World ‘nowhere near’ hitting emissions targets, UN says

The United Nations says current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on course to blow past the limit for global warming countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The United Nations climate office said Wednesday that its latest estimate based on 193 national emissions targets would see temperatures rise to 2.5 C above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century.

That’s a full degree higher than the ambitious goal set in the Paris pact to limit warming by 1.5 C .

The report found that emissions will also increase by 10.6 per cent by 2030 from 2010 levels, a slight decrease from the 13.7 per cent estimates last year.

Scientists say emissions of planet-heating gases actually need to be cut by 45 per cent by the end of the decade.

“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a [1.5 C] world,” the head of the UN climate office, Simon Stiell, said in a statement. “To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”

The report was released ahead of next month’s UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where countries will again try to ratchet up their targets.

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