TEST OF SURVIVAL

GENERATION ALPHA INHERITS A WORLD IRREVOCABLY WARMER BY 1.5°C

- ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY, AKSHIT SANGOMLA, KIRAN PANDEY AND RAJIT SENGUPTA

FOR THE first generation of the 21st century-Generation Alpha-it is an inheritance of profound loss. For their predecessors, climate change was an unfolding planetary emergency. But Generation Alpha-which will comprise an estimated 2 billion people by 2025, making it the largest generation in history is enduring a climatologically changed, warmer planet.

The year 2024 may be the point that divides the pre- and post-climate change eras. In mid-November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) stated with certainty that 2024 would be the hottest year since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900), and the first to cross the warming threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. "This marks a new milestone in global temperature," says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, which has analysed temperature trends of the first 10 months of 2024.