses place that milestone as early as the year 2030. The shift arrives considerably faster than most earlier climate models had anticipated.[1]

Crossing 1.5°C carries genuine legal weight under the Paris Agreement's ambition and review mechanisms. The International Court of Justice has already ruled the threshold constitutes a binding legal obligation, according to Greenpeace. Governments now face mounting pressure to treat their climate targets as fully enforceable commitments.[4]

The New Baseline: Temperatures Set to Peak Near 1.8°C

The report's best-case scenario assumes full delivery of every national climate pledge on the table. It requires immediate, deep near-term cuts to global fossil fuel emissions and methane pollution. Even then, warming still peaks at 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels.[1]

UNEP's modelling places that best-case temperature peak sometime around the middle of this century. Current policies, by contrast, point toward far higher warming levels by 2100. The gap between political ambition and actual delivery remains stark across most major economies.[1]

Sustained warming near 1.8°C threatens irreversible damage to major ice sheets and tropical rainforests. Coral reef ecosystems face accelerating collapse under prolonged and repeated heat stress. Global food systems and freshwater security also face growing and compounding strain.[1]

A higher baseline fundamentally reshapes risk models for coastal flooding and extreme weather events. Analysts at insurer Aon note Australia already records some of the world's highest natural catastrophe losses per capita. That trend has climbed steadily since the 1970s, driven largely by growth in increasingly hazardous exposed areas.[5]

The Peak and Decline Pivot

UN officials describe the new approach as an overshoot, peak and decline pathway. Warming will exceed 1.5°C, plateau as low as possible, then gradually retreat. Success depends on rapid, front-loaded emissions cuts followed by sustained large-scale carbon removal.[1]

Managing an overshoot period demands coordinated global monitoring of emissions, removals and progress. It also requires binding national commitments to clear fossil fuel phase-out timelines. Multilateral finance mechanisms must scale sharply to support the world's most vulnerable nations.[1]

The strategic pivot also reshapes how international climate finance gets allocated across the globe. Greenpeace argues wealthy polluting nations must fund both steep emissions cuts and damage recovery efforts. Its call to make major polluters pay reflects growing global pressure for accountability.[4]

Shifting from pure prevention to active temperature reduction raises entirely new scientific hurdles. Carbon removal technologies still remain largely unproven at the scale the pathway now requires. Researchers warn that untested large-scale methods carry real ecological and financial risk.[5]

Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Frameworks: Australia's Test

UNEP calls for rapid, front-loaded cuts to global fossil fuel production this decade. Australia now faces particular scrutiny as the world's third-largest fossil fuel exporter. It will also oversee formal negotiations at COP31 this November.[6]

An equitable transition demands finance and technology support for developing nations. Pacific leaders describe 1.5°C as a matter of survival rather than ambition. Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Palau this year kept close watch on Australia's response.[8]

Nearly 100 campaign groups have urged Australia to halt new coal, oil and gas approvals. Australian Greens Senator Steph Hodgins-May linked the nation's fossil fuel expansion to its retreat from a full hosting role. She said the shift reflected the government's continuing approvals of coal and gas projects.[7]

Energy security concerns continue to complicate the pace of any rapid fossil fuel phase-out. Australia and Turkey have both promoted renewables as protection against unreliable energy imports. Analysts say any credible transition plan must still safeguard reliable domestic energy supply throughout.[6]

Carbon Capture and the Question of Accountability

UNEP identifies large-scale carbon dioxide removal as essential to any credible decline phase. Options include large-scale reforestation, soil carbon storage and direct air capture technology. None of these methods can substitute for immediate, deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions.[1]

The report's central pathway aims to return warming below 1.5°C well before 2100. That timeline depends heavily on global emissions falling sharply well before 2035. Every year of delay now simply lengthens the eventual recovery period ahead.[1]

Aon's Tom Mortlock says carbon removal capacity must scale far beyond current global levels. Achieving that scale requires crowding in far greater private and public investment capital. Investment levels today fall well short of what the overshoot pathway ultimately demands.[5]

Large-scale carbon removal still carries its own significant ecological and social risks. Poorly sited reforestation projects can strain local water supplies and displace vulnerable communities. Curtin University's Peter Newman says Australia must show genuine climate leadership rather than rhetoric at COP31.[5]

UNEP's Limiting Overshoot report closes the door on preventing a 1.5°C breach. The overshoot, peak and decline pathway remains achievable only through immediate action. Even the most optimistic modelled pathway still exceeds the Paris Agreement's core target.

