Current pledges for curbing carbon emissions will doom the world to global warming of 3.5 degrees Celsius, massively overshooting the United Nations' target of 2 C, researchers reported at the climate talks Tuesday.
Current pledges for curbing carbon emissions will doom the world to
global warming of 3.5 degrees Celsius, massively overshooting the United
Nations' target of 2 C, researchers reported at the climate talks Tuesday.
Output of heat-trapping carbon gases is rising so fast that governments have
only four years left to avert a massive extra bill for meeting the 2 C [3.6
degrees Fahrenheit] target, they said.
"The current pledges are heading towards a global emissions pathway that
will take warming to a 3.5 C goal [6.3 F]," according to an estimate
issued by a consortium of German researchers.
The world is on a "high-warming, high-cost, high-risk pathway," it
said.
The report, compiled by Climate Analytics and Ecofys, which are German firms
that specialize in carbon data, was issued on the sidelines of the 194-nation
U.N. talks in
Durban
. The
12-day conference runs until Friday.
The 2 C goal, initiated at the stormy Copenhagen Summit of 2009, was enshrined
at last year's conference of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change
along with a less feasible target of 1.5 C [2.7 F].
Accompanying these objectives is a roster of pledges by nation-states about
what they intend to do to rein in their emissions.
The promises mark the first time that all countries have been coaxed into
declaring specific carbon-curbing actions.
But the measures aren't subject to any international compliance regime and
don't incur any penalties if they are not met.
The report said current pledges would lead to global emissions in 2020 of 55
billion metric tons of carbon dioxide [CO2] or its equivalent in 2020. This is
11 billion tons above the 44 billion tons consistent with meeting the 2 C (3.6
F) objective smoothly.
As a result, costs in energy efficiency and switching to cleaner power will
rise very sharply after 2020 in order to recover lost headway. Global emissions
would have to fall by 3.8% annually from 2020 to 2050, using 2000 as the
benchmark year per year.
But this effort would be roughly halved, to 2%, if action to brake emissions
growth is initiated within the next three years to bring the tally back on line
to 44 billion tons by 2020.
The figures carried in the report concur with similar estimates, published last
month by the International Energy Agency and the U.N. Environment Program.
Scientists caution that 2 C is no guarantee of a safe haven against climate
change and consider 3.5 C to be an extremely dangerous scenario.
It would strongly exacerbate droughts, flooding and storms and affect sea
levels, spelling famine and homelessness for tens of millions.
Already, 0.8 C of the 2 C has occurred since the start of the Industrial
Revolution, when coal--followed by oil and gas--powered the rise to prosperity.
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