Earth Day: Pledges Met and Lapsed – An AiTimeline Review

The first Earth Day, on 22 April 1970, was a protest. What made it matter was what came next. The US Environmental Protection Agency opened on 2 December 1970, and on 31 December President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act of 1970, which set national air quality standards and deadlines for meeting them. The Clean Water Act followed in 1972.

Fifty-four years later, the EPA’s own trend data shows combined emissions of the six common air pollutants (particles, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide and lead) down 79% between 1970 and 2024, while the US economy grew 338%. That is the answer to the claim that pollution rules must wreck growth. It was not automatic: it took law, standards, monitoring, enforcement, new technology and investment, in that order.

The ozone story is even cleaner. British scientists reported the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985. Two years later, on 16 September 1987, countries adopted the Montreal Protocol. It named the chemicals (CFCs, halons and others), set dates to cut them, created a fund to pay poorer countries to switch, and was tightened again and again as the science improved. In 2009 it became the first UN treaty ratified by every country.

The 2023 scientific assessment backed by UNEP, WMO, NASA, NOAA and the EU projects the ozone layer returning to 1980 values by about 2040 for most of the world, 2045 over the Arctic and 2066 over Antarctica. The 2025 Antarctic hole was the fifth-smallest since 1992. The 2026 hole opened larger than average, but Copernicus put that down to a cold stratosphere, with other measures close to normal. Because CFCs are also greenhouse gases, the phase-out avoided an estimated 135 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent between 1990 and 2010. The 2016 Kigali Amendment now phases down HFCs, the replacements that turned out to warm the climate.

Climate was always going to be harder than ozone. At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, countries signed the UN climate convention, but carbon dioxide comes from almost every part of the economy, not from a short list of chemicals with ready replacements.

The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was the first attempt at binding targets: industrialised countries would cut emissions to an average of 5% below 1990 levels in 2008-2012. On its own terms it largely worked, since the 36 countries that took part fully complied, some by buying reductions abroad. But the United States signed and never ratified, Canada announced its withdrawal in 2011, and China, India and other growing economies had no binding cuts. Global emissions kept rising.

The Paris Agreement of December 2015 turned the model around. Every country writes its own pledge, a Nationally Determined Contribution, and is expected to strengthen it every five years. The collective goal is to hold warming well below 2°C and pursue 1.5°C.

A decade later, UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025, titled “Off Target”, measures how far apart the promises and the path are. If every NDC is fully delivered, warming this century is projected at 2.3-2.5°C. On current policies it is about 2.8°C. Global emissions rose 2.3% in 2024 to a record 57.7 billion tonnes. To stay on a 1.5°C path, emissions in 2035 would need to be about 55% below 2019 levels; for 2°C, about 35% lower. By 30 September 2025, only 60 parties, covering 63% of emissions, had filed their 2035 targets.

2024 was the first calendar year more than 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial times, at about 1.55°C; the WMO puts 2023-2025 at 1.48°C on average. A single hot year is not a breach of the Paris goal, which is about long-term warming, but it shows how little margin is left. Then the world’s second-largest emitter left: the US exit from Paris took effect on 27 January 2026, and in February the EPA rescinded the 2009 “endangerment finding” that underpins US vehicle climate rules. Both are being fought in court and in politics. The verdict here is on the collective path, not on any one country.

At COP26 in November 2021, leaders promised to halt deforestation by 2030 and, through the Global Methane Pledge, to cut methane 30% from 2020 levels. The 2025 Forest Declaration Assessment found 8.1 million hectares of forest lost in 2024, when the path to zero allowed about 5 million. For methane, a UNEP report at COP30 found current national plans would deliver only about 8%, with emissions still rising. India did not sign the methane pledge.

Clean power capacity: met early. India’s 2015 pledge of 40% non-fossil capacity was reached in 2021. The updated goal of about 50% by 2030 was crossed in June 2025, with 242.78 GW of 484.82 GW. By 30 June 2026 the share was 54.18%, and by 31 July MNRE counted 300.50 GW of non-fossil capacity, about 60% of the separate 500 GW goal for 2030. India added a record 55.3 GW in 2025-26.

But capacity is not generation. A solar park produces only when the sun shines. In 2025-26, non-fossil sources generated 29.2% of India’s electricity (538.97 of 1,845.92 billion units), and coal most of the rest. Closing that gap takes storage, transmission and a grid that can handle variable power, not just more panels.

Emissions intensity: in progress. The first target, a 33-35% cut by 2030, was met in 2019. The government’s latest official figure is a 36% cut between 2005 and 2020, against the updated 45% goal for 2030. This is an intensity target: emissions per unit of GDP. India’s economy can grow and its total emissions can rise while intensity falls, and that is what has happened.

Carbon sink: in progress. India aims to store an extra 2.5-3 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in forests and trees by 2030, compared with 2005. The government says 2.29 billion tonnes had been added by 2021. Forest carbon is hard to count: it depends on tree survival, age, soil and whether the land stays forest.

Net zero by 2070: too early to judge. Announced in Glasgow in 2021, it can only be tested through interim steps. The first of those is the 2035 NDC, approved by the Cabinet on 25 March 2026 and filed with the UN in April: 60% clean capacity, a 47% intensity cut and a 3.5-4 billion tonne sink.

Biodiversity. In 2010 countries agreed 20 “Aichi” targets for 2020. The UN’s Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 found that none was fully met. In December 2022 they were replaced by the Kunming-Montreal framework, whose best-known goal is to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. The 2024 Protected Planet Report found 17.6% of land and 8.4% of ocean protected, so land coverage must nearly double and ocean coverage more than triple in six years. And protected on paper is not the same as healthy: less than 5% of protected land has been checked for how well it is managed.

Plastics. In March 2022 the UN Environment Assembly agreed to negotiate a global plastics treaty by the end of 2024. Talks in Busan (2024) and Geneva (August 2025) ended without a deal, and the chair resigned in October 2025. A new chair was elected in February 2026. Many countries have national rules instead: India banned 19 single-use plastic items from 1 July 2022.

Oceans. “Protect the oceans” is easy to promise and hard to measure: protected area, fish stocks, warming, acidification, coral and plastic all move separately. A bigger protected-area number does not by itself mean a healthier sea.

“Protect the planet” is a slogan. “Phase out CFCs on a fixed schedule” is a policy. “50% non-fossil capacity by 2030” is a target. “Net zero by 2070” is a destination. None of these words guarantees anything. In 1970 the task was to demand environmental action; in 2026 it is to measure whether that action worked. The next big test is 2030, when the deadlines for forests, methane, 30×30, India’s capacity goals and the first round of Paris pledges all arrive together.