Australia's position as a major fossil fuel exporter sharpens its responsibility. Hosting formal COP31 negotiations gives the nation genuine influence over the pathway ahead. Continued coal and gas approvals sit awkwardly beside that diplomatic role.

Communities from the Torres Strait to the Great Barrier Reef await credible follow-through. Accountability now rests on turning diplomatic leadership into measurable emissions reductions at home. Frontline residents, reef scientists and Pacific neighbours are watching closely for results.

References

1. UNEP: World Set to Cross 1.5°C of Global Warming. The UN Environment Programme's official press release announcing the Limiting Overshoot report and its findings.

2. A Landmark UN Report Says the World Will Overshoot the 1.5°C Climate Target. The Conversation analysis by legal academic Jacqueline Peel on the implications for Australia and its Pacific neighbours.

3. Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2024/25. The Australian Institute of Marine Science's long-term monitoring report on the 2024 mass bleaching event.

4. UNEP Declaration of Expected 1.5°C Overshoot Must Spark Urgent Political Response. Greenpeace International's response, including comments from its Pacific climate campaigner.

5. Expert Reaction: Quick Action Needed as the World is Set to Get Hotter. Scimex expert reactions from Australian climate and risk scientists including Tom Mortlock and Peter Newman.

6. United for COP31. An open letter from 94 civil society organisations urging Australia and Turkey to lead on fossil fuel phase-out.

7. Turkiye to Host COP31 Climate Summit After Australia Concedes Bid. Al Jazeera's report on Australia's negotiations role and domestic criticism of its fossil fuel approvals.

8. 350.org Responds to UN Report Confirming World Set to Breach 1.5°C. A civil society response naming Australia as a major fossil fuel exporter under scrutiny ahead of COP31.

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04/09/2026

Australia's Pacific Climate Test Is Becoming Harder to Ignore - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Pacific leaders have challenged Australia's climate credibility
as the region confronts escalating climate risks
Key Points
  • Vanuatu's Ralph Regenvanu urged Australia to stop expanding fossil fuel production and accelerate its transition away from coal oil and gas.[1]
  • The Climate Council says the Albanese government had approved 36 new expanded or extended fossil fuel projects by March 2026.[2]
  • Fiji and Tuvalu will co-host Australia's Pacific pre-COP process with leaders from five non-Pacific nations confirmed so far.[3]
  • Australia's domestic electricity grid recently exceeded 50 per cent renewable supply during a quarter highlighted by Anthony Albanese.[4]
  • Australia is financing Palau's first utility-scale solar and battery facility which will raise renewable electricity generation to 25 per cent.[5]
  • The Forum exposed a central contradiction between Australia's regional climate assistance and continuing fossil fuel expansion.[6]

In Melekeok on Palau's largest island, storm-driven seawater reaches homes along a low-lying coastline.[6]

Residents seeking higher ground face slow infrastructure funding while climate impacts advance faster than relocation plans.[6]

Fossil Fuel Policy Draws Pacific Criticism

The 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting brought the argument into sharp focus in Koror from 30 August to 4 September.[7]

Vanuatu Climate Change Adaptation and Energy Minister Ralph Regenvanu said Australia should stop future fossil fuel expansion.[1]

He called for rapid transition away from fossil fuels and fossil fuel subsidies while pointing to Australia's major producer status.[1]

Regional criticism focused on Australia's coal mining gas production oil extraction and large-scale fossil fuel exports.[1]

The Climate Council counted 36 new expanded or extended coal oil and gas developments approved under the Albanese government by March 2026.[2]

The approvals include coal mines gas extraction projects and major gas export infrastructure with operations extending for decades.[2]

Greenpeace activists reinforced the criticism through public campaigning that described Australia's fossil fuel role as climate vandalism.[8]

