Current Climate Pledges Will Not Avoid Irredeemable Consequences of Global Warming, Researchers Say

Summary

Global green­house gas emis­sions are pro­jected to sur­pass the level needed to limit tem­per­a­ture rise to 1.5 ºC by 2030 by twice as much, accord­ing to the Climate Action Tracker. Current pledges to reduce emis­sions by 2030 would result in a 2.4 ºC tem­per­a­ture increase by 2100, indi­cat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant gap between gov­ern­ment promises and actual actions to address cli­mate change.

Global green­house gas emis­sions are on pace to exceed the vol­ume required to keep the plan­et’s sur­face tem­per­a­ture from ris­ing 1.5 ºC above pre-indus­trial lev­els before 2030 by twice as much, a new analy­sis has found.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, an inde­pen­dent research index run by Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute, the zero-car­bon tar­gets announced at the COP26 cli­mate sum­mit are ​“bring­ing false hope to the real­ity of the warm­ing result­ing from gov­ern­ment inac­tion.”

While ana­lyz­ing cli­mate data and pub­lic pledges made by par­tic­i­pants in Glasgow, researchers found that fol­low­ing cur­rent pledges to cut emis­sions by 2030 alone will result in a 2.4 ºC increase by 2100.

When look­ing at what the coun­tries are cur­rently doing – as opposed to what they have pledged to do – global tem­per­a­ture would rise to 2.7 °C by the end of the cen­tury.

A 2.7 ºC rise would be almost one degree higher than the tar­get tem­per­a­ture rise that gov­ern­ments have embraced while pledg­ing their net-zero strate­gies.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, in the best sce­nario, when all pledges are trans­formed into real action, there would be a 1.8 °C increase by 2100, which is more than the 1.5 °C ceil­ing set by the Paris Agreement.

Researchers from all over the world have recently signed an appeal pub­lished by hun­dreds of health sci­ence jour­nals, which warn of irre­deemable con­se­quences if the 1.5 °C increase is reached.

The United Kingdom’s Met Office also has warned that heat and humid­ity could fatally affect up to one bil­lion peo­ple on the planet, should the tem­per­a­ture rise 2° C.

“The major­ity of 2030 actions and tar­gets are incon­sis­tent with net-zero goals: there’s a nearly one-degree gap between gov­ern­ment cur­rent poli­cies and their net-zero goals,” said Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics.

“It’s all very well for lead­ers to claim they have a net-zero tar­get, but if they have no plans as to how to get there, and their 2030 tar­gets are as low as so many of them are, then frankly, these net-zero tar­gets are just lip ser­vice to real cli­mate action,” he added. ​“Glasgow has a seri­ous cred­i­bil­ity gap.”

• Climate Action Tracker
• BBC News