As the COP27 climate summit begins, emissions reduction pledges are still far behind where they need to be to meet the goals to limit global warming
The good news: countries have been increasing their ambitions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The bad news: it’s not nearly enough.
Every fraction of a degree of warming avoided makes a difference in lessening the ever worsening impacts of the climate crisis. Such changes have already been seen across the globe this year, with heat waves, floods and droughts all exacerbated by rising global temperatures. The window to narrow the gap between what is needed to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement and what is currently being done is small—about a decade—and quickly closing.
The gap between current pledges and keeping warming to two degrees C is equivalent to about 12 gigatons of CO2—the gap to 1.5 degrees C is an even steeper 20 gigatons. Conversely, other countries have domestic policies that should achieve more reductions than their current pledges aim for. India, for example, has set a modest NDC but has policies aimed at boosting renewable energy that will easily surpass that goal, Fransen says. Countries such as India are developing economically but cannot have unfettered use of fossil fuels to do so as the U.S. and other developed countries did last century.
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