The Most Effective Recent Climate Action

A bit of positive news to lighten your day: We outline some big recent environmental victories you may not have heard of.

• Of course people know Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who became the face of climate action and climate justice and animated people around the globe to join Fridays For Future strikes.
• But while Greta can be credited with having dragged the climate crisis centre stage, what kind of action has actually been taken by those in power to avert climate catastrophe, and is it effective?
• There is the Paris Agreement, a landmark piece of climate action from 2015 that saw, for the first time, almost all the world's nations united in a pledge to slow global warming by cutting emissions.
• Less well known but just as historic is a UN resolution signed by nearly 200 countries in March 2022, giving world leaders until 2024 to agree a treaty on tackling plastic pollution globally.
• The US, responsible for 15% of global carbon dioxide pollution, saw president Joe Biden pledge to halve US emissions and ensure that half of all new vehicles sold in the US are zero-emission by 2030.
• And while the world hopes that polluter No 1 China will honour its pledge to be carbon neutral by 2060, experts think sector-specific action, such as fossil fuel flight bans, may be most impactful.