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“Now or never”: UN report warns of warming of up to 2.9 degrees Celsius within the scope of current measures to contain climate change.
ANNOUNCEMENT
A new report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warns of global warming of 2.9°C by 2100, taking into account current measures to contain climate change. The report, which comes a good week before the start of the climate summit COP28 published in Dubai confirms the need for urgent action to prevent this prediction from becoming reality.
Global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 28% to limit warming to 2°C and by 42% to reach the 1.5°C limit. To achieve this goal, efforts to contain climate change would have to be carried out this decade. significantly strengthened become.
“Today’s emissions gap report shows that if nothing changes, emissions in 2030 will be 22 gigatons higher than the 1.5 degree limit,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
“This is roughly equivalent to the current total annual emissions of the US, China and the EU combined.”
2023 was a record year
After increasing 1.2% last year, global greenhouse gas emissions are reaching a new high, according to UNEP. These record emissions lead to Record the temperatures.
In early October, average temperatures greater than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels were measured on 86 days. September was the hottest month on record, with a global average temperature 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels.
And global average temperatures likely surpassed the critical threshold of 2°C above pre-industrial levels last week, according to the EU’s climate change service Copernicus.
However, these average temperatures must be maintained for a longer period of time to exceed the official limits established by the Paris Agreement.
“This year we have seen a terrifying number of record highs and extremes in terms of heat, wildfires and new global temperature records,” Anne Olhoff, science editor of the report, told Euronews Green.
What was the impact of the Paris Agreement on emissions?
There has been progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement. Under the measures in force at the time, the UNEP predicted a 16% increase in emissions by 2030. Now, the predicted increase is 3%.
“I think progress has been made, and I don’t want to say nothing has happened,” Olhoff said.
“But it really is now or never when it comes to keeping the window for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.”
In recent years, huge opportunities to reduce emissions have been missed, she adds. While the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis have pushed some countries toward green solutions, others have used the crisis to develop new oil and gas reserves or extend the life of coal-fired power plants.
One of the biggest obstacles to closing the emissions gap, Olhoff said, is the “lack of global leadership.”
“Lack of global leadership”
If efforts to reduce emissions under current policies continue as before, global warming will be limited to just 3°C above pre-industrial levels. If the efforts outlined in countries’ climate plans or National Climate Contributions (NDC) are fully implemented, the world will move towards 2.9°C.
None of the world’s 20 largest economies are reducing their emissions at a pace consistent with their net zero targets. Even in the most optimistic scenario, the probability of limiting warming to 1.5°C is just 14 percent, according to UNEP.
The report shows that the emissions gap more closely resembles an “emissions canyon,” Guterres added.
“An abyss filled with broken promises, broken lives and broken records. All of this is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the weak and a huge missed opportunity.”
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Rather than just focusing on stricter targets for 2035, Olhoff says more ambitious measures are needed to reduce emissions before the end of the decade: “If we don’t do this, we could say goodbye to 1.5 degrees.”
Peak emissions have not yet been reached and current climate policy is largely stabilized. But there are huge opportunities for most countries to significantly reduce emissions, e.g. End fossil fuel subsidies.
Achieving maximum emissions should be the “easy part of the curve,” says Olhoff, but reducing the last 10, 20 or even 30 percent will likely be much more challenging.