WRI’s State of Climate Action in 2025
Last week the World Resources Institute (WRI) published their annual State of Climate Action for 2025. They also published this short article of their 10 Key Findings that is worth reading for their key takeaways. While it’s not good news, they do offer hope and recommend actions we need to undertake NOW (actually we should have started a couple of decades ago!)
They still discuss avoiding global heating of less than 1.5ºC of global warming. While that goal seems to me to be an impossibility, they emphasize that every 0.1ºC of warming will result in a worsening climate, and we must keep pushing for immediate and persistent action on all fronts.
For me several key take-aways are: On the positive’ish side:
- Private climate finance increased sharply,
- Relatively new innovations, like green hydrogen, technological carbon dioxide removal and electric trucks, saw some of the most meaningful one-year gains.
- EV sales are still rising.
- Solar and wind keep hitting new milestones.
But on the negative side:
- The world has barely moved the needle on … phasing out coal and halting deforestation.
- Public finance for fossil fuels is still climbing, despite global pledges to phase out subsidies.
- Progress on decarbonizing emissions-intensive steel and cement production is a mixed bag.
So, while there is much to do for a more livable future than our current “business as usual” track, we need to focus on the big picture – and secure a government that supports a future for all generations and not simply more wealth for the already wealthy – and the individual picture as we live more efficiently, cut down on food waste and over consumption, and care about one another. As with protecting our democracy, we can do impressive things if we all pull together.
As always, I welcome your thoughts on this email, WRI’s synopsis article and their 2025 State of Climate Action.
Cheers, Bill
