Vision 2050
Twenty-five years from now, the decisions made today — in labs, legislatures, and boardrooms — will have already locked in a trajectory. Here is the trajectory I want us to choose.
Much of what I follow comes from Simon Clark — an independent climate researcher with a PhD in atmospheric physics from the University of Exeter, and one of the most rigorous science communicators on YouTube. He translates dense climate science into something genuinely understandable without dumbing it down. His newsletter is at simonoxfphys.com/newsletter.
In particular, I recommend his documentary, Global Warming: The Decade We Lost Earth →
The world is changing faster than its politics can keep up. In India, heat waves have become annual events, with temperatures crossing 48°C across multiple states. A 2026 peer-reviewed study found that extreme heat kills 3,400 people every single day in India — a figure that dwarfs what the government officially counts.1 At the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca in June 2024, temperatures inside the Great Mosque reached 51.8°C, a record high. At least 1,301 pilgrims died. In a single day, over 2,764 heat stroke cases were recorded.2 And it is not just the extremes — by 2026, average spring temperatures in Mecca were approaching what used to be typical summer highs in the 1970s and 1980s. The seasons themselves are shifting.
Europe is no different. In the summer of 2024, an estimated 62,700 people died from heat. In 2023, 47,000. Across three summers, over 181,000 heat-related deaths on one continent alone. The WHO puts Europe's annual toll at more than 175,000. And the numbers are rising.3
2024 was the warmest year on record, at 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels — the first calendar year to breach the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold. The chart below tracks 144 years of surface temperature anomaly. 2023 and 2024 stand apart from everything that came before.4, 5
Source: NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4) & NOAA, via Our World in Data.5 We have already crossed 1.5°C. At the current trajectory, 2°C is within reach before mid-century.
The timeline is compressing. It took 65 years after industrialisation to warm the planet by 0.5°C. The next 0.5°C took just 28 years. In October 2025, the German Physics Society and the German Meteorological Society issued a rare joint warning: a 3°C rise by 2050 can no longer be ruled out. Not by end of century. By 2050. Their scientists point to two consecutive years of ocean temperature spikes. Oceans have long absorbed the worst of our emissions, but as they lose this capacity, atmospheric temperatures could climb faster than any current model predicts.6 This statement has not been fully peer-reviewed, and the authors frame it carefully as a risk, not a certainty. But when established scientific institutions feel the need to sound an alarm like this, we should listen.
Fossil fuels are not just an environmental problem. They are a system designed to perpetuate itself. ExxonMobil's own scientists understood the mechanics of climate change in the 1960s, and the company spent the following decades funding denial and delay. The damage done to global climate policy was not incidental. It was deliberate.
And it is not just heat. In October 2025, the Global Tipping Points Report confirmed that warm-water coral reefs have crossed their first major climate tipping point. At 1.4°C above pre-industrial temperatures, reefs have passed the threshold from which recovery is near-impossible. The Great Barrier Reef recorded its largest ever annual decline in coral cover in 2025.7 But this is not the most catastrophic tipping point scientists warn about. That distinction belongs to Arctic permafrost. A large-scale thaw would release methane and CO₂ locked away for millennia, setting off a feedback loop no human effort could stop. The coral reefs are the warning shot.
And yet countries are still tempted to, and actively try to, prioritise economic growth over conservation, ecology, biodiversity, and climate action. New Zealand's Conservation Amendment Bill 2026, currently before Parliament, risks opening over 60% of the country's public conservation land to sale or exchange for development. Forest & Bird has called it the largest threat to conservation land in New Zealand's history.10 This is one country, one bill — but it reflects a pattern seen across the world, where short-term economic pressures override long-term ecological ones, even as the cost of inaction compounds year by year.
And yet the dominant response has remained adaptation: sea walls, cooling centres, drought insurance, disaster relief, and carbon capture. This is the wrong answer — not just morally, but economically. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report is clear: the economic benefit of limiting warming to 2°C outweighs the cost of mitigation.8 The Global Commission on Adaptation put a number to it: $1.8 trillion invested in climate resilience between 2020 and 2030 would generate $7.1 trillion in net benefits, a return of nearly four to one.9 And the clean energy itself is no longer expensive. Solar PV is 41% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel option. Onshore wind, 53% cheaper. Lazard confirms renewables have been the cheapest new-build power source for ten years running. The transition is not a sacrifice. It is simply the better deal. Why would we spend money bracing for impact when we can prevent the collision altogether?
Content in progress — research ongoing.
Content in progress — research ongoing.
Content in progress — research ongoing.
Content in progress — research ongoing.
The communities most exposed to climate change — coastal cities in South and Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, small island states — are among those least responsible for causing it. A just 2050 is one where the burden of transition falls on those with the greatest capacity to bear it, and the benefits of clean technology reach those who need them first.
That is the world I am trying to help build. Not by saving it in some grand gesture, but by doing the engineering work — sensor by sensor, system by system, proposal by proposal — that makes the better version incrementally more real.