Action plans inadequate
DOHA, Nov 30, (Agencies): Major nations’ policies are inadequate to limit global warming and the United States is off track even in carrying out its weak pledge to limit greenhouse gas emissions, a scientific scorecard showed on Friday. The Climate Action Tracker report, issued on the sidelines of talks among almost 200 countries in Doha about climate change, said a toughening of policies was still possible to avert damaging floods, heat waves and rising seas.
Major emitters China, the United States, the European Union and Russia all got “inadequate” ratings for their plans to help limit global warming to an agreed UN ceiling of below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times, it said.
Adding up all national pledges and taking account of rising emissions, the world was headed for a warming of about 3.3 degrees Celsius (6F), it said.
Off track
“We are off track and the United States is not likely to meet its pledge,” said Niklas Hoehne of research group Ecofys, which compiles the tracker with Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
He told Reuters that the other top emitters were on course at least to meet their promised curbs in emissions by 2020 as part of efforts to avert severe change that would disrupt water and food supplies.
President Barack Obama aims to cut US emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The US delegation leader in Doha, Johnathan Pershing, has reaffirmed the target and said Washington has been making “enormous” efforts.
But the US Senate never ratified Obama’s pledge, made in 2009. Hoehne said that the United States could step up action by tightening emissions from existing coal plants, giving more incentives for renewable energy or tougher building codes.
Pershing said US emissions seem to have peaked, spurred by Obama’s clean energy policies. The US goal is being helped by a shift to less-polluting shale gas from coal, and by an economic slowdown.
Emitters
Among the biggest emitters, only Japan and South Korea had formal policies for cuts that were “sufficient”. India, Brazil and Indonesia got a “medium rating,” according to the scorecard.
In a related story, the chances of hitting the UN’s global warming target are diminishing, but the goal can still be met if greenhouse-gas emissions fall by 15 percent by 2020, scientists said on Friday.
“Limiting global warming below 2C, or even to below 1.5C, remains technically and economically feasible, but only with political ambitions backed by rapid action starting now,” the team said.
“If nothing more is done except the current pledges, costs would be much higher to reach deeper reductions necessary, and/or the damage from climate impacts would be far greater.”
The United Nations climate chief also is urging people not to look solely to their governments to make tough decisions to slow global warming, and instead to consider their own role in solving the problem.
Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN’s climate change secretariat, said Friday that she didn’t see “much public interest, support, for governments to take on more ambitious and more courageous decisions.” “Each one of us needs to assume responsibility. It’s not just about domestic governments,” she said.
The United Nations also said on Friday greater urgency was needed to slow climate change and that even success at current low-ambition talks among 200 nations in Doha would delight no one.
Doha is seeking to agree measures including a symbolic extension of the UN’s existing Kyoto Protocol, which binds rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until end-2012.
“Ultimately (governments) do have to reach a politically balanced package (in Doha) with which no one will be delighted ... fully recognising that what comes out of Doha is not at the level of ambition that we need,” she said.