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

A new analysis from the Climate Action Tracker shows that the current commitments to curtail greenhouse gas emissions will not stop further global temperature rises.
By Paolo DeAndreis
Nov. 17, 2021 09:43 UTC

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.”

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… frankly, these net-zero tar­gets are just lip ser­vice to real cli­mate action.- Bill Hare, CEO, Climate Analytics

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.

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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.”



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