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Countries committed under the Paris Agreement to a broad goal of limiting global temperature rise to under 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), ideally 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it clear that half a degree of warming makes a huge difference, and 1.5 degrees C is the safer target.

The key global goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius is already beyond reach as negotiators begin planning a 2015 climate treaty, experts say. "There is nothing that can be agreed in 2015 that would be consistent with the 2 degrees," said former United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer. "The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy

NASA found that 2016 was 1.78 degrees warmer than the mid-20th century average, while NOAA found 2016 was 1.69 degrees warmer than the 20th century average. The agencies use those pre-industrial periods as a set point for measuring climate change.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

The Paris climate agreement will likely be ratified on Earth Day, when it will be signed by more than 130 nations, the UN said on Friday. Only 55 signatures are needed to ratify the document. If approved, the climate accord is expected to encourage countries to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately holding global warming to an increase of no more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, through the next two decades.

One good place to start when deciding which program to look into is the comprehensive list of sustainability-focused masters programs from The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. It includes some 450 programs that offer training in sustainability, providing an excellent portal to get started. The list is also helpful for those looking to drill deeper into specific fields of sustainable study, with programs that hone in on design, entrepreneurship, policy, sustainable agriculture and more.

The Science Based Targets initiative announced that 155 companies are now participating in its program to establish emissions goals in line with what scientists say is necessary to keep global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius threshold.

Corporations interested in sustainability have become a major driver in the renewable energy industry, said experts at the North American Energy Markets Association meeting in Florida last month. "There is about 15 GW of latent demand for renewables that wants to be built by 2020 in order to meet the targets of Fortune 500 companies that have committed to some degree of renewable energy in their supply portfolios," said Invenergy Vice President of Sales and Marketing Craig Gordon. 3M, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft are among the companies seeking power purchase agreements with renewables in the US.

Oslo, Norway has a much more ambitious plan than most when it comes to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The city plans to cut its emissions in half compared to 1990 levels, in only four years - faster than any city or country has made changes in the past. At the same time, if we want to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, it's the pace we need.

ust 18 months after its launch, the Science Based Targets initiative announced that 200 companies have committed to set emissions reduction targets consistent with the global effort to keep temperatures well below the 2-degree threshold. In the past year, the initiative has seen a growth rate of over 2 companies per week committing to set science-based targets, far exceeding the project's timeline and signaling that climate action has gained tremendous momentum in the private sector.

Warming ocean waters are bleaching the world's corals to an unprecedented degree and could destroy huge swaths of coral reefs in areas ranging from Australia to Africa. "This is a huge, looming planetary crisis, and we are sticking our heads in the sand about it," says Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland in Australia.

The International Energy Agency estimates that to stay within 2 degrees Celsius of atmospheric warming, the global economy will have to avert emitting the carbon from roughly 80 percent of world's proven reserves of fossil fuels. This is called unburnable carbon.

2015 was Earth's hottest year on record, according to new data released Wednesday by NOAA and NASA. For the last 12 months the  average surface temperature across the globe was 58.47 Fahrenheit, a 0.23-degree increase from 2014's record-breaking average temperature of 58.24, the two agencies reported.

Corporate sustainability reporting desperately needs to up its game in order to align company-level sustainability performance with the broader systems-level ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and COP21, the UN climate change conference, according to a new report from the UNEP. For example, while 95% of the 108 companies researched in the report disclose their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, only a mere 8% set GHG emissions reduction goals in the context of the science-based target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius - the central goal of COP21.

While so much of our lives have veered toward the digital, many organizations' operations still rely to some degree on paper. Innovative solutions to help minimize the impact of continued paper use include print-optimization technologies and more "sustainable" fonts. Now, Seiko Epson Corporation has developed what it believes to be the world's first compact office paper-making system capable of producing new paper from securely shredded waste paper with minimal use of water.

While so much of our lives have veered toward the digital, many organizations' operations still rely to some degree on paper. Innovative solutions to help minimize the impact of continued paper use include print-optimization technologies and even more "sustainable" fonts.

Consulting firm Ecofys entered a 3-year partnership with advocacy initiative The Generation Foundation to address the challenges of carbon pricing and identify the role of carbon pricing in achieving the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

Warming ocean waters are bleaching the world's corals to an unprecedented degree and could destroy huge swaths of coral reefs in areas ranging from Australia to Africa. "This is a huge, looming planetary crisis, and we are sticking our heads in the sand about it," says Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland in Australia.

The Mission 2020 campaign defines six milestones -in energy, transport, land use, industry, infrastructure and finance - that give governments and industries a clear roadmap to put us on a path towards achieving 1.5 degrees C. In a working paper published today, WRI found progress in some areas, but we'll need faster action in order to achieve the 2020 turning point.