Here's what Earth might look like in 100 years - if we're lucky

Trump's reported decision comes on the heels of the hottest year the world has seen since 1880 - when scientists first started keeping global temperature logs - and the fifth annual heat record of the past dozen years.

Overall, planet Earth has warmed 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.26 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial averages, which is dangerously close to the 2.7-degree-Fahrenheit (1.5-degree-Celsius) limit set by international policymakers for global warming. (Some argue this cutoff is arbitrary, though it could still rein in some of the most disruptive changes to human civilization.)

"There's no stopping global warming," Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist who is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, previously told Business Insider. "Everything that's happened so far is baked into the system."

That means that even if carbon emissions were to drop to zero tomorrow, we'd still be watching human-driven climate change play out for centuries. And we all know emissions aren't going to stop. So the key thing now, Schmidt said, is to slow climate change down enough to make sure we can adapt to it as painlessly as possible.

This is what the Earth could look like within 100 years if we succeed in curbing climate change with international agreements like the Paris climate accord (barring huge leaps in renewable energy or carbon-capture technology).

Sarah Kramer wrote a previous version of this post.