Summary:
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Despite legally enforceable commitments to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5C over pre-industrial levels established at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) claimed in a new report that there is “no credible road to 1.5C in place” today.
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To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, emissions must be cut by 45 percent, while average temperature rise must be cut by 30 percent.
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Greenhouse gas emissions and reforming the global economy are two challenging but necessary goals.
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Changing the food systemUNEP says that sectors that make food must also cut their emissions quickly and for a long time because they make almost a third of all greenhouse gases.
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It was said that if actions were taken in four areas—protecting natural ecosystems, changing nutrition, improving farm food production, and getting rid of carbon from food supply chains—emissions from the food system could be cut by about a third of what they are now by 2050.
Despite legally enforceable commitments to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5C over pre-industrial levels established at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) claimed in a new report that there is “no credible road to 1.5C in place” today.
Unsettling truth
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, stated that the report “tells us in cold scientific terms what nature has been saying to us all year, through terrible floods, storms, and blazing fires: we have to stop filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and stop doing it fast.”
“We had a chance to introduce little improvements, but that opportunity has passed. If we don’t want the climate to worsen, we need to change how our businesses and communities work.
UNEP estimates that even though countries promised to reduce their carbon footprints in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), less than 1% of the world’s estimated greenhouse gas emissions for 2030 will have been cut since the last climate summit in Glasgow in 2021.
Miniscule decreases
According to UNEP’s calculations, this is just the equivalent of 0.5 gigatonnes of CO2; it also noted that only a 45% reduction in emissions would keep global warming to 1.5C.
According to the most recent data, the planet will likely experience a temperature increase of 2.4 to 2.6C by the end of this century.
“There is hope because the entire unconditional execution of the NDCs and further net-zero emissions obligations indicates a maximum temperature increase of only 1.8C.” UNEP says that this scenario is not plausible because current emissions, short-term NDC commitments, and long-term net-zero goals are not in line with each other.
Non-fossil fuel alternative
A “large-scale, rapid” and fossil fuel-free transformation of our “electricity supply, industry, transport, and building sectors, and the food and financial systems” is required to improve the situation, according to the UN agency. To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, emissions must be cut by 45 percent, while average temperature rise must be cut by 30 percent.
Although the transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is already underway in the building sector, transportation, industry, and electricity supply, the paper says that it has to happen “far faster.”
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