BRUSSELS — Intensify efforts to fight global warming or start planning a funeral for the Paris Agreement, the United Nations is telling governments ahead of this year’s international climate summit.
Current plans and policies will lead to 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of global warming this century, with zero chance of limiting the temperature increase to the totemic 1.5 C target agreed in Paris in 2015, according to a new report out Thursday.
In fact, existing measures are falling so far short of what’s needed that the world even risks blowing past 2 C, the Paris accord’s upper limit, the U.N. warned.
The severity and frequency of dangerous heat waves, destructive storms and other disasters rise with every fraction of warming. At 3 C, scientists say the world could pass several points of no return that would dramatically alter the planet’s climate and increase sea levels, such as the collapse of polar ice caps.