The Pre-COP Attendance Problem

Australia's Pacific climate diplomacy also faces scrutiny over an October pre-COP process hosted jointly with Fiji and Tuvalu.[3]

Fiji will host formal pre-COP meetings while Tuvalu will host a leaders' component from 5 to 8 October.[3]

Five non-Pacific leaders have confirmed attendance from Antigua and Barbuda Cabo Verde Thailand Maldives and Timor-Leste.[3]

Germany Mexico and South Korea are expected to provide ministerial representation rather than national leaders.[3]

Critics argue the limited attendance weakens the event's international weight especially without major emitters such as China and the United States.[9]

The attendance controversy has prompted Australian commentary describing the gathering as a potential “COP-out”.[9]

Albanese rejected that interpretation and argued that pre-COP meetings traditionally attract fewer leaders than the main United Nations climate conference.[3]

Albanese Defends Australia's Transition

Albanese defended Australia's record by pointing to rapid renewable growth within the national electricity system.[4]

He said more than 50 per cent of Australia's energy supply came from renewables during the December quarter.[4]

He also argued Pacific partners understand that Australia's energy transition requires time and firming capacity.[1]

Firming capacity means dependable electricity supply that supports variable generation when wind and solar output falls.[1]

Albanese said gas still has a role in that transition while renewable generation and supporting infrastructure expand.[1]

That position sits uneasily beside Pacific demands for faster fossil fuel phase-out and stronger action from major exporters.[6]

The dispute therefore concerns both Australia's domestic transition and the climate consequences of fuels exported beyond its borders.[2]

Palau Offers a Practical Alternative

The contrast was visible in Palau where Australia is financing renewable infrastructure alongside its fossil fuel economy.[5]

Australia provided a $31.4 million financing package for Palau's first utility-scale solar and battery energy storage facility.[5]

The Ngatpang facility combines 15.28 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with 12.9 megawatt-hours of battery storage.[5]

Additional Australian financing will upgrade Palau's electricity grid and double energy storage capacity at the facility.[4]

The project will lift renewable electricity generation to 25 per cent and displace more than one million litres of diesel annually.[4]

Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr welcomed Australia's practical support despite the wider disagreement over fossil fuel policy.[6]

Whipps argued countries producing oil and gas should instead reduce the demand that keeps those fuels central to energy systems.[6]

A Regional Partnership Under Strain

The Forum's debate reveals a Pacific relationship built around both cooperation and profound climate disagreement.[6]

Australia remains the region's largest development partner while also ranking among the world's major fossil fuel exporters.[6]

Pacific governments increasingly frame climate change as a security issue involving land livelihoods food systems oceans and cultural survival.[6]

The United Nations Environment Programme has warned current policies point towards warming beyond the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C threshold.[6]

For low-lying states the consequences extend beyond damaged infrastructure because ancestral land and cultural identity can also face irreversible loss.[6]

Greenpeace has therefore urged Australia to support Pacific energy sovereignty and a just transition away from fossil fuels.[8]

The organisation says Australia's regional credibility ultimately depends upon aligning climate diplomacy with domestic energy decisions.[8]

The Palau meeting exposed two versions of Australia's Pacific climate role. One provides renewable infrastructure while the other continues approving fossil fuel developments.

Pacific governments increasingly judge climate leadership through outcomes affecting communities facing rising seas extreme weather and disrupted livelihoods.

Australia's challenge is therefore one of policy coherence. Regional trust will depend upon whether its energy transition increasingly matches the urgency expressed by its Pacific neighbours.

References

1. 1.5C global warming breach likely as Australia defends Pacific climate talks. ABC News reports Ralph Regenvanu's demand for Australia to halt fossil fuel expansion and accelerate its transition.

2. The Albanese Government's fossil fuel approvals. Climate Council analysis records 36 new expanded or extended coal oil and gas developments approved since 2022.

3. COP31 Australia-Pacific. The Australian Government outlines the Fiji pre-COP and Tuvalu leaders' event planned for October 2026.

4. Pacific collaboration on climate and renewable energy powers ahead. The Prime Minister's Office details Australia's Palau renewable energy partnership and grid upgrades.

5. Building Palau's first utility-scale solar power plant. The Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific provides technical and financial details of Palau's solar and battery project.

