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'We're Playing With Fire': World on Track for 'Catastrophic' 3.1°C of Warming
"Closing the emissions gap means closing the ambition gap, the implementation gap, and the finance gap," said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. "Starting at COP29."
Oct 24, 2024
The world's nations must commit to dramatically slashing greenhouse gas emissions in the near future or risk a "catastrophic" rise in global average temperatures, a key United Nations climate report published Thursday warned.
"It is still technically possible to meet the 1.5°C goal" set out in the Paris agreement, "but only with a G20-led massive global mobilization to cut all greenhouse gas emissions, starting today," the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) said in a summary of its annual Emissions Gap Report.
"Nations must collectively commit to cutting 42% off annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57% by 2035 in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—and back this up with rapid action—or the Paris agreement's 1.5°C goal will be gone within a few years," UNEP warned.
"Failure to increase ambition in these new NDCs and start delivering immediately would put the world on course for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1°C over this century," the agency said. "This would bring debilitating impacts to people, planet, and economies."
UNEP said "solar, wind, and forests" have the potential to help the world "get on a 1.5°C pathway." However, "sufficiently strong NDCs would need to be backed urgently by a whole-of-government approach, measures that maximize socioeconomic and environmental co-benefits, enhanced international collaboration that includes reform of the global financial architecture, strong private sector action, and a minimum six-fold increase in mitigation investment."
"G20 nations, particularly the largest-emitting members, would need to do the heavy lifting," the agency added.
The task is daunting—according to the report, human emissions of greenhouse gases—CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases—reached a record 57.1bn tons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) last year.
"The emissions gap is not an abstract notion," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed in a video message on the UNEP report. "There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters."
"Around the world, people are paying a terrible price," he continued. "Record emissions mean record sea temperatures supercharging monster hurricanes; record heat is turning forests into tinder boxes and cities into saunas; record rains are resulting in biblical floods."
"Today's Emissions Gap report is clear: We're playing with fire; but there can be no more playing for time," Guterres added. "We're out of time. Closing the emissions gap means closing the ambition gap, the implementation gap, and the finance gap. Starting at COP29."
The U.N. chief was referring to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is set to take place next month in Baku, Azerbaijan—a nation that is "aggressively" expanding fossil fuel production.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said in a statement:
Climate crunch time is here. We need global mobilization on a scale and pace never seen before—starting right now, before the next round of climate pledges—or the 1.5°C goal will soon be dead and well below 2°C will take its place in the intensive care unit. I urge every nation: No more hot air, please. Use the upcoming COP29 talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, to increase action now, set the stage for stronger NDCs, and then go all-out to get on a 1.5°C pathway.
Even if the world overshoots 1.5°C—and the chances of this happening are increasing every day—we must keep striving for a net-zero, sustainable, and prosperous world. Every fraction of a degree avoided counts in terms of lives saved, economies protected, damages avoided, biodiversity conserved, and the ability to rapidly bring down any temperature overshoot.
Climate scientists and green groups expressed alarm over the UNEP report.
"The Emissions Gap Report is yet another clear warning about what needs to be done and fast," Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, said in a statement. "Last year at COP28, nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. The report makes it crystal clear that governments must translate this decision into action in their national climate pledges if they are serious about the just energy transition."
Greenpeace International climate politics expert Tracy Carty said that "for 15 years, the UNEP has been sounding the alarm on the great chasm between political will for climate action and the worsening emissions trajectory fuelling rising temperatures."
"These reports are a historical litany of negligence from the world's leaders to tackle the climate crisis with the urgency it demands, but it's not too late to take corrective action," Carty continued. "We challenge leaders to embark on wholesale change in their 2035 climate plans, to come to COP29 prepared to finance climate action and to make up for lost time."
Rachel Cleetus, policy director and a lead economist in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, issued a statement arguing that the new UNEP 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," she noted. "To put it bluntly, decades of inadequate action have put the 1.5°C 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."
Cleetus continued:
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," Cleetus added.
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South Korean Court Hears First Asian Youth Climate Case
"Carbon emission reduction keeps getting pushed back as if it is homework that can be done later," said one plaintiff's mother. "But that burden will be what our children have to bear eventually."
Apr 23, 2024
One of South Korea's two highest courts on Tuesday began hearing Asia's first-ever youth-led climate lawsuit, which accuses the country's government of failing to protect citizens from the effects of the worsening, human-caused planetary emergency.
Nineteen members of the advocacy group Youth4ClimateAction filed a constitutional complaint in March 2020 accusing the South Korean government of violating their rights to life, the "pursuit of happiness," a "healthy and pleasant environment," and to "resist against human extinction."
The lawsuit also notes "the inequality between the adult generation who can enjoy the relatively pleasant environment and the youth generation who must face a potential disaster from climate change," as well as the government's obligation to prevent and protect citizens from environmental disasters.
"South Korea's current climate plans are not sufficient to keep the temperature increase within 1.5°C, thus violating the state's obligation to protect fundamental rights," the plaintiffs said in a statement.
