World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds | Environment

The world is still on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of 2.6°C as countries have failed to make strong enough climate commitments, while emissions from fossil fuels have reached a record high, according to two major reports.

Despite their promises, new emissions reduction plans presented by governments at the Cop30 climate negotiations taking place in Brazil have done little to avoid dangerous global warming for the fourth year in a row, according to the Climate Action Tracker update.

The world is now predicted to warm 2.6°C compared to pre-industrial times by the end of the century – the same temperature increase predicted last year.

This level of heating easily exceeds the thresholds set in the Paris climate pact, which all countries have agreed to, and would drag the world into a catastrophic new era of extreme weather and severe hardship.

Another report finds that fossil fuel emissions causing the climate crisis will increase by about 1% this year to a record high, but the rate of increase has been cut by more than half in recent years.

Over the past decade, emissions from coal, oil and gas have increased by 0.8% per year, compared to 2.0% per year in the previous decade. The accelerated deployment of renewable energy is now on track to meet the annual increase in global energy demand, but has not yet exceeded it.

“A 2.6°C world means global disaster,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. Such a warm world would likely trigger major “tipping points” that would result in the collapse of key Atlantic Ocean circulations, loss of coral reefs, long-term deterioration of ice sheets, and conversion of Amazon rainforest to savannah.

“All this means the end of agriculture in the UK and across Europe, drought and monsoon failure in Asia and Africa, deadly heat and humidity,” Hare said. “It’s not a good place to be. You want to stay away from that.”

The world has already warmed by about 1.3°C since the industrial revolution due to deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, a situation that has already triggered storms, wildfires, droughts and other more violent calamities.

Under the Paris Agreement, signed in 2016, countries are supposed to periodically update their emissions reduction plans, with new submissions of so-called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) expected for this round of UN climate negotiations currently underway in Belém, Brazil.

But only around a hundred countries have done so, the reductions envisaged being very insufficient to face the climate crisis.

In a scenario that takes into account countries’ net-zero emissions targets as well as NDCs, the outlook has deteriorated slightly, with global warming falling from 2.1°C to 2.2°C by the end of the century, according to the Climate Action Tracker, largely due to the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Donald Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax,” upended climate policies at home and pushed for more oil and gas drilling in America and abroad. For the first time, the United States did not send a delegation to a COP summit, much to the relief of some delegates.

Although the rate of global warming remains dangerously high, expected levels have fallen since the Paris agreement, when warming of around 3.6°C was predicted by 2100. This is due to an explosion in the rate of deployment of clean energy and a decline in the use of coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

However, an assessment released simultaneously by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) reveals that emissions from fossil fuels are still expected to increase by around 1% in 2025.

The new analyzes also show a worrying weakening of the planet’s natural carbon sinks.

Scientists said the combined effects of global warming and tree felling have transformed the rainforests of Southeast Asia and large parts of South America from global CO2.₂ flows into climate heating gas sources.

There was a global agreement to “ditch” fossil fuels at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023, but the issue is still contested at UN meetings.

On Tuesday, the G77 group of countries and China, which represents around 80% of the world’s population, announced their support for a process agreed at Cop30 to support a just transition away from fossil fuels – although other countries (including Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, the UK and the EU) did not support it.

Brazil has created an investment fund to combat deforestation, but many countries, including the United Kingdom, have not joined.

Former US Vice President Al Gore told delegates it was “literally insane that we would allow [global heating] continue “.

“How long are we going to sit here and keep turning up the thermostat for these kinds of events to get even worse?” he said.

“We have to adapt and mitigate, but we also have to be realistic: If we allow this madness to continue, to use the sky as an open sewer, it will be very difficult to adapt to some things.”

Professor Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia, one of 130 GCP scientists, said: “We are not yet in a situation where emissions are falling as quickly as they need to be to combat climate change, but at the same time emissions are increasing much less rapidly than before due to the extraordinary growth of renewable energy.

“It’s clear that climate policy and actions are working – we have the power to bend these curves on a global scale. »

She said 35 countries, representing a quarter of global GDP, now have growing economies but falling emissions. This has been the case in Europe and the United States for some years, but these countries have now been joined by Australia, Jordan, South Korea and others.

The report predicts that the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere will reach 425 ppm (parts per million) in 2025, compared to 280 ppm in the pre-industrial era. It would have been 8 ppm lower if carbon sinks had not been weakened.

The GCP projection for 2025 is based on monthly data through September and has been proven accurate in the previous 19 annual reports.

Romain Ioualalen, of Oil Change International, said: “Countries meeting at Cop30 must redouble their efforts on renewable energy and start planning for an accelerated phase-out of fossil fuel production and use. »