New Scientific Report Confirms World Leaders Failing to Meet Climate Goals, With Rich Nations Causing Greatest Harms

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its annual emissions gap report today. According to this latest analysis, global heat-trapping emissions have yet to peak, and the world is on track to endure global average temperatures that rise between 2.6 and 3.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels based on nations’ current emission reduction pledges, far exceeding the Paris Agreement temperature goals.

As with other recent scientific studies, this report raises alarm about the disconnect between the science-based goals of the Paris climate agreement and both the pledges countries have made to rein in heat-trapping emissions and the policies they have implemented thus far to achieve those commitments. Scientific agencies around the globe are already forecasting that 2024 will be deemed the hottest year on record, continuing a trend of rising global average temperatures.

Below is a statement by Dr. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and a lead economist in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). She has more than 20 years of experience working on international climate and energy issues and is a regular attendee of the annual U.N. climate talks. Dr. Cleetus will be attending this year’s negotiations, also called COP29, taking place next month in Baku, Azerbaijan, just after the U.S. presidential election.

“This report forcefully confirms that nations’ efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions have been grossly insufficient to date. Global heating records are being topped year after year, and people and ecosystems worldwide are suffering the devastation of unrelenting climate change disasters and increasingly irreversible impacts. To put it bluntly, decades of inadequate action have put the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal further out of reach and world leaders are failing their people. The consequences are profound—but the policy choices decided now are as crucial as ever to limit future harm.

“The best way forward is to implement sweeping changes to the global energy system by phasing out the destructive products fossil fuel companies are peddling and investing big in renewable energy solutions to sharply curtail heat-trapping emissions. Also urgent are scaled-up investments in climate resilience to cope with impacts already locked in. Rich, high-emitting nations—including the United States—are most responsible for these calamitous circumstances. Those living in climate-vulnerable, low-income countries that contributed very little to the fossil fuel pollution driving this crisis need more than hollow words; they need wealthy countries and other major emitters to live up to their responsibilities.

“At the upcoming U.N. climate talks, wealthy nations must significantly grow the amount of climate financing available to ensure all countries can slash their global warming emissions and prepare for the more frequent and severe climate impacts that are the punishing consequence of a warming world. And nations’ updated emission reduction commitments, which are due by February, must directly respond to the flashing red lights in this report and be followed through by robust policies to meet those commitments.”