The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened COP-27 in Sharm-El-Sheik, saying, “the world is on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” As two weeks of the international negotiations come to an end, are we on course to take our foot off the accelerator? Or not?
Taking the Paris Agreement as the measure, taking our foot off the accelerator means reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to keep global warming within 1.5oC. The world is currently at 1.1oC of warming, and this is increasing, not decreasing.
The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the plan of each country to conditionally or unconditionally reduce emissions, when added up together, mean we are on course for warming of 2.4oC to 2.6oC over the twenty-first century. The world needs to reduce emissions by an additional 23 Giga tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent for a 1.5oC pathway – assuming full implementation of the unconditional NDCs- for a 66 per cent chance of achieving the temperature target.
Approximately a quarter of emissions are from fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation, a quarter from agriculture and land use (mainly animal farming), just less than a quarter from industry, and the rest from transportation, buildings and other use.
To avoid getting on the highway to climate hell, the world should have stopped burning fossil fuels decades ago. It’s reported that there are 636 delegates linked to the fossil fuel industry at COP-27. What were their objectives?
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