Everyone dismissed the Paris climate deal signed late last year as more show than a real attempt to deal with global warming — but surprisingly, participant countries may hit target milestones a whopping two years earlier than planned, the United Nations is saying.

During a lecture in London on the impact of the global climate deal over the coming years, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC) executive secretary Christiana Figueres said that countries are actually quite serious about the proposal and are aggressively moving forward to hit their targets and even exceed them, according to a Tech Times report.

The Paris climate deal will take effect in 2020, once 55 of 196 countries sign and ratify the agreement, which Figueres says will happen in 2018.

Of course, plenty of work remains to tackle perhaps the greatest problem humanity has ever faced.

To deal with this complex issue, the world will need to switch to clean energy systems and develop low-carbon technologies, which would require incredible investment not seen since rebuilding after World War II.