UN warns climate target ‘will be dead within years’ if world doesn’t act

October 25, 2024

3 minute read

UN warns climate target ‘will be dead for years’ if world doesn’t act

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 center of their climate efforts.

Sarah Schoenhardt and electrical and electrical engineering news

Globe in the shape of a lit match — Nikita Ivanov/Getty Images

CLIMATWIRE | The world is well on track to meet the goal that many countries see as the heart of the global climate effort: 1.5 degrees Celsius.

If current trends continue, there is “virtually no chance” of limiting global warming over the past 170 years to 1.5 degrees, according to latest emissions gap report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Even in the most optimistic scenarios, where all countries meet their emissions reduction commitments, “there remains a 3 in 4 chance that warming will exceed 1.5C,” the report adds.

This temperature target has become a benchmark that countries use when developing their national climate plans. Efforts to reduce climate pollution and increase resilience counter this. The persistence of the problem has become a rallying cry at successive global climate conferences among activists and officials.

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But there is growing dissatisfaction among some in the scientific community about the feasibility of this goal, since it will require immediate action in all countries and sectors, as well as a massive expansion of technology without delays or prohibitive costs.

“Even if it were even imaginable, if it happened within the legal framework of countries, it would slow things down, not to mention the fact that the population is not behind such changes,” Glen Peters, senior fellow at the Center for International Affairs climate research in Norway, the email said. Peters took part in the preparation of the UN report.

The UNEP report estimates the yawning gap between the rise in global greenhouse gas emissions in line with countries’ current commitments and where they need to be to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. He found that current policies would lead to warming of 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius.

The report says the world has already warmed by about 1.3 degrees, and at current rates of warming the 1.5 degree target will be reached in less than 10 years.

Countries are expected to submit clearer plans to the UN early next year on how they plan to meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement, an agreement aimed at keeping warming “well below” 2 degrees while “making efforts” to limit it to 1 .5 degrees. . Thursday’s report outlined the need to keep warming as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.

In short, countries must not only meet their current 2030 commitments (which many do not), but also go beyond them 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 compared with 2019 levels. That falls far short of the 42 percent reduction needed to meet the 1.5 degree target, the report said.

Inger Andersen, head of UNEP, said in the foreword to the report on Thursday that without a significant increase in activity, the 1.5 degree target “will be dead for several years.”

“Essentially, 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 bring global temperatures back down. “There is an over-confidence that things are happening immediately and on a global scale.”

Coalition of Scientists and Academicians started protests demanding action in 2022 when the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said time was running out to keep warming to a relatively safe level. Things haven’t gotten any better since then. This year has seen record heat waves in oceans and land, and severe floods and droughts have devastated communities from Brazil to Sudan.

Some scientists argue that maintaining the 1.5 degree target could make it difficult to understand the scale of the problem. But failure to do so could also lead to complacency at a time when countries need to do more, not less.

“From a scientific perspective, it will be some time before we can say categorically that we will exceed 1.5,” said Joeri Rogelge, director of research at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and lead author of the UNEP report.

But that doesn’t invalidate it, he said.

“We want to keep warming as close to 1.5 as possible,” Rogel said. “The only way to do this is to reduce emissions in the near future.”