Climate Trunk Archives - Legal Sustainability Alliance

The Big Picture – Climate Trunk

The Big Picture – Climate Trunk

by tess | Apr 1, 2026 | Climate Trunk

Climate Trunk –
The Big Picture

These weekly infographics offer a steady, year-long stream of engaging content supporting a practical, structured way to build climate literacy across your organisation. They aim to be the world’s clearest and most coherent visual guide to climate and the energy transition for policy makers, sustainability leaders, advisers and educators and are designed to balance realism and rigour with optimism and agency — helping people see not only the scale of the challenge, but also where influence and progress are possible.

For further learning and context, each infographic is accompanied by a reading tree – a resource, a read, a review and an expert opinion on The Climate Trunk Website.

We hope this resource will support you to shift how people understand, talk about, and act on climate inside your organisation, providing firms with a system-level framework that shows how climate science, impacts, energy, economics, politics and net zero fit together, dispelling myths and educating along the way.

New infographics will be released weekly below, for inspiration why not read our post The Climate Trunk – ideas on how to make the most of this resource.

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Infographics 28 of 52

Copyright & Usage Notice

LSA member firms are licensed to download and use these images for educational purposes, including training and upskilling colleagues through internal communications. This license does not permit use in external presentations, commercial marketing materials, or on social media platforms, except when such use is separately permitted under the original copyright terms of The Climate Trunk – i.e. when using platform generated link previews or unaltered screenshots.

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When El Niño Turns Up The Heat

El Niño reshuffles heat across the Pacific, weakening trade winds and allowing warm water to spread eastwards.

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A Sign of Things to Come

Clean energy investment has risen more than 70% since 2020, with nearly $2 now going into clean energy for every $1 into fossil fuels. Follow the money and you get a pretty good sense of where the global energy system is heading.

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The Accountability Hierarchy

Companies with no reduction target shouldn’t escape attention because of the absence of a promise that can be broken. Three hierarchies: one for targets, and one each for reward and scrutiny.

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What Does Shipping Carry?

When the world burns fewer fossil fuels, shipping will feel it. Not at the smokestack, but in the cargo hold.

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The End, Not The Means

Electrification means getting far more of what we need from far less energy.

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Energy In, Motion Out

EVs are hopelessly efficient mobility machines.

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Flying Above Its Weight

Aviation punches above the weight of its CO₂ emissions.

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The Historical Ledger

CO2 emissions accumulate in the atmosphere over time. Today’s heating reflects the stock built up over generations, not just what we emit today.

20/52

Half the Problem

Just 32 companies were linked to more than half of global fossil-fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2024.

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The Persuadable Majority

Nine in ten people are open to the evidence on human-caused climate change. The communication challenge is about helping the persuadable majority connect climate change to their values and everyday lives.

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Climbing the S-curve

Most clean technologies are now moving from invention to scale. As they climb their S-curves, the challenge is no longer just better technologies, but building the grids, finance, infrastructure and skills that allow them to grow.

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A Reflection Problem

Climate change is first and foremost an emissions problem. It’s also increasingly becoming a reflection problem.

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Two Centuries, One Conclusion

Modern climate science is built on more than 200 years of discovery. This infographic traces the key scientific milestones that shaped our understanding of Earth’s changing climate.

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Learning by doing

Solar is now the cheapest source of new electricity across most of the world. Like learning to ride a bike, we’ve got better at making solar technology with practice. Every panel built has helped make the next one cheaper.

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Loading the Heat Dice

Climate change isn’t causing every heatwave, but it is loading the dice so that extreme heat becomes far more likely. This visual shows how one-in-50-year heat events have become increasingly routine as the world heats, and why every additional fraction of a degree matters.

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True at the Same Time

Climate is not a story of either doom or denial. Emissions are still too high, impacts are worsening and clean energy is changing what’s possible. All three things are true at the same time.

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In A League of their own

Wind turbines have grown from niche machines into towering giants capable of powering tens of thousands of homes. As the record-breaking SunZia project in the US shows, the next phase of the energy transition depends as much on building wires as building wind farms.

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A Matter of Degrees Not Thresholds

Climate change is a slope we slide down, not a cliff we fall off. Every fraction of a degree matters: impacts worsen, risks compound, and avoiding additional heating reduces the risk of triggering dangerous, potentially irreversible tipping points.

What makes a good climate law

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What Makes A Good Climate Law?

Climate change unfolds over decades. Political cycles don’t. That’s why countries are increasingly embedding climate action into law through targets, carbon budgets, independent oversight and long-term planning. This week’s Climate Trunk graphic explores eight building blocks of effective climate governance.

The World Spoke

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The World Spoke

The UN General Assembly backed the ICJ’s landmark climate ruling by 141 votes to 8. The eight voting against, including the US and Russia, account for one-third of cumulative historical CO2 emissions since 1750.

The Sun Has Won

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THE SUN HAS WON

Solar is fast becoming the backbone of a new global electricity system. What once looked marginal is outgrowing expectations at breakneck speed – driven by plunging costs, learning curves and the explosive rise of batteries, which is turning daytime solar into anytime solar.

One system, two stories

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ONE SYSTEM, TWO STORIES

China is both the world’s largest source of emissions and its biggest clean energy force – still deeply fossil-fuelled, yet driving the technologies, investment and electrification reshaping the global energy system.

Less than one percent of emissions

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‘But We’re Less Than 1%’

No country is too small to matter. Nations that each emit around 1% of global CO2 may look negligible on their own, but together they produce about 30% of the total – roughly as much as China – so if they sit it out, the maths doesn’t stack up.

New Energy Calculus

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The New Energy Calculus

The pursuit of clean energy is no longer climate policy. It is increasingly a strategy for security, affordability, development, sovereignty and lower import bills – reshaping how governments think about energy and national interest.

It's Fixable - Net Zero

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IT'S FIXABLE: NET ZERO

Net zero is not a political slogan, it’s the physics of how we stop heating. Turn down the emissions tap as far as possible, then remove what’s left – bringing inflows and outflows into balance so temperatures stabilise.

Screenshot

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IT'S BAD

Climate change is bad news for societies built on stability. But the future is not pre-written. Within a single lifetime, the extent of heating – and the risks that come with it – depends on the choices societies make over the next decade or so.

Screenshot

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IT'S US

Human activity is driving today’s heating. Greenhouse gases create strong warming, partly offset by cooling from air pollution. Natural factors play a minimal role in the long-term trend.

It's Real

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IT'S REAL

Global temperatures are rising fast. The long-term trend is unequivocal: Earth has heated by around 1.3°C since the late 19th century — with most of that increase coming recently.