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Why it matters: The first report card on the Paris agreement shows some climate change progress has been made but efforts need to be ramped up.

Minnesota this year endured record heat, drought and weather turbulence while much of the southern United States saw temperatures top 100 degrees for more than a month.

In Texas, high temperatures have reached at least 100 degrees 73 times this year, far more than the previous record of 59 triple-digit days, which was set in 2009.

More frequent and punishing storms along the coasts continue.

This is what climate scientists around the world warned about beginning decades ago, telling us that if the world kept burning fossil fuels we would heat the planet, heat and raise oceans, melt polar ice and cause more killer weather events.

In 2015 nearly 200 countries took a big step with a global approach by adopting the Paris agreement, which pushed nations to slash their greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, the United Nations has released the first report card on the Paris agreement.

The good news is that many of the worst-case-scenarios we worried about are far less likely to happen thanks to progress made since the agreement.

But the report card also notes that the world needs to seriously ramp up the effort to convert to clean energy if goals are to be met and more damage avoided.

The planet has gotten about 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter since the Industrial Revolution. While a seemingly small number, it’s already caused the extreme weather and related natural disasters the world has seen in recent years.

To keep the problems from getting a lot worse, the Paris agreement aims to limit warming to about 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But to achieve that goal countries will need to do much more, more rapidly than they are doing now.

The report is good in two ways: It shows us we have slowed the progression of climate change by the things we’ve done so far, and it prods us to ramp up those efforts to keep us from reaching a tipping point where it’s too late.

— Mankato Free Press, Sept. 12