New pledges to cut_CO2 emissions will push global temperature beyond safe limit

The countries’ plans updated after last year’s request for reinforcement “leave the world on track to achieve a temperature increase between 2.4ºC and 2.6ºC”, according to the UN-Environment analysis.

A year ago, at the Glasgow Climate Conference, there were calls for strengthening national plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2030. 12 months later, the new pledges bring very little: with them, the Earth will still warm beyond 2ºC, the minimum safety threshold set in the Paris Agreement. Of the ideal limit of 1.5ºC, no trace.

“The climate pledges updated since COP26 leave the world on track to achieve a temperature increase between 2.4ºC and 2.6ºC,” concludes the analysis of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

After reviewing the national plans submitted until September 2022, the calculation is that they would reduce global emissions by less than 1% by 2030. “It takes a 45% cut for the extra warming to be 1.5ºC,” recalls the work.

And these new “promises” will still need to be put in place. They are, for the moment, plans since, with the policies that have become really effective, the course is going to 2.8ºC. The Program says that, if all the promises were fulfilled, “both short-term and long-term national plans that bet on net zero emissions by 2050” would leave global warming of the Earth at 1.8 ºC.

But, that “is not a credible scenario,” concludes the UN, because of “the discrepancy between current emissions, near and far targets.” That is, it does not seem plausible to achieve those famous zero_CO2 emissions, which means a cut of more than 90% compared to today, in 2050 if the updated plans for 2030 would only provide a cut of 1%. Immense ground would have to be recovered in two decades.

UN technicians estimate that with the measures now in place, there is a 37% chance that the world will go to more than 2ºC extra by the end of the century and another 36% that warming will be between 2.5ºC and 3ºC. With the revised national climate plans after COP26 in Scotland, if implemented as is, the chances of being between 2-2.5ºC are 43% and between 2.5-3ºC, 28%. All these calculations leave behind the Paris Agreement’s declared goal of tackling global warming “well below 2ºC”.

The report states that “a year has been wasted, despite the decision taken by all countries at the Glasgow summit to strengthen climate plans.” “It tells us in cold scientific terms what nature is telling us all this year with floods, storms, or forest fires: we have to stop filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases,” summarizes UNEP chief Inger Andersen.

Because the atmosphere is, year after year, more full of those gases released by human activities: producing electricity, moving and transporting goods with vehicles that burn fossil fuels or mass-producing meat. The layer of_CO2, methane and nitrous oxide is at its highest levels since it was measured, the World Meteorological Organization revealed on Wednesday. That layer retains the heat that ends up altering the climate.

“It’s a big challenge, and some will say impossible, to reform the economy and halve_CO2 emissions by 2030, but we must try,” concludes Andersen.

Source: El Diario