New Glasgow commitments, if implemented, would result in a 12 percent emissions cut by the decade’s end, well short of what is needed to curb global warming
LONDON — The United Nations warned Friday that based on current action plans submitted by 191 countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is on track to warm by more than 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
The findings come as President Biden gathered the world’s biggest emitters to the White House Friday to try reach an agreement among some of them to cut methane — a potent greenhouse gas — 30 percent by 2030.
The U.N. report offered good and bad news as it synthesized the latest projected emissions by individual countries, as forecast in their “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDC) reports.
So far, 113 parties to the U.N. climate accord, including the European Union’s collective of 27 countries, have submitted 86 new, updated and often more ambitious projections. Together these nations account for about half of total emissions. If they carry out their current plans, they are on track to produce a 12 percent reduction in heat-trapping gases in 2030 compared to 2010.
That’s the good news, said, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of U.N. Climate Change, in a news conference Friday marking the release of the report.
But taken as a whole, the 191 nations that are parties to the U.N. climate accord would contribute a 16 percent increase in greenhouse gases in 2030 than 2010.
Espinosa called these numbers “sobering.”
“It is not enough, what we have on the table,” she said during the news conference.