Climate Action
5 Climate Change Facts to Scare You Into Action This Halloween
October 31, 2025
It’s Halloween, which means costumes, candy, and scary movies. Fear turns to fun on October 31 because Halloween lets us seek scary thrills that can’t hurt us. When we feel like threats are closing in on us and things are getting truly scary, we just turn off the TV and turn on the lights. But there is one terror that we can’t escape, no matter the time of year.
We’re talking about climate change! Here are five of the scariest, most bone-chilling facts about climate change to get you in the mood for terror this season (and hopefully also scare you and your fellow trick-or-treaters into action to address it).
1. Within the next 2 decades, global temperatures are likely to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
In its highly-anticipated Sixth Report in 2021, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that a certain amount of global warming is locked in and is irreversible. They reported that from 2011–2020, the global temperature had already reached 1.1 degrees Celsius above 1850-1900 levels.
In 2024, global temperatures rose above 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time, and if this trend persists, we will have failed to reach our climate goals established under the Paris Agreement. As climate change becomes more severe, it is predicted to increase the frequency of “fire weather”, kill 70-90% of coral reefs at 1.5 degrees Celsius warming, and raise our sea levels globally by .3 meters above 2000s level.
Scientists estimate that we are on track to reach the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold by 2030 and reach the “tipping point” for climate change. Although the 1.5 degree threshold is considered by the signatories of the Paris Agreement as an acceptable level of global warming, every “extra bit of warming increases the severity of many weather extremes, ice melt and sea-level rise.” Yet, little has changed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s like the movie Don’t Look Up; we know what’s happening but we aren’t doing enough to change the outcome.
In 2019, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels and industry reached a high of 36.44 billion metric tons. In 2020, emissions from fossil fuels and industry fell by 5.8 percent due to COVID-19 and the resulting economic crisis. Despite that year’s reverse trend, however, 2022 emissions were back up to 36.8 billion metric tons. In the latest estimates from 2024, fossil fuel and industry emissions reached a new record high of 37.41 billion metric tons of CO2.
We need to change policy and approaches in light of the latest evidence about the state of the climate system. Time is no longer on our side.
Professor Piers Forster, University of Leeds
Four years later, Professor Forster’s eerie words still hold true.
2. The last 7 years have been the warmest on record
In 2023, NASA announced that the summer of 2023 was the hottest summer on record globally, surpassing the intense heat experienced in 2016. One year later, 2024 is confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as the hottest year on record.
Climate history is playing out before our eyes. We’ve had not just one or two record-breaking years, but a full ten-year series. This has been accompanied by devastating and extreme weather, rising sea levels and melting ice, all powered by record-breaking greenhouse gas levels due to human activities.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo stated in 2024
And not only is food security severely at risk because of climate change, but our human security is as well. With temperatures rising due to climate change comes the risk of heat stress, the leading cause of weather-related deaths.
As we enter the spooky season, the Washington Post reports that it will be an unseasonably hot one in the US. As a marine heatwave amplified by long-term global warming sweeps across the US, we are likely to experience temperatures above seasonal averages, with the Ohio Valley, Appalachians and Northeast predicted to experience 10 to 20 degree deviations.
“Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important — the important things are long-term trends,” said Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Director Gavin Schmidt. The current long-term trend is that each year is getting hotter and hotter.
Are you scared for our future, yet? Well get ready, because it’s going to get even scarier.
3. Our extinction rate is currently estimated to be 1,000-10,000 times the natural rate.
Imagine dressing up as a frog for Halloween and having to explain to younger generations what a frog was and why it’s gone. Currently it is estimated that 41% of all amphibians species are at risk of extinction due to climate change — so this could be a reality if we don’t act soon.
Extinction is a natural phenomenon, claiming about five species per year. But some experts suggest we’re in the midst of the sixth mass extinction — one that is caused mostly by human activity.
According to a 2023 report, 48% of species are declining and on their way to extinction. It also revealed that the 33% of species listed as non-threatened by the IUCN Red-List are actually decreasing. By mid-century, over one third of the total species found on Earth are predicted to disappear because our extinction rate is currently 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural rate. In 2024, 21 species were declared extinct by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which tragically included the beloved Bachman’s Warbler.
Allowing this to continue is “a crime equivalent to tossing books from the Library of Alexandria thoughtlessly into a fire, erasing the shared inheritance of all mankind,” according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Science in a review from 2009.
Species diversity is crucial for ecosystem resilience, and without it, ecological communities will not have the strength to withstand change — especially not the change we’re throwing at them.