6. Pacific island nations seek to turn geopolitics into funding to offset climate change harm. Associated Press reports Pacific climate concerns and differing views over Australia's climate performance.

7. 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting: a backgrounder. The Parliamentary Library records the Forum's dates location and major regional priorities.

8. Pacific Islands Forum leaders, Albanese must not lose focus on Pacific priorities of climate and ocean. Greenpeace Australia Pacific outlines its criticism of fossil fuel expansion and its call for a Pacific-led transition.

9. Fiji COP-out has a serious side. The Australian reports criticism surrounding international attendance at the Pacific pre-COP event.

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03/09/2026

The Evolution of Climate Denial: And Where Australia Sits - Gregory Andrews

Lyrebird Dreaming  –  Gregory Andrews

Author

Gregory Andrews is:

Climate denial used to be easy to recognise. 

It told us global warming was a hoax, scientists were conspiring for grant money and a day of snow disproved decades of evidence. It sounds just like Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson. 

Of course that kind of denial remains alive and dangerous. But it's no longer the only - or even the most politically effective - way to obstruct climate action.

Climate denial has evolved. It's learned to accept the science while denying what the science requires.

Four ways to deny a crisis

A recent Forbes article just described four forms of modern climate denial:

  1. Deny the diagnosis: climate change is not happening, or humans are not causing it.
  2. Deny the cause: the fire, flood or heatwave was caused by arson, cloud seeding or ordinary weather - not a destabilised climate.
  3. Deny the treatment: climate change is real, but every serious response is too expensive, too fast, unfair or impractical.
  4. Deny responsibility: action is necessary, but China, consumers, or another industry or group are to blame.

All of these overlap. As one becomes socially unacceptable, another takes its place. Each concedes a little more reality while protecting the same outcome: continuing emissions.

Of course, that doesn't mean anyone who questions a particular climate policy is a denier. Policies should be scrutinised. But genuine disagreement rejects one policy and offers another capable of achieving a comparable or better result. Treatment denial rejects every proportionate response and substitutes delay, wishful thinking or nothing. Sound familiar? Read on.

Retreating as the danger grows

You'd expect worsening disasters to produce stronger action. Instead, many governments and corporations that accept the science are increasingly making climate policy reversals. Canada has abandoned or weakened measures covering oil and gas, methane, electricity and electric vehicles. European governments have diluted carbon-market, heating, transport, corporate-accountability and deforestation policies. New Zealand has reopened offshore petroleum exploration and weakened its methane target.

These u-turns are rarely sold as pro-pollution. They arrive dressed as cost-of-living, energy and strategic security, consumer choice and "pragmatism". But the reality is that by weakening effective action without replacing it, they're actually instruments of denial.

Where Australia sits

Australia contains all four forms of denialism, but under the Albanese Government we've got really good at the last two - treatment denial and responsibility denial. They accept climate science and have undertaken action on renewable energy, batteries, vehicle efficiency and some industrial emissions. Those differences matter. But so does the contradiction - accepting the renewable-energy half of the treatment while refusing the fossil-fuel phase-out half.

Australia's Future Gas Strategy says new gas supplies are needed and commits us to continuing and even expanding our massive gas exports. The Albanese Government approved Woodside's North West Shelf gas project to operate until 2070 - 20 years beyond our net-zero deadline.

Then comes responsibility denial. We are told emissions from Australian coal and gas belong to the countries that import and burn them. Under international rules, those emissions are indeed counted in the importing country, avoiding double counting. But an accounting convention is not an ethics system. It doesn't absolve the country that approves, digs up, exports and profits from the fossil fuels. 

Climate Analytics has calculated that burning Australia's exported coal and gas produces over 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. That puts our global carbon footprint at around three times our domestic one. We're outsourcing the smoke and the warming.

What can we do?

First, broaden our understanding of climate denial. Challenge it when it comes from respectable governments and institutions, not only conspiracy theorists. Name treatment denial and responsibility denial when they appear in conversations, media coverage and political debate. Accepting the science is only the first step - not the test of climate credibility.

Second, ask the treatment question: If you oppose this policy, what equally effective alternative do you support? "Not this" is not a climate plan.

