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The world must “deliver dramatically stronger ambition and action in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions or the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will be gone within a few years,” according to a new report released by the United Nations this week. While the UN’s annual Emissions Gap Report says getting on the 1.5°C is technically possible, our current trajectory has pushed the world into a state they are now calling “Climate Crunch Time.”
The 2015 Paris Agreement was established in hopes of curbing warming within that 1.5°C limit by 2030, mainly calling for a reduction in CO2 emissions through reliance on cleaner energy. However, according to the new UN report, emissions rose 1.3% between 2022 and 2023, to a new high of 57.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and the world has warmed by about 1.3 C (2.3 F). It appears those initial pledges agreed upon by nations in the Paris Agreement almost 10 years ago have led us on a trajectory to rise between 2.6 C (4.7 F) and 2.8 C (5 F) by 2100, the report found.
“We’re teetering on a planetary tight rope,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a speech on Thursday. “Either leaders bridge the emissions gap, or we plunge headlong into climate disaster”.
The UN says we can limit global warming to 1.5°C as previously targeted by capping CO2 emissions by 42 percent by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels). The next goal would be to cut emissions by 57 percent by 2035. Their first suggested path to that is investing heavily in solar and wind power. In that scenario, we live on with the planet remaining relatively stable. If we can manage to limit global warming to 2°C in that same time frame, we will still survive but there will be many struggles to do so, they say. Heat waves, floods, and rising sea levels will bring new challenges that we will have to adapt to globally. This would be accomplished by cutting emissions by 28 percent by 2030. If we fail to do this, however, the UN’s report says things will get bleak. At 2.6°C and beyond, severe storms will have a greater impact on human life, ecosystems will collapse, and “the cost of reversing the damage becomes overwhelming.”
“If we look at the progress towards 2030 targets, especially of the G20 member states … they have not made a lot of progress towards their current climate targets for 2030,” said Anne Olhoff, chief scientific editor of the report.
Next up, nations will gather at the annual United Nations climate summit (COP29) in Azerbaijan to discuss new emissions-cutting strategies. The new strategies will then be set by February 2025.