Signs of alarm—and reasons to hope—for the environment in 2023

Environment2023 in Review

Climate change is rapidly reshaping life on Earth—but our efforts to combat it also reached important milestones this year.

ByKieran Mulvaney

Published December 15, 2023

• 6 min read

Increasing temperatures, a melting Arctic, cataclysmic Canadian wildfires: in 2023, the effects of climate change and environmental threats to wildlife set records.

But not all the environmental milestones of 2023 were negative. Amid these causes for concern were signs of hope.

A trend away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy continues apace, even if not at quite the rate of change that many would like to see. While some species were declared extinct, other showed themselves for the first time in decades. And the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act highlighted that some species that had seemed destined to disappear are now, relatively speaking, thriving.

Both the good and the bad, here are six environmental milestones from the past year.

Temperatures kept climbing

With just two weeks remaining, 2023 appears destined to be the warmest year on record, with average temperatures approximately 2.5°F higher than they were before the industrial revolution. This year, we saw the hottest July, August, September, and October on record. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and July 4 was the warmest single day ever documented—possibly one of the warmest days in the past 125,000 years.

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, the primary driver behind such temperature increases, also reached a new high in 2023, having increased by 1.1 percent since 2022.

This extreme heat has also been fueled by a strong El Niño event, which emerged this past spring in the Northern Hemisphere and developed rapidly during summer. According to the World Meteorological Organization, this weather pattern will likely lead to even higher temperatures in 2024.

Fire damage spreads

In a year that saw a succession of extreme weather events, few stood out more than the wildfires that swept across swaths of Canada and polluted the skies over much of the United States. A record 45.7 million acres burned across the country in 2023, almost three times the previous record amount and an area approximately twice as large as Portugal.

(Orange skies are the future. Prepare yourself.)

According to a study by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Canada’s wildfires emitted 410 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, roughly the equivalent of Mexico’s emissions in 2021 and not far off the 546 million metric tons that Canada itself emitted as a result of human activity in 2022.

The Arctic and Antarctic sweltered and melted

Earth’s most northerly region continues to warm four times faster than the rest of the planet.

In December, NOAA published its annual Arctic Report Card, which found that 2023 was the warmest year ever recorded in the region.

In Greenland, temperatures at Summit Station, high on the ice sheet, temporarily nudged above freezing on June 26—temperatures only seen five times in the past 34 years.

At the other end of the Earth, sea ice dwindled to a record low.

For several years, Antarctic sea ice—which melts almost entirely each summer—had been stable, despite the warming ocean below it. Researchers have offered a number of explanations for this persistence but predicted that there would one day come a time when Antarctic sea ice would begin to retreat. That time is now.

The maximum extent of Antarctic sea ice for the year was the lowest ever recorded: 6.55 million square miles, almost 400,000 square miles below the previous low, and a cause for concern for the Antarctic wildlife such as penguins and seals, for which sea ice is a vital habitat.

Renewables are on the rise

The COP28 climate change conference concluded in December with a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

That would almost certainly require more investment in the industry, but there’s reason to believe that investment is possible. The use of renewables has already reached new records in 2023.

The International Energy Authority stated in July that global renewable energy capacity will increase by 440 gigawatts over the course of 2023, 107 gigawatts greater than the growth in 2022. Two-thirds of that increase is driven by a growth in solar cell capacity, the IEA added.

According to a report published earlier this year by energy think tank Ember, wind and solar together provided 14.3 percent of global electricity in the first half of 2023, compared to 12.8 percent in 2022. Fifty countries set monthly records for solar generation in that same period, although energy generation from hydropower declined slightly, due largely to droughts in China.

Electric vehicles are gaining traction

The clean energy revolution is spreading to personal transportation. While sales were lower than what automakers and the federal government had hoped for, the number of EVs on the road had a notable increase in the U.S. and abroad.

Global sales of common types of electric vehicles rose 20 percent this year, according to one study. Sales increased by 43 percent in the United States and Canada, and 25 percent in China.

According to the BloombergNEF Zero Emission Vehicles Handbook, forecasts for the number of battery electric vehicles on the road by 2030 have risen 26 percent compared to 2022, with all zero-emission vehicles combined estimated to account for as much as 75 percent of global passenger vehicle sales in 2040.

This increase is primarily driven by China, where more than 25 percent of new passenger vehicle sales are electric vehicles.

Species went extinct while others were rediscovered

In May, a study of 71,000 animal species found that 48 percent are experiencing declines, 49 percent remain stable, and just three percent are seeing an increase in the size of their populations. That same study concluded that one-third of animal species that are not presently considered at-risk are nonetheless declining in numbers that threaten their long-term survival.

The U.S. government removed 21 species from the endangered species list because they are now considered extinct, including the Little Mariana fruit bat, the Bachman’s warbler, and several species of birds, mussels, and fish. However, as the Endangered Species Act reached its 50th anniversary, the continued survival of several species— including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and American alligators— is testament to what can be achieved when conservation measures are taken.

And some species, previously considered extinct, were rediscovered in 2023, including a “golden mole that swims through sand,” last seen in 1937, and a species of echidna named after Sir David Attenborough and described as having “the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the feet of a mole.

It resurfaced in Indonesia after more than 60 years.

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