South Korea's Constitutional Court began hearing a case that accuses the government of having failed to protect 200 people, including dozens of young environmental activists and children, by not tackling climate change https://t.co/XRIGE23KGM pic.twitter.com/snvqBaGGe9
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 23, 2024
Signatories to the 2015 Paris agreement committed to "holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C."
According to the United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) most recent Emissions Gap Report, the world must slash greenhouse gas emissions by 28% before 2030 to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels and 42% to halt warming at 1.5°C. UNEP said that based on current policies and practices, the world is on track for 2.9°C of warming by the end of the century.
A summary of the lawsuit notes that South Korea is the fifth-largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, and that the government is constitutionally obligated to protect Koreans from the climate emergency.
Instead, the plaintiffs argue, the Korean Parliament "gave the government total discretion to set the GHG reduction target without providing any specific guidelines." Furthermore, they contend that the government's downgraded reduction targets fall "far short of what is necessary to satisfy the temperature rise threshold acknowledged by the global community."
Lee Donghyun, the mother of one of the plaintiffs, told Reuters: "Carbon emission reduction keeps getting pushed back as if it is homework that can be done later. But that burden will be what our children have to bear eventually."
The South Korean case comes on the heels of a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which found that Switzerland's government violated senior citizens' human rights by refusing to heed scientists' warnings to swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
The ECHR ruled on the same day that climate cases brought by a former French mayor and a group of Portuguese youth were inadmissible.
Courts in Australia, Brazil, and Peru also have human rights-based climate cases on their dockets.
In the United States, a state judge in Montana ruled last year in favor of 16 young residents who argued that fossil fuel extraction violated their constitutional right to "a clean and healthful environment."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is trying to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government.
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'Emissions Canyon': World on Track for 2.9°C of Warming
Keeping the 1.5°C temperature goal alive "requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.
Nov 20, 2023
Nations' current unconditional climate action plans under the Paris agreement would put the world on track for 2.9°C of warming by 2100, the United Nations Environment Program warned Monday.
The UNEP's 2023 Emissions Gap Report, released ahead of next week's U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates, finds that policymakers must slash greenhouse gas emissions by 28% by 2030 to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels and 42% to halt warming at 1.5°C.
"The report shows that the emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "A canyon littered with broken promises, broken lives, and broken records. All of this is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity."
The annual Emissions Gap Report calculates the difference between climate-warming emissions under current policies and what needs to be achieved to limit global heating to "well below" 2°C and ideally 1.5°C. This year's report highlighted 2023's string of broken temperature records and extreme weather events: Scientists predict it's on track to be the hottest year in 125,000 years.
At the same time, global greenhouse gas emissions rose by 1.2% between 2021 and 2022, hitting a record 57.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) last year.
"Humanity is breaking all the wrong records when it comes to climate change," UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said in the report foreword.
"The 2023 edition of the Emissions Gap Report tells us that the world must change track, or we will be saying the same thing next year—and the year after, and the year after, like a broken record," Andersen added.
Even the report's full title expressed a sense of exasperation: Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record—Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again).
The report looked at both existing and promised policies, including countries' Paris action pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It did find that national actions since the Paris agreement was negotiated in 2015 have made a difference. At the time, greenhouse gas emissions were projected to rise by 16% by 2030 and now they are on track to rise by 3% by the end of the decade.
But that progress is not nearly enough to avoid ever more extreme climate impacts. Currently implemented policies put the world on track for 3°C of warming by 2100, unconditional NDCs for 2.9°C, conditional NDCs for 2.5°C, and conditional NDCs combined with net-zero pledges give temperatures a 66% chance of topping out at 2°C. Under the last, most optimistic scenario, the world is left with a 14% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C. However, net-zero pledges are not currently seen as reliable, since no Group of 20 country is on pace to reduce its emissions in line with this goal.
The report found that nations must cut their emissions by 14 GtCO2e by 2030 to reach 2°C and 22 GtCO2e to reach 1.5°C. The way this can be done is by phasing out fossil fuels as soon as possible.
"The only way to curtail this spiraling crisis is through wholesale changes to the global energy system that will sharply drive down all heat-trapping emissions."
"We know it is still possible to make the 1.5°C limit a reality. And we know how to get there—we have roadmaps from the International Energy Agency and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]," Guterres said. "It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. And it demands a just, equitable renewables transition."
The report comes as nations prepare to gather on November 30 for COP28, which will include the first global stocktake of their progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris agreement. This will lead to a new round of NDCs through 2035.
"Ambition in these NDCs must bring greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 to levels consistent with the 2°C and 1.5°C pathways. Stronger implementation in this decade will help to make this possible," Andersen said in the foreword.
"The world needs to lift the needle out of the groove of insufficient ambition and action, and start setting new records on cutting emissions, green and just transitions, and climate finance—starting now," Andersen added.
In response to the report, Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and a lead economist in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, also called for ambition at the upcoming climate talks.
"The only way to curtail this spiraling crisis is through wholesale changes to the global energy system that will sharply drive down all heat-trapping emissions," Cleetus said. "At COP28, nations must heed these scientific truths by agreeing to a fast and fair phaseout of fossil fuels, ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency, and significantly expanding climate finance commitments from wealthier countries for an equitable clean energy transition."
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