October 25, 2024
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Climate Target “will be dead in a few years” unless the world takes action, the UN has warned
The world is on track to exceed the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, which many countries have put at the center of their climate efforts.
Mykyta Ivanov/Getty Images
KLIMAWIRE | The world is on track to exceed the target set by many countries as the beating heart of the global climate effort: 1.5 degrees Celsius.
If current trends continue, there is “virtually no chance” of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees over the past 170 years final emissions gap report From the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Even in the most optimistic scenarios, when all countries meet their commitment to reduce emissions, “there is a 3 in 4 chance that warming will exceed 1.5 C,” he added.
This temperature target has become the guide used by countries to develop their national climate plans. Efforts to reduce climate pollution and build resilience are measured against this. Keeping it alive has become a rallying cry at successive global climate conferences between activists and officials.
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But there has been a growing backlash among some in the scientific community about the feasibility of such a goal, which would require immediate action and massive deployment of the technology across countries and sectors without delay or enormous cost.
“Even if this were imaginable, things will be slow to happen in the legal frameworks of countries, not to mention if the population is not behind these changes,” Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for Norwegian International Climate Research, said in an email. Peters contributed to the UN report.
The UNEP report assesses the gap between the growth of greenhouse gas emissions based on countries’ current commitments and what should exist to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. It finds that current policies would lead to 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming.
The world has already warmed by about 1.3 degrees, and at the current rate of warming, the 1.5 degree target would be reached in less than 10 years, the report said.
Early next year, countries are expected to present stronger plans to the UN on how they plan to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement, which aims to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees while making “efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees. . Thursday’s report outlines what is needed to keep warming as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.
In short, nations must not only meet their current commitments by 2030—many are failing to meet them—they must go further and then present even more ambitious plans for 2035.
Even if countries fully meet their most ambitious commitments, the report estimates that emissions in 2030 would fall by just 10 percent from 2019 levels. That’s a far cry from the 42 percent drop needed to stay in line with the 1.5 degree target, the report said.
Inger Andersen, head of UNEP, said in a preview of the report on Thursday that without a dramatic increase in action, the 1.5 degree target “will die within a few years”.
“Fundamentally, exceeding 1.5C requires overconfidence in what the world can do,” Peters said, referring to the idea that the world could exceed 1.5 and global temperatures could drop again. “There’s too much confidence in things that happen instantly and globally.”
Coalition of scientists and academics started protests to demand action in 2022 When the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that time was running out to keep warming to reasonably safe levels. Since then, things have not improved. Record-breaking heat waves have hit oceans and land this year, and extreme floods and droughts have devastated communities from Brazil to Sudan.
Keeping the 1.5 degree target could make it difficult for people to understand the scale of the problem, some scientists say. But letting it go can also lead to complacency at a time when countries need to do more, not less.
“Scientifically speaking, it will be some time before we can say categorically that we will exceed 1.5,” said Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and lead author of the UNEP report.
But that does not invalidate the continuation, he said.
“We want to keep warming as close to 1.5 as possible,” Rogelj said. “The only way we can do that is to reduce our emissions in the short term.”
Reprinted E&E News Courtesy of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
