Sidney Lepkin
Appearances
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
And those new goals, they're going to need to be much more ambitious than the ones that exist already, if there's any hope of keeping warming below 1.5 or even 2 C. And then, of course, there's a really big question mark right now about what the U.S. will do climate-wise. President-elect Trump has said that he'll pull the U.S. back out of the Paris Agreement.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
That's something he did during his first term in office, too. And some of the people that Trump has nominated to run federal agencies are saying that they want to eliminate a lot of the climate-focused programs that have been developed in the last couple years. So we'll all be following these efforts at the federal level to de-emphasize climate action.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
But at the same time, we also expect there to be a lot more action happening at the state and local level, which is really interesting. Thank you.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
Yeah, welcome to the hot world now. This year was just really, really hot, like so hot. One of the hottest and we will soon know if it was the hottest year ever.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
The numbers aren't officially out yet, but the overall global temperature increase this year compared to the pre-industrial period back before we started burning tons of fossil fuels, it's probably going to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And it's important to know that one single year around that temperature level, that doesn't mean that we've crossed some threshold.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
And that's because there's still a lot of variation year to year in temperatures because of things other than climate change. But scientists look at the long-term averages in order to assess total warming. And so officially, we probably won't be past 1.5 for at least another couple of years. But getting close to that major limit, that's not a great sign.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
And that's especially because there's just still not nearly enough climate action happening to slow down further warming.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
That's basically what we're looking at. But also, like I said at the beginning, the number two Google search of the year was excessive heat. And that, to me, says that people are at least paying attention. And maybe because of stuff like that, we've actually seen some policy action to deal with heat here in the U.S.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
Hello. And yeah, the number two Google search of the year was excessive heat. And so it's great that people are aware, but it is less great that so many people have had to live through record-breaking heat.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
There are a few states and cities that have passed heat rules protecting workers this year. And drumroll, the Biden administration proposed a national heat standard for workers, basically a rule that would require employers to protect workers when it's really hot outside. That idea, it's been bopping around as like since the 1970s. So it's a pretty big deal that it moved forward at all.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
Yeah, that's definitely a big thing for 2025. Like you said, next year's annual climate conferences, the COPs, it's going to be a big one. And countries are coming up with new plans for how to cut emissions right now that they'll be rolling out in the next couple of months.