’Tis the season for year in reviews and unless an asteroid hits us in the next few weeks, 2023 will be the hottest year on record.

The record year isn’t surprising in itself, at least to anyone who understands climate change. It’s the surge above all previous extremes that’s horrifying.

The record is exactly what we’d expect — if you’re climbing, you keep getting higher. It would be surprising if we didn’t keep setting records.

The shock is the huge leap above previous records and the new trajectory in the second half of 2023. This year, we’ll cross the finish line just shy of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. An alarming figure but even more disturbing because 2023 didn’t come out of the blocks this way. The past six months have accelerated away from the pack so dramatically that they’ve lifted the yearly average up near that talismanic temperature. If this new trajectory continues, we can expect the 12-month running average to exceed 1.5 C.

“Barring an asteroid hitting in the final three weeks of 2023,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, it’s now safe to say “2023 is the warmest year in human history.”

This year had six record-breaking months and two record-breaking seasons (summer and fall). And you can see very clearly how 2023 peeled away from our climate history in the second half of the year.

You can also clearly make out the spike for two days above two degrees last month.

So, it's a year for the record books but the record isn’t likely to stand for long.

“As long as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising, we can’t expect different outcomes from those seen this year,” says Carlo Buontempo, the director of Copernicus. “The temperature will keep rising and so will the impacts of heat waves and droughts,”

We should maybe take a deep breath at this point. Because you probably know these seemingly small temperature figures have enormous implications. To take just one example, the best science we’ve mustered shows a sustained 1.5 C rise means the destruction of 75 per cent of coral reefs. Over 90 per cent are killed above 2 C. The implications for heat waves, ice sheet loss and human suffering barely bear thinking about.

It’s worth emphasizing that we cannot know if the current trajectory will continue or subside back to ordinary climate breakdown. Highly esteemed scientists like James Hansen think climate change is accelerating and he has declared the goal of 1.5 “deader than a doornail.” This week, Hansen and colleagues wrote that “even the 2 C goal is dead if policy is limited to emission reductions and plausible CO2 removal.” Hansen is not alone in this view but other scientists still see a possible pathway if we make steep cuts in fossil fuels.

Problem is, steep cuts are looking very far-fetched as each attempt gets obstructed by politicians and industry. And the public has very little context for why the efforts are such a BFD in the first place — almost nowhere will you find the debate contextualized with the kind of facts and measurements Copernicus has laid out.

Instead, the fights over climate policy are presented as exciting political battles in the race to the next election. Without context, reining in fossil fuels comes off as something optional or something we could do later. Deploying cleaner alternatives is presented to the public as if it were mostly about competing for a lucrative new market, not a race against impacts many cannot survive.

Climate policy without a climate context

I suppose there’s some consolation in the fact climate policies have become so central in the political fray. But it’s astonishing how rarely debates over climate policy make any mention of the climate itself. From Parliament to Dubai, the measures to cut carbon are debated as if that carbon wasn’t forcing us onto a terrifying trajectory.

Pierre Poilievre is threatening to bog down Parliament with “thousands” of procedural motions and stop the House from taking a winter break unless there’s a new carbon tax carveout for farm fuel to dry grain (most on-farm fuels are already exempt). Not a mention anywhere that temperatures are rising faster across the planet than Poilievre is raising them in the House of Commons.

Over in Dubai, the president of the international climate talks managed to invert the situation entirely, claiming there is “no science” behind demands for phasing out fossil fuels. Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber — who is also the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — got in a testy, mansplainy exchange with the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, even badgering her with the old denier canard about taking “the world back into caves.”

At least at the UN summit, the climate context isn’t quite as absent as domestic politics. Al-Jaber has been backpedalling after many hundreds of climate scientists quickly forwarded the precise citations on the need for a rapid phaseout. “The phasedown and the phaseout of fossil fuels … is essential,” Al-Jaber conceded at a hastily convened press conference. “It needs to be orderly, fair, just and responsible.” That sounds reasonable enough until you consider his company’s plans for fossil fuel expansion, in which case, the translation becomes “something we can do later.”

The feds have been announcing new measures at COP28. Most notably, draft regulations for 75 per cent cuts in fugitive methane and a new “framework” for an oil and gas emissions cap.

Both are generally in line with public pledges already made by the oil and gas industry. And you’ll notice one is a “draft” and one is … whatever you call whatever comes before a draft.

Neither come anywhere near the requirement for “fundamental changes to … political and economic systems” laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Nevertheless, both are virulently opposed by premiers like Danielle Smith and Scott Moe who threaten constitutional mayhem and predict dire economic impacts. Nothing about caves from the premiers, although Smith hasn’t shied from “freeze in the dark.”

The premiers are then amplified by the likes of Jordan Peterson to his millions of followers — “Up yours, you scumrat Steven Guilbeault,” Peterson posted in response to the emissions cap. “Get ’em, Danielle.” and “Don’t let those bloody appalling incompetent federal propagandist (sic) push the West around.”

Dispatches from Dubai

John Woodside is our guy in Dubai, reporting on the two-week summit where fossil fuel lobbyists have infiltrated the UN climate talks in record numbers — at least 2,400 of them.

Canada has been tapped by the United Arab Emirates to help land a final deal for COP28. In an interview with Canada’s National Observer, Steven Guilbeault confirmed he and seven other middle powers have been asked by summit president Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber to find “landing zones” so that countries can agree, for the first time, to signal the end of the era for fossil fuels.

Quebec was promoted to the leadership team of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), joining Costa Rica and Denmark as co-chairs. “I don't like hearing about phasing down [fossil fuels],” said Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette. “It's not enough. Phasing out is the real [goal] we need to reach.”

Meanwhile, the Prairie provinces are flogging oil and gas. Former environment and climate change minister Catherine McKenna told Canada’s National Observer it’s “completely bonkers” to come to a climate summit to push oil and gas extraction. (We’ll circle back with a more humorous take on the pitch by Prairie premiers at the end of the newsletter.)

It’s worth delving into the details on the new framework for an emissions cap on oil and gas, and what happens next. Not only will it be a major flashpoint in Canadian politics, “no such policy exists anywhere else in the world, let alone for a major fossil fuel producing country.”

Beyond the formal negotiations in Dubai, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance gained new members: Spain, Samoa, Kenya and Colombia.

And 12 countries have now endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative alongside the World Health Organization, the European Parliament and over 100 subnational governments.

Colombia’s endorsement is particularly important because the country is heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction but its president committed to reorient away from such “poisons.”

“Between fossil capital and life, we choose the side of life,” declared Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro.