The report by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) says that all the G7 countries and the member states of the European Union have so far agreed is to keep their emissions at around their present levels for the next 15 years, instead of cutting them fast.
The combined climate plans for the G7 and the EU mark “a small step towards the right track to hold warming to 2˚C, but they still leave a substantial emissions gap”, according to analysts from CAT, which reports on countries’ emissions commitments and performance.
The gap yawns so wide that the present level of commitment shown by the two blocs would go less than one-third of the way to staying within the 2˚C limit, they find.
Extreme risk
And they say there is “an extreme risk” that this low level of ambition could continue until 2030 to keep emissions so high that it would be impossible to stay within the 2°C warming limit, agreed by the world’s governments.
The concern is based on what climate negotiators call the blocs’ Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), undertakings given by governments about what each of them will do to implement the global agreement on tackling climate change that they hope to reach at the UN climate change conference in Paris later this year.
With the G7 countries meeting in Germany yesterday and today, CAT − a consortium of four research organizations − has looked at the combined INDCs of all G7 governments and the EU, who account together for around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 40% of global GDP.
The current G7+EU policies, CAT says, are projected only to stabilize emissions through to 2030 at close to present levels, despite the need for there to be a rapid decline in emissions.
Read more at Rich Countries’ Climate Plans Leave Yawning Gap
No comments:
Post a Comment