A new report from the United Nations predicts that the combined climate pledges of the 193 countries that have signed the Paris Agreement are insufficient to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C (2.7°F) by the end of the century, and expect temperatures to instead increase by 2.5°C (4.5°F) over the same time period.
Although this year’s assessment, detailed in the Nationally Determined Contributions Synthesis Report, is more optimistic than last year’s prediction that global greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 13.7 percent by 2030, the 2022 report still forecasts a 10.6 percent increase in emissions over 2010 levels by the end of the decade. Although projections indicate that emissions are not expected to increase after 2030, they are also not expected to decline at a rate necessary to keep temperature increases below the 1.5°C target.
“The downward trend in emissions expected by 2030 shows that nations have made some progress this year,” explains Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change. “But the science is clear and so are our climate goals under the Paris Agreement. We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world. To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that carbon emissions need to be cut by 43 percent over the next seven years in order to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. Unfortunately, only a small number of pledge updates from individual countries have been submitted since last year’s Climate Change Conference, despite an agreement by all parties to reevaluate their climate commitments; however, those that did update their commitments indicated their intention to improve greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts by the end of the decade.
“At the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year, all countries agreed to revisit and strengthen their climate plans,” remarked Stiell. “The fact that only 24 new or updated climate plans were submitted since COP 26 is disappointing. Government decisions and actions must reflect the level of urgency, the gravity of the threats we are facing, and the shortness of the time we have remaining to avoid the devastating consequences of runaway climate change.”
Stiell is calling on the world’s governments to revisit their respective countries’ climate change plans and to fortify their commitments to achieve their goals when their delegates attend the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, this November.
“COP 27 is the moment where global leaders can regain momentum on climate change, make the necessary pivot from negotiations to implementation and get moving on the massive transformation that must take place throughout all sectors of society to address the climate emergency,” Stiell said.
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we are all fucking doomed by greed and inaction.
Aye , my thoughts too James.
The ruling class are throwing us all to the wolves .
There positions in power and wealth status are all that matters to them .
Populations are seen as disposable workforce.
As it stands now the ruling class is using the pretext of ‘climate emergency’ to further their own ends and multiply their power. For all it’s flaws, modern Western civilization and the largely capitalistic system that it has developed has been responsible for the greatest uplift of the standard of living for the most number of people in history. Radical restrictions in energy are already causing havoc in Europe affecting – you guessed it – working people the most. Small businesses collapse while hedge funds and financial bigwigs eat popcorn. The result of all of this will be massive de-industrialization which in turn will negatively impact the standard of living of the middle/working class and poor. The WEF says they envision a world where “you own nothing and are happy” you know what that sounds like to me? Neo-Feudalism with a dash of Orwellian Newspeak.
In case we’re not already doomed, aren’t there some practical steps we can take?
– stop “following” the top 1% income people online, be that Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, or the forthcoming BlueSkySocial (beta version soon from Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO). Also stop reading online news stories about them.
– stop following them in other ways, such as not buying magazines where they are mentioned, not watching TV programs featuring them, etc. They have become toxic, and if you continue following them, you will encourage that toxicity.
– my own use of Twitter has become strategic — I’m only there for the duration of the pandemic, and most of the accounts I follow are infectious disease physicians, scientists, epidemiologists, like that. Some of those are moving to Mastodon, but they will likely retain some Twitter presence. Yes, Twitter will have its epic downtime, but it’s unlikely to fail permanently.
Or maybe, i dunno, stop using fossil fuels or things that rely on them in your personal everyday life?
agreed, they put that stuff in TONS of cosmetics
I got sick and looked at the crap I’d been slathering on my skin and ingesting and drinking, unreal how many petroleum products get “repurposed”
having some of it happening real time in our lifetimes is scary and as far as the red herring one percent who people fixate on instead of the fact that we already have climate refugees then perhaps our species doesn’t deserve this beautiful planet 🙁
I’ve seen such a drop in things I grew up with and it’s not just my imagination as a great deal of butterflies have vanished and moths though we had a white moth keep visiting us till a couple days ago and it’s been really cold so that was interesting.
My husband whom I gifted a one year subscription to got a picture of it and we just put it away, I did put up a photo , when you zoom in it gets weird as I was taking a pic of a completely vertical “trail”. They were common here over the city especially and nobody thinks it’s weird, no comment. (also if you do find that pic look at the bottom real close of the trail)