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In 2025, American climatologist James Hansen and a team of research colleagues declared the goal to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius was no longer viable. That goal, part of a pledge negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France, aimed to combat climate change by keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But a team of researchers that included Hansen, a professor at Columbia University, insisted that rising global energy use has made the goal impossible to achieve. Authors behind the study, which was published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, also predicted that accelerated global heating will increase ice melting in the Arctic, a development that could make sea level rise of several meters inevitable.