In a year where we saw record-breaking heat, accelerating emissions, and climate impacts arrive faster and harder than even scientists expected, the gap between political rhetoric and physical reality became impossible to ignore. 2025 has made one thing painfully clear: that accelerating warming, tipping risks and policy failure are now colliding at once.
In our latest article, Climate Hot Takes, David Spratt reviews a confronting year and cuts through denial and delay to examine what the science actually tells us about where we now stand. He outlines how global emissions and atmospheric CO? continue to rise, how the 1.5°C threshold has effectively been crossed far earlier than expected under the Paris Agreement, and why the idea of a gentle “overshoot” followed by recovery is increasingly at odds with the evidence.
The article also explores one of the most alarming developments of the year: new research showing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation may be far closer to collapse than previously believed, with devastating implications for Europe, Africa, and the global climate system. Alongside this, the review examines how weakening carbon sinks, approaching tipping points, and the ongoing political protection of fossil fuels are pushing us toward a world of 3°C or more of warming — a level that leading scientists now openly describe as incompatible with a civil, organised society..
Finally, Climate Hot Takes looks at how these realities are reshaping once-taboo conversations about restorative responses, climate cooling and Arctic repair even as Australia’s political debate remains dangerously disconnected from the degree of impacts and risk.
If you want a clear-eyed assessment of the year we’ve just lived through — and what is at stake in the years ahead — we encourage you to read and share this article.
Read more » Climate Hot Takes by David Spratt