4. Climate change is already happening, and it’s detrimental to human life, too
The impacts to human health are much scarier than any child-eating clown movie.
Rising temperatures — coupled with cities that lack the capacity to minimize the accumulation and generation of urban heat and the increasing population of elderly — have increased heat-related deaths, according to an article published in 2024 by the World Health Organization.
A 2018 report concluded that the lack of adaptive capacities and effort toward reducing emissions threatens human lives and the national health systems people rely on, by pushing services to their limit and disrupting core infrastructure. Vulnerable communities are already being hit first and worst.
But hyperthermia is not the only risk climate change brings to human life. Pollution worsens air quality, and as of 2021, has been reported to be responsible for 1 in 8 deaths worldwide. This makes air pollution the second leading risk factor for death worldwide.
A warming world also increases the intensity of natural disasters.
According to NASA, extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled worldwide. This year, California saw one of the most destructive wildfires in US history in terms of loss of life, structural damages, and acres lost. In 2024, an intense wildfire in Chile killed 136 people, making it the deadliest disaster in the country since the 2010 earthquake and tsunami. Not only are the fires themselves deadly, but the smoke they produce is as well. As of this year, smoke from wildfires in Canada and the American West are predicted to cause more than 40,000 premature deaths per year. This is more than all the fatalities from car crashes in 2024.
Hurricanes are reaching new extremes, too. According to scientists, 84% of Atlantic hurricanes between 2018 and 2023 were, on average, 18 mph stronger because of climate change. It has become immensely more difficult to escape these storms unscathed, and it will only get harder in the future.
Have you noticed that the Halloween season doesn’t feel the same either? If we can’t wear a full costume without sweating then something is wrong, right?
That’s because climate change is shifting the seasons. Over the past five decades, the vegetation season has become lengthened by an average of one month. This means that spring arrives earlier, while fall is delayed. This not only affects Halloween, but it might affect your Christmas plans too! Because of this change in seasons, many popular ski destinations around the world are forced to make their own artificial snow to stay open.
This change in season not only makes dressing up in a full-body werewolf costume uncomfortable but also disrupts the natural interactions between species, their habitats, and their migration patterns.
BOO!
5. Many leaders still aren’t taking it seriously.
The world has been aware of climate change at least since the IPCC formed in 1988. Scientists and the public rallied around environmental policy, but many global governments had a different idea.
They were going to ignore it.
Countries contributing the most to global emissions have the best chance of curbing climate change, but leaders are doing little to address it.
Although it has been seven years since the Paris Agreement entered into force, none of the world’s major economies are on track to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
To outline steps to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience to climate change, parties submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years. February 10 was the deadline to submit updated NDCs, however, some countries failed to submit theirs, including many of the world’s major polluters. Although the US submitted their NDCs, they have since withdrawn from the Paris Climate agreement. Climate literacy is among the climate goals that have missed the mark. Climate literacy (as supported by an integrated K-12 curricula) is needed to prepare youth with an understanding of the climate crisis and skills to create solutions, yet not one country has thoroughly addressed it within its NDC.
Everyone may die at the end of horror movies, but we don’t have to.
We’re not in a Hollywood studio, helplessly in the hands of sadistic screenwriters. We can actively choose to change the ending of our story — and for that we should feel hopeful.
In 2019, younger generations took matters into their own hands and started striking for the climate. They skipped school completely to plead for an end to inaction toward climate change and demanding world leaders to undertake environmental reforms. A 2021 study revealed that 83% of people aged 16-25 feel that we have failed to take care of our planet and concluded that it is vital for governments to take “urgent” action against climate change. In June of this year, UNICEF described this eco-anxiety as “an emergent mental health problem.”
The next UN Conference of Parties (COP30) will be held this November. In this international meeting of heads of state and governments and stakeholders, countries will have an opportunity to heighten their ambition on climate change.
This is the critical decade for climate change. Decisions made now will have an impact on how much temperatures will rise and the degree and severity of impacts we will see as a result.
Professor Piers Forster
After decades of inaction on climate change, we don’t have any more time to spare before it’s too late. Join the movement and add your voice to this urgent call for change. You can sign the Global Plastics Treaty petition, and spread the word to your friends! Or, you can donate to our Canopy Project, which organizes tree plantings all over the world, and take the effort not to buy clothes that promote Fast Fashion.
This Halloween we must face our fears. The human-made monster that is climate change won’t go anywhere if you just close your eyes or turn off the TV. Action and advocacy are the only way to flip the script — and not wind up like your favorite victim at the end of the horror film.
