Initial Assessment Of Paris Agreement - 1% Reduction By 2030 And That's If All Pledges To Date Hold

[hatrack]

The first assessment of countries’ pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade, a vital component of the Paris climate agreement, has found they are only a fraction of the effort needed to avoid climate breakdown.

If all of the national pledges submitted so far were fulfilled, global emissions would be reduced by only 1% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Scientists have said a 45% reduction is needed in the next 10 years to keep global heating to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, in line with the Paris agreement. Patricia Espinosa, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said: “We are very far away from a pathway that will meet the Paris agreement goal. We are collectively walking into a minefield blindfolded. The next step could be disaster.”

The assessment, published by the UN on Friday, covers countries responsible for only about a third of global emissions. Only 75 of the 197 signatories to the Paris accord submitted their national action plans for reducing emissions between now and 2030 – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – in time to be assessed.

Some of the world’s biggest emitters, including China, the US and India, have still to formulate NDCs