Climate deal back on course
Pledges by US President-elect Joe Biden and China to cut emissions have helped to put the world ‘‘within striking distance’’ of meeting the most ambitious goal of the Paris agreement on climate change, a new report says.
If governments fulfil all their promises to become carbon neutral within 30 or 40 years, the global temperature increase could be limited to 2.1 degrees C above preindustrial levels by 2100, according to the assessment by two notfor-profit research groups.
Under the Paris Agreement, which came into force in 2016, 190 countries agreed to keep the increase this century to ‘‘well below 2 degrees’’ and to ‘‘pursue efforts’’ to limit it to 1.5C.
US President Donald Trump formally withdrew the US from the Paris agreement last month, but Biden has pledged that the country will join again after he becomes president. He has also pledged that the US will achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
In September, China’s President Xi Jinping told the United Nations that his country would reach net zero emissions by 2060, and that its emissions would peak before 2030.
China’s commitment alone would reduce global warming by
2100 by 0.2 to 0.3C compared with what it would otherwise have been, according to Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute, which produce the Climate Action Tracker reports. Biden’s pledge would reduce it by 0.1C.
There are now 127 countries, responsible for about 63 per cent of global emissions, which have adopted or are considering such goals. If they all met those targets, global warming by 2100 ‘‘could be as low as 2.1C’’ and the Paris agreement’s 1.5C limit would be ‘‘within striking distance’’, the report says.
However, it says countries have not set out how they would achieve their long-term goals, and have yet to strengthen their targets for cutting emissions by 2030 to put them on course to honour their pledges.
The report says actual policies on switching to renewable energy suggest that Earth is on course for 2.9C of warming by 2100.
‘‘No large emitter has yet submitted a substantially updated [2030 target], and the emissions gap is huge. Short-term targets ... are totally off,’’ said Bill Hare, of Climate Analytics.
Professor Martin Siegert, of Imperial College London, said it was ‘‘extremely positive news’’ but added: ‘‘Even at 2.1C, which is another 1C of warming from today, the world looks set for more heatwaves and wildfires, more flooding, reduced ability to grow crops and less access to fresh water.’’