Voice of the Sea Ice: Where to from here for the climate?

Follow Wild Sounds: Voice of the Sea Ice on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts

In 2015, scientist Dr Daniel Price cycled from New Zealand to Paris to raise awareness of the climate crisis, and the impacts it was already having - and would have in future - on people around the world.

The trip was timed to coincide with an important global climate summit: the 21st conference of parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. At that meeting, a famous international agreement was hashed out.

Signed in 2016, it is known as the Paris Agreement.

Our current global agreement

Under the Paris Agreement, the signed-up parties are supposed to work together to keep global warming within 2degC of pre-industrial temperatures.

Scientific evidence and modelling suggest that 2C of warming will result in dramatic changes to Earth's system that could pose large risks to human life. And ideally, the Paris Agreement says, we would keep things within 1.5C - although in 2024 global temperatures breached that for the first time.

Each party puts forward a self-imposed target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - one that's supposed to be ambitious. Developed countries are expected to do more, having built their wealth off the back of burning planet-heating fossil fuels.

There are rules to ensure transparency: parties must submit their plans and policies, and report on how they are doing, so that others can assess their efforts and apply peer pressure if they are not pulling their weight.

All but three countries signed up to the Paris Agreement - but now the US is joining Yemen, Iran and Libya outside the circle, with Donald Trump pulling the country out of the agreement for a second time.

And while the agreement has helped to reduce emissions somewhat, the world is far off its goal of limiting warming to 2C, according to the Climate Action Tracker.

In the decade since his epic bike journey, Price has continued his research in Antarctica, while watching global emissions rise. He's found it hard to keep talking about climate change, and hard to stay hopeful in the face of the apathy and inaction he sees.

"We really need significant political leadership globally to start to redirect the direction that we're heading in. The way politics is going at the moment in parts of the world, it makes that quite tricky to be optimistic about. But it's important to stay optimistic, and the key thing is that the solutions are all already there," he says.

These solutions include renewable sources of energy, and a shift in global finances away from fossil fuels.

Although it might be happening slower than most scientists say is needed, there are signs that momentum is building.

The age of electricity?

The shift is powered in part by the cost of solar panels and batteries falling faster than expected, RNZ's climate correspondent Eloise Gibson says.

In early 2025, a climate think-tank reported that the EU made more electricity from solar than coal in 2024.

New Zealand is getting in on the action too. Solar farms generate 2 percent of the country's power now, but Meridian Energy is predicting that will reach 7-8 percent by 2030.

Money is also driving change: from trade agreements and tariffs - such as the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism - to banks withdrawing from fossil fuel industries that lack plans for a green transition.

Plus, Gibson says, insurance companies are starting to have a big impact. "We're seeing insurance retreat in increasingly fire-prone parts of the US. And those things drive up people's costs and they do create pressure for action, but they also shift the flow of money," she says.

What is New Zealand doing?

New Zealand's gross greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2006, plateaued for a while, and have now been in decline since 2019.

Since 2021, New Zealand's international Paris Agreement target is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent of the 2005 levels by 2030.

Right now, it is projected that we will exceed this 2030 target by 84 million tonnes of emissions. That's more than one full year of New Zealand's gross emissions. This is because our target factors in an overseas component which has yet to be accounted for.

The plan was to achieve part of our pledge by paying another country to take action to reduce their emissions. This idea dates to 2016, when then Prime Minister John Key submitted our original 30 percent target. However, successive governments have failed to make any deals.

We've recently submitted a target of a 51-55 percent reduction in emissions for 2035, with the idea that this would be fully achieved within New Zealand. However, with current policies, we are projected to exceed this target by 9 million tonnes. Critics have called the target not suitably ambitious too.

In her work reporting on climate, Gibson often hears the refrain: "New Zealand is such a small part of the emissions picture, why would we bother?". But alongside 'doing our bit' and putting pressure on other countries, as the finances shift, and the cost of extreme weather events rises, there's a self-interest economic benefit too.

Price would like to see New Zealand step up and be an example. "New Zealand is in a great position with a strong renewable energy economy already. It's a small country, but a small country can show leadership... And show how things can be done."

This series was made with travel support from the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme.

Sign up to the Our Changing World monthly newsletter for episode backstories, science analysis and more.