Third, challenge the exported-emissions alibi. Australia can't claim global credit for exporting renewable energy while denying global responsibility for exporting fossil fuels.

Finally, demand specific commitments from our elected representatives: no new coal and gas; a just, and urgent phase-out; consideration of exported emissions in project approvals; an end to fossil-fuel subsidies; and serious transition plans for workers and communities.

Climate denial no longer always arrives shouting that climate change is a hoax. Sometimes it acknowledges the science, announces a distant target - and approves fossil-fuel expansionism until 2070.

Australia may accept the science, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still in climate denial.

Gregory Andrews Climate Change Articles

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02/09/2026

The Wettest Drought: How a Record El Niño Rewrote Australia's Climate Story - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Australia's strongest El Niño on record is bringing rain
instead of the drought scientists feared
Key Points
  • A landmark Science study found El Niño events nearly 40 per cent stronger than pre-industrial levels.[1]
  • Researchers used 1,000 years of Galápagos coral data to isolate the human-warming signal.[2]
  • Australia's current El Niño ranks among the strongest since formal records began in 1950.[4]
  • Despite drought forecasts, Australia is tracking toward its wettest El Niño year on record.[5]
  • Scientists say rising emissions are sharpening the swings between El Niño and La Niña.[3]
  • Intensifying cycles threaten coral reefs, insurance markets and disaster planning across Australia.[7]

Farmers across Western Australia's wheatbelt watched rain fall through winter, defying months of stark drought warnings from national forecasters. 

Meteorologists had forecast drought, citing a record-strength El Niño, the periodic warming of the central Pacific Ocean. Instead, paddocks turned green as an unprecedented climate anomaly delivered rain nobody predicted.

The paradox traces back to new research on El Niño's long-term intensity. 

A landmark study published in the journal Science analysed 1,000 years of coral data. Findings showed El Niño events have grown nearly 40 per cent stronger since the pre-industrial era.[1]

Study Findings and Statistical Discoveries

The research appeared in Science, widely regarded as one of the world's most rigorous peer-reviewed journals. Lead author Julia Cole, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Michigan, headed the international team. Her team examined whether rising global temperatures were reshaping El Niño's long-term intensity.[1]

Coral-based measurements revealed a 36 per cent jump in El Niño strength since large-scale industrialisation began. Compared with the twentieth century alone, the increase measured roughly 16 per cent. Combined, these shifts pushed recent El Niño intensity nearly 40 per cent above pre-industrial levels.[3]

Corals record ocean chemistry much the way tree rings record successive growing seasons over centuries. Strontium-to-calcium ratios and oxygen isotopes preserve centuries of sea-surface temperature data. Scientists sampled these layers a millimetre at a time to reconstruct the record.[2]

The study spanned roughly 1,000 years, reaching back through medieval times to before 1850. That predates large-scale human greenhouse gas emissions by more than a century. Researchers therefore had a genuine pre-industrial baseline for comparison.[1]

Historical Data and Methodology

Researchers sampled 13 coral colonies from the remote Galápagos Islands, including both living and long-dead fossil specimens. The Galápagos sits at the heart of El Niño's strongest ocean-temperature swings. That location made the corals an unusually sensitive natural recorder of the phenomenon.[6]

Each individual core provided a continuous chemical record spanning at least two decades of growth. By stacking overlapping cores, scientists reconstructed a near-continuous millennium-long timeline. This approach let them compare eras separated by hundreds of years directly.[2]

The pre-industrial baseline came from ancient corals predating widespread fossil fuel combustion and industrial emissions. Modern El Niño events consistently exceeded that historical range in strength. No period before 1850 matched the intensity recorded across the last four decades.[1]

The long baseline let scientists methodically rule out ordinary natural variability as the underlying cause. Volcanic activity and solar cycles failed to explain the scale of change. That left human-driven warming as the most plausible remaining explanation.[2]

Current Meteorological Context

Meanwhile, a separate but closely related event has gripped the tropical Pacific throughout this year. The Bureau of Meteorology declared El Niño active in mid-June, part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, cycle. Forecasters flagged it as among the strongest events since formal records began in 1950.[4]

