October 25, 2024
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UN warns that climate change goals will disappear within a few years unless the world takes action
The world is on track to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which many countries have placed at the heart of their climate action plans.
Mikita Ivanov/Getty Images
Climate Wire | The world is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal that many countries have set as central to global climate action.
If current trends continue, there is “virtually no chance” of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the past 170 years, according to the United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) latest emissions gap report. Even in the most optimistic scenario, in which all countries meet their emissions reduction commitments, “there remains about a three-quarters chance of warming exceeding 1.5 degrees,” the report added.
These temperature targets serve as guideposts for countries to use when developing their national climate plans. Efforts to reduce climate pollution and build resilience will be measured against climate pollution. Keep climate change alive has become a rallying cry among activists and officials at successive global climate change conferences.
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But there is growing opposition among some in the scientific community about the feasibility of that goal, which requires immediate action in all countries and sectors and technological advances without delay or prohibitive cost. This is because it needs to be expanded on a large scale.
“Even if it were imaginable, implementing it within each country’s legal framework would slow things down, not to mention when the population does not support such a change. ” said Glenn Peters, a senior researcher at the center. Norway’s International Climate Institute said in an email. Peters was involved in the UN report.
The UNEP report finds a wide gap between the increase in global greenhouse gas emissions under countries’ current commitments and where countries should go to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. It is evaluated as follows. Policies currently in place were found to lead to warming of 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius.
The world has already warmed by an estimated 1.3 degrees Celsius, and at the current rate of warming, the 1.5 degrees goal will be reached within 10 years, the report said.
Early next year, countries will submit stronger plans to the United Nations on how to meet their obligations to the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is an agreement aimed at keeping the temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius while “continuing efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. . Thursday’s report outlines what is needed to keep temperature rise as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.
This means that countries need to not only meet their current commitments for 2030 (which many countries have not met), but also go beyond that and submit even more ambitious plans for 2035. be.
Even if countries fully implement their most ambitious commitments, the report estimates that emissions in 2030 would fall by just 10 percent compared to 2019 levels. This is far short of the 42% decline needed to stay in line with the 1.5 degree goal, the report said.
UNEP Director Inger Andersen declared in the foreword to Thursday’s report that the 1.5 degree target “will disappear within a few years” unless there is a real and significant increase in temperatures.
“Basically, 1.5C with overshoot requires overconfidence in what the world can do,” Peters said, referring to the idea that the world could go beyond 1.5C and lower global temperatures again. did. “There is an overconfidence that things will happen quickly and on a global scale.”
A coalition of scientists and academics has launched a protest demanding action in 2022, when the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declares time is running out to limit warming to relatively safe levels. . The situation has not improved since then. This year, record heatwaves have hit seas and land, and extreme flooding and drought have devastated communities from Brazil to Sudan.
Some scientists argue that maintaining the 1.5 degree target could make it harder for people to understand the scale of the problem. But giving up could lead to complacency at a time when countries need to do more.
“Scientifically speaking, it will be a while before we can say with certainty that we have exceeded 1.5,” said Joeli Logerge, director of research at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and lead author of the UNEP report. Probably.”
But that doesn’t invalidate the pursuit, he says.
“We want to keep temperatures as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible,” Logerge said. “The only way to achieve this is to reduce emissions in the short term.”
Reprinted from E&E News Published with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides news that matters to energy and environment professionals.
