New national plans designed to more aggressively combat climate change would hardly dent already dangerously high global temperature projections, according to a United Nations report published Tuesday.
The findings underscore the task at hand for nations as they prepare for COP30 climate negotiations that begin Nov. 10 in Brazil. The U.N. report showed nations are on a path that would bake in long-term changes to the planet such as more deadly heat waves, runaway sea-level rise, and likelier extreme events like wildfires and droughts.
Temperatures would rise between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial-era levels by 2100 through policies governments included in their formal climate strategies last week, the annual U.N. emissions gap analysis found. That trajectory would far exceed the 2015 Paris climate agreement goals of keeping increases “well below” 2 C and the more ambitious 1.5 C mark.
“The bottom line is that nations have had three attempts to hit the mark with their Paris Agreement pledges, and each time they have landed off target,” the report said. “We still need unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, in an ever-compressing timeframe, amid a challenging geopolitical context.”
