‘The world must get its act together’ on global warming
The gap between what is pledged to tackle carbon emissions by 2020 and what is needed remains as wide as ever, perhaps wider, according to the UN. Annual carbon emissions would have to fall by around 8.5 per cent compared with 2010 to bring earth on...
The gap between what is pledged to tackle carbon emissions by 2020 and what is needed remains as wide as ever, perhaps wider, according to the UN.
Annual carbon emissions would have to fall by around 8.5 per cent compared with 2010 to bring earth on track for reaching a commonly-accepted goal for warming, said the UN.
In 2010, the last UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, decided to limit the increase in global average temperature to 2C over pre-industrial levels.
The UN Environment Programme report sketched scenarios giving a “likely” chance – more than 66 per cent – of meeting this target.
Annual emissions that in 2010 were 48 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), a standard benchmark of greenhouse gases, would have to peak before 2020 and then fall to 44 billion tonnes of CO2e in that year, it said.
Yet the report also pointed to a possible widening in the “emissions gap,” a term describing the difference between carbon-curbing pledges and what is needed to reach the 2C objective.
Last year, UNEP estimated that this “emissions gap” was set to be between five and nine billion tonnes in 2020. Its new estimates are higher, at six to 11 billion tonnes, “but are still within the range of uncertainty of estimates,” the updated report said. The size of the gap depends on how rigorously pledges are implemented and monitored, it explained.
Assuming that the 2020 global carbon curb is reached, emissions would still have to be followed by a steep decline, of an average of 2.6 per cent per year, UNEP cautioned.
“To have a likely chance of complying with the 2C target, total greenhouse-gas emissions in 2050 must be about 46 per cent lower than their 1990 level, or about 53 per cent lower than their 2005 level,” the report said. But it also highlighted a range of strong options for reducing the gap.
Potential reductions of around 16 billion tonnes of CO2e in 2020 lie in efficiency gains in electricity production, industry, transport, construction and agriculture; in switching to renewable energy sources and installing carbon capture at power stations; and in cutting emissions from deforestation and agriculture.
Gains could also be made if countries toughened the conditions of pledges that so far are voluntary and minimised use of “forest sinks” and surplus credits on the carbon market to offset their own emissions.
The estimates are made in an update of a report, Bridging the Gap, issued ahead of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Durban which concluded on Friday.
Set up nearly 20 years ago, the forum has been dogged by bickering over how to share out the burden of reducing carbon emissions, especially from coal, oil and gas, which are the backbone of the energy supply today.
Reacting to the report, the EU climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, said: “The bad news is that the gap is widening. The good news is that UNEP shows that it can still be closed.
“But its report underlines why the world does not need more time to think what to do. The world must get its act together.”