Standard seasonal outlooks predicted a hot, dry spring across most of the eastern and southern country. Historically, moderate to strong El Niño events cut Australia's winter rainfall by roughly a third. Spring rainfall typically falls by a fifth, with summer effects far smaller.[8]

Instead, Australia is tracking toward its wettest El Niño year on record. National rainfall had already passed 400 millimetres by late winter, well above historical El Niño averages. Western Australia and the Northern Territory face a wet spring rather than the forecast drought.[5]

This mismatch raises hard questions for drought, water security and bushfire planning agencies nationwide. Water authorities, farm lenders and emergency services calibrated preparations around a dry-season forecast. Officials now face pressure to explain how confident outlooks diverged so sharply from outcomes.[5]

Human-Driven Impacts and Climate Cycles

Scientists identify rising greenhouse gas concentrations as the primary driver behind this long-term shift. Fossil fuel emissions have warmed the tropical Pacific Ocean's surface layer for over a century. That warming appears to be sharpening the natural swings between El Niño and La Niña.[2]

The link troubles scientists because ENSO drives weather patterns far beyond the Pacific basin alone. Stronger El Niño events amplify droughts, floods, wildfires and food insecurity worldwide. A more volatile cycle therefore threatens communities with little direct connection to the ocean itself.[1]

Human activity appears to skew the ENSO cycle toward more frequent, more extreme El Niño phases. The cycle still swings toward La Niña, its cooler counterpart, but the amplitude has grown. Researchers describe a natural system now behaving well outside its historical range.[3]

The sudden jump in intensity signals a climate system still responding to decades of past emissions. Global greenhouse gas output remains far above levels compatible with a stable climate. Continued warming risks pushing El Niño intensity beyond even this year's extremes.[2]

Broader Environmental Implications

A stronger ENSO cycle now threatens the very coral reefs that provided this historical record. Repeated marine heatwaves have already pushed global coral cover down to about a quarter of reef area. Scientists warn recovery windows between heat events keep shrinking.[7]

For Australian communities, an intensifying cycle complicates disaster preparedness and economic planning. Insurers already price flood and bushfire risk using historical El Niño patterns that are becoming outdated. Farmers, regional lenders and emergency planners now face growing uncertainty over which scenario to prepare for.[8]

First Nations land and fire managers face similar uncertainty across vast stretches of country. Cultural burning programs and seasonal calendars rely on predictable wet and dry patterns. An increasingly erratic cycle complicates decisions once guided by generations of observation.

The combined findings place fresh urgency on Australia's national climate policy and emissions reduction targets. Every fraction of a degree of warming appears to compound El Niño's extremes. Scientists say the current event offers a preview of a hotter, more volatile future.[6]

Two exceptional events now sit side by side. A 1,000-year coral record shows El Niño growing far stronger since industrialisation began. Australia's unpredictable rainfall this year shows what that intensified cycle looks like in practice.

Forecasting agencies got the direction of Australia's season wrong despite record confidence. That gap between forecast and outcome deserves closer scrutiny from policymakers and regulators. Communities cannot plan effectively around outlooks that diverge so sharply from reality.

The underlying science remains clear regardless of any single season's surprises. Warming oceans are reshaping one of Earth's most influential climate cycles. Governments and industries now carry the responsibility of preparing for greater volatility ahead.

References

1. El Niños More Intense Over Last 40 Years Than Previous 1,000 Years. University of Michigan announcement summarising the Science study's key findings.

2. Climate Change Is Strengthening El Niño, Coral Records Suggest. Peer-reviewed coverage detailing the study's methodology and intensification figures.

3. El Niño Events Are Becoming Stronger as the World Warms. News analysis comparing El Niño intensity across different historical baselines.

4. El Niño: What It Means for Australia's Climate. Official Bureau of Meteorology guidance on the current event's likely impacts.

5. Why Australia's Weather Is Seeing a Soaking While a Record El Niño Is Forming. Investigation into why rainfall diverged from seasonal drought forecasts.

6. Climate Change Is Supercharging El Niños, Coral Records Show. Science journalism explaining why the Galápagos coral record carries particular weight.

