Climate commitments remain dangerous above the 1.5 ° C target

In battle against climate change, one figure stands out above all others: 1.5 degrees Celsius. It may be difficult to wrap your head around the effects of a warming world, but the difference between 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2 degrees Celsius is profound. To give an example: with 1.5 degrees Celsius, we are talking about a loss of 70 percent of coral reefs; At 2 degrees Celsius, the corals will disappear. With 1.5 degrees Celsius, 1 in 100 Arctic summers will be ice-free; At 2 degrees Celsius it is 1 in 10.

With the COP26 climate conference near Glasgow close to the finish line, one of the biggest questions to be answered is whether it has kept the 1.5 degree Celsius target alive. It was done by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson asked the countries “Take out all the stops in the next few days to keep 1.5 alive.” And a statement He calls on the “ambitious coalition” to deliver more ambitious climate commitments before COP27 in line with 1.5 degrees Celsius. it now has 41 partner countries, Including the United States.

For countries like the Marshall Islands, which it deals with deletion if emissions from climate change are not regulated, the very idea of ​​not increasing short-term climate commitments is not a trigger. “We need to get back to ensuring that nationally determined contributions are aligned with 1.5 degrees C,” said Tina Stege, climate commissioner for the COP26 for the Marshall Islands, on Nov. 10. “We need to have something that brings us back. On the table, until we meet those goals.”

With all the confusing messages coming out of COP26, it can be difficult to decipher how far we are from reaching the 1.5 degree Celsius goal. Analysis released last week International Energy Agency (IEA) it is estimated that climate commitments made at COP26 so far may help limit global warming to 1.8 degrees by the end of the century. But a separate one analysis The Climate Action Tracker (CAT) found that current commitments add 2.4 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century, putting real policies and actions on the ground and putting the world on the path to a massive warming of 2.7 degrees Celsius, a path for UN leaders . Antonio Guterres said it was a “disaster”. The real difference between 1.8 degrees Celsius and 2.7 degrees Celsius would be profound.

So what happens? The fact is that these are all projections, who have to make certain hypotheses about what will happen by their nature. The IEA assessment assumed that all net zero long-term commitments would be met and included high-level commitments made last week, such as. Reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

But not all of these commitments are now in the more formal and shorter-term climate commitments made by countries to the UN, known as the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

When CAT made the same assumptions for the IEA, it actually came up with the same numbers, says Niklas Höhne, a partner at the NewClimate Institute and co-author of the CAT analysis. “We also have a very optimistic scenario that drops to 1.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, but we basically warn that this is not going to happen,” he says. “Countries have not set enough short-term policies to move themselves towards zero goals. The problem is short-term.”