From “lost decade” of climate action, hope emerges

From “lost decade” of climate action, hope emerges

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) released a look back at ten years of its Emissions Gap Report—a hugely influential publication that compares where greenhouse gas emissions levels are headed to where they should be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

At first glance, the news seems bleak. The world would seem to have spent the last decade doing the exact opposite of what it should. Despite the warnings in each year’s gap report, greenhouse gas emissions grew at an average of 1.6 percent per year from 2008 to 2017. In fact, these emissions are now almost exactly what early gap reports projected they would be in 2020 if the world did nothing to change its brown, polluting growth models.

With the policies currently in place, the world is heading for a 3.5°C temperature increase this century, compared to pre-industrial levels. This is far beyond the goals of the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C, or at least well below 2°C. If this hotter world comes to pass, all of the predictions of catastrophic climate impacts will come true. Rising seas, extreme weather events, and untold harm to people, prosperity and nature.

But behind the grim headlines, a different message emerges from the ten-year summary: one of possibility.

“The last decade didn’t bring the fall in greenhouse gas emissions we wanted, that is true. But we are, in many ways, in a better place than we were ten years ago. Huge advances in awareness, technology and the will to act means that we are now poised to rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions,” said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.

The ten-year summary lays out a number of encouraging developments that have taken place: political focus on the climate crisis is at an all-time high, including through the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and voters and protestors, particularly youth, are increasingly making it clear that the climate crisis is their number one issue.

Cities, regions and businesses are not waiting for central governments to force them to act. Around 7,000 cities from 133 countries, 245 regions from 42 countries, and 6,000 companies with at least US$36 trillion in revenue have pledged to cut emissions.

In addition, the technology for rapid and cost-effective emission reductions has improved significantly. Renewable energy is a perfect example. Explosive growth means that clean energy avoided an estimated two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2017, as it provided around 12 percent of global electricity supplies. The technology is now cheaper than ever to install.

This is all fantastic progress, but it is not even close to sufficient. According to the ten-year summary, nations must at least triple the level of ambition reflected in their climate promises under the Paris Agreement—known as nationally determined contributions—to get on track for a world below 2°C. They must increase ambition at least five times for the 1.5°C target.

Strong action by G20 members, which together account for 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, will be crucial. This action has yet to be seen, according to an advance chapter of the Emissions Gap Report focusing on ways the G20 can increase climate ambition.

Read and download the Emissions Gap report 10-year summary.

Original source: UN Environment
Published on 22 September 2019