7. Heat Stress Is Harming Coral Reefs, Global Data Shows. Reporting on shrinking recovery windows for coral reefs amid repeated heat events.

8. El Niño in 2026 Could Be One of the Strongest on Record. Analysis of the historical relationship between El Niño strength and Australian rainfall decline.

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01/09/2026

Here comes the Human Tsunami - Julian Cribb

 Surviving the 21st Century - Julian Cribb

Unleashing a migratory crisis on the Planet
                                      AUTHOR
Julian Cribb AM ATSE is an Australian science writer and author of seven books on the human existential emergency. 
He is Co-founder, Council for the Human Future. 
Julian Cribb's latest book is How to Fix a Broken Planet (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

The human tsunami is building irresistibly, with one person in every 20 worldwide now seeking to relocate from their home country to another.

In 2026 there are over 420 million people on the move, seeking new homes in places not torn by war, famine, climate disruption, resource scarcity or political, religious and economic savagery.

Migrants now comprise the world’s third largest population, behind that of India and China, but significantly outnumbering the USA, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria.

At its root the building migrant tsunami is fed by overpopulation, but also by the forces accompanying it – scarcity of key resources like water, land or food, conditions progressively more hostile and more toxic to family life, and a plague of bad governments bent on war, repression and autocracy.

Humans and our ancestral species have been natural migrants for going on 2 million years, as revealed by a trail of prehuman remains stretching from Ethiopia to China and Indonesia – so there is nothing surprising about our endless quest for new opportunities and horizons. It’s what we do naturally when local resources no longer appear sufficient.

But there is something exceptional about this building tsunami of migration, especially if it results from the abandonment of large areas of the Earth or its megacities as they become uninhabitable. It will be the greatest upheaval in all human history.

The movement has two main components – refugees and voluntary migrants. At last count there were a record 124 million refugees and stateless people adrift, up by over 300% since 2000 (38m). Just above half of these were displaced within their home countries but looking to move. Presently, 1 person of every 67 on Earth has been forced to flee.

There were also 304 million voluntary migrants worldwide in 2024 – a doubling in numbers since 1990 and a tripling since 1975. A Canadian study shows the primary reasons to leave home include education, career, concern about overpopulation and the environment, providing for family, politics, religion, culture, healthcare and poverty. Those, however, are what the migrants state on their applications. There is growing evidence a great many people are relocating ahead of disasters – climatic, environmental or political – which they foresee in their homeland.

The 2026 World Migration Report speaks of “a time of profound global disruption…. Conflicts and violence continue to displace millions, while environmental degradation and climate change are transforming mobility patterns across regions. Rapid technological transformation is altering labour markets and governance systems, creating new opportunities alongside new risks,” it warns. “The scale of current developments is striking. By the end of 2024, more than 83 million people were internally displaced – the highest number recorded in the modern era.”

Resisting the trend towards migration is a global wave of anti-migrant sentiment, notably in countries that have traditionally welcomed new settlers and refugees. Whipped up by right-wing politicians in the North America, Europe, Oceania and parts of Asia “far-right political actors strategically manufacture anti-immigrant sentiment to garner electoral support through systematic fearmongering and racialization of migrants,” says Olivia Weninger of the Human Rights Research Center. In other words, the protests are less about immigration than about the flexing of raw political power by neofascist minorities.

Nevertheless, immigration was a hot-button issue in the two elections that delivered Trump to power in the US, leading to his unleashing of paramilitaries on the populace and the building of concentration camps, evoking ugly echoes of the 1930s.

The question remains: Is the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment real – or an artefact of the global fascist movement? And the answer, probably, is: both. People are often xenophobic, for no other reasons than fear and ignorance of new arrivals. On the other hand, new arrivals may sometimes come in the form of a Mongol Horde, Vandal or Axis army of settler movement and prove less than friendly to the indigenes. So fear of foreigners has sound basis in the human experience, which is being exploited by local right-wing elements in their quest for personal power.

However, fear and resentment of immigrants will do nothing to stem the tidal surge of migration that is coming. In 2019 the Climate Foresight Report estimated there could be as many as 1 billion migrants moving worldwide by 2050. Five years late Swiss insurance giant Zurich put the estimate of the displaced as high as 1.2 billion – one human in every 8.

