Six Climate Breakthroughs That Made 2022 a Step Toward Net Zero

The damage caused by climate change over this past year was at times so immense it was hard to comprehend. In Pakistan alone, extreme summer flooding killed thousands, displaced millions and caused over $40 billion in losses. Fall floods in Nigeria killed hundreds and displaced over 1 million people. Droughts in Europe, China and the US dried out once-unstoppable rivers and slowed the flows of commerce on major arteries like the Mississippi and the Rhine.

In the face of these extremes, the human response was uneven at best. Consumption of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, rebounded in 2022. Countries like the UK and ...