2024 hottest year on record
The World
PRX
4.6 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The world is on the threshold of failing to reach an important climate goal to stop the global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. It was the most ambitious climate goal in the Paris Agreement, but it's unclear if failure is official, or just imminent. Also, with the devastating fires in Los Angeles still raging, we hear about an interesting fire warning system that was developed by a German company. Also, in Venezuela, the popular leader of the political opposition, Marina Corina Mochado, was detained during an anti-government protest. She was released soon afterward. But she was also reportedly made to appear in several videos. And, more Americans are deciding to retire abroad. How it all works — and what it's meant for one family that now splits its time between Japan and the US.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The devastating wildfires in Los Angeles are part of a global trend, and there's new |
| 0:10.4 | technology designed to sniff out forest fires before they get out of control. |
| 0:14.8 | We want to detect a fire in its infancy before it actually reaches the tree crowns and jumps |
| 0:20.4 | from one tree to the next. |
| 0:22.1 | I'm Carolyn Beeler. And I'm Carol Hills. In other climate news, |
| 0:25.9 | 2023 was the hottest year on record until 2024. We're just smashing that record this year. |
| 0:33.2 | Venezuela sees Nicolas Maduro begin a third term as president, with many fearing a harsh new crackdown. |
| 0:40.0 | And there are various reasons why more Americans are thinking about retiring abroad. |
| 0:45.0 | Here's one. |
| 0:45.9 | In Portugal, if you qualify for residency, the health care is free. |
| 0:49.6 | It's top standard international health care, and it's zero cost. |
| 0:52.9 | Those stories and more on the world. |
| 0:58.6 | It's official, 2024 was the hottest year on record, which means we have now overshot a key |
| 1:05.4 | warming threshold for the first time. Four out of six weather monitoring agencies worldwide reported today that |
| 1:12.2 | the global average temperature last year was more than a degree and a half Celsius warmer than |
| 1:17.2 | in the late 1800s. That's before fossil fuels started to reshape our climate and trigger |
| 1:23.1 | increasingly devastating extreme weather events. Two U.S. government agencies were the only ones to put the figure slightly below that |
| 1:30.8 | 1.5 degree threshold, but all agreed that last year was a record-smashing hot one. |
| 1:36.8 | Corinne La Corre is a climate science expert at the University of East Anglia in the UK. |
| 1:42.0 | She spoke to me this afternoon about the significance of today's |
| 1:44.7 | announcements. This is really a very important threshold that we have just passed here with |
| 1:51.6 | this warming of the planet in 2024. We have seen the temperature of the world rising, |
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