Largely dismissed by politicians and media at the time as alarmist, these predictions have acquired far more substance in view of the fact that the Earth’s migrant population has more than doubled since 2000 – and, on a linear projection alone, is likely to more than double again by 2050. If one adds progressive breakdown of global food and water systems, overheating of the climate, state failures, the global rise in authoritarian governments and spontaneous wars (possibly nuclear), the projection of 1.2 billion migrants in 2050 is starting to look very conservative. If the forecast by British actuaries is borne out, of 2-4 billion dead, then the mass migration preceding it will involve more than half the world’s population.

“Humanity’s current path will push societies into deeper crises unless we make major changes,” warns Professor of Ecology Corey Bradshaw. “The planet’s life support systems are already under strain and, without rapid shifts in how we use energy, land, and food, billions of people will face increasing instability. Our study shows these limits are unfolding right now.”

The region worst affected by the burgeoning crisis – and the likely source of most of the outmigration – is the tropics which, by 2050, will contain over 4.5 billion people including two thirds of the world’s children. Tropical Africa, especially, is at risk, but equally so are South Asia and Central America. The tropics will shed their human populations first – and the wave will break over the temperate regions.

In such a scenario, regions such as Europe will face a floodtide of hundreds of millions of African migrants, who will sweep away the nations of south Europe, displacing their existing populations into the countries to their north. Those who know their history will recall the Moors once ruled Spain – and may well do so again. Indeed, if allowed to build to its full force the main impact of the human tsunami will be to largely eradicate the nation state as the principal mode of self-governance.

The human tsunami undeniably represents the principal security threat to all countries and people going forward – not the petty nationalistic rivalries and military chest-thumping that have disgraced human history hitherto. It arises directly from the heart of the Planetary Emergency.

Many countries will resort to military means before they are overthrown and their armies dissolved. But despite all the fear and angst, the human tsunami is not to be halted or even stemmed by force, or the violent prescriptions invoked by xenophobes. Because their own actions are feeding it.

For example, the USA whilst waging an internal pogrom against “illegal immigration” is also doing all in its power to manufacture more migrants globally. By promoting the burning of fossil fuels, the US generates overpressures that increase the probability of famines, searing heatwaves, sea level rise and acute water shortages. Thus, America’s policy solution to the migrant ‘threat’ is to multiply the number of migrants!

Russia and Saudi Arabia, and others, are also doing their best to exacerbate the global migrant flood by mining oil. China, while still adding greatly to climate disruption through its fossil fuel emissions, seems at the same time to partly grasp the suicidal implications and is taking new steps as the world leader in renewable, green energy, while at the same time encouraging its own population to shrink.

The human tsunami can only be contained by finding ways to keep people happily settled in their own homelands. This will involve:

  1. An accelerated program to deliver family planning to every woman on Earth and so slow population growth.
  2. Urgent worldwide adoption of both renewable food and renewable energy, to overcome hunger, replace fossil fuels and cool the climate as fast as possible.
  3. A global program to put back the forests, grasslands and wetlands ruined by human ‘development’ over the past century and repair the Earth’s life support system everywhere.
  4. Adoption of a circular global economy, especially for key resources such as water and nutrients, but also for building materials, metals, timber, fibre etc.
  5. Redoubling world aid efforts, to assist those regions most likely to collapse to become self-sufficient in food, water and energy.
  6. Agreement to ban all nuclear weapons and scale back world military spending, redirecting resources to food, health, education and environmental repair.

All of these measures are readily affordable – by the simple expedient of cutting the world arms budget of $2.7 trillion by 25-30% or so and re-directing the funds to repair of the planet and its ability to sustain human life. Such a cut was accomplished back in the 1990s, so don’t believe anyone who tells you it can’t be done. One trillion dollars would go a long way towards rescuing a habitable planet and forestalling the human tsunami. That should be the budget.

There are many other scientifically-based methods needed to head off global mass migration and most of them can be found in How to Fix a Broken Planet. However those listed above are among the largest and most pressing.

Inaction, apathy and disinterest will allow the human wave to engulf us all.

Julian Cribb Articles

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