More than halfway through the climate summit in Scotland, U.N. researchers issued a report on Tuesday concluding the Earth is on track to warm by at least 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century due to the huge gap between nations’ long-term pledges and what is truly needed to slow global warming.
The analysis by the United Nations Environment Program is based on 33 new mitigation pledges for 2030 that were made since the cutoff date before the start of the annual summit. The total number of official plans to rein in carbon emissions by 2030, known as “nationally determined contributions,” or NDCs, “is now 152, covering 88 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions,” UNEP assessed in an addendum to an earlier report.
“When the effects of full implementation of the latest updates of unconditional and conditional NDCs are projected out to 2100, warming over the 21st century is projected to be limited to 2.7°C (range: 2.2°C–3.1°C) and 2.5°C (range: 2.1°C–3.0°C), respectively, with a 66 percent probability,” it said. “These estimates remain very similar to the estimates published in the Emissions Gap Report 2021, due to limited changes to 2030 emissions.” That makes many of the “net zero” pledges impossible, according to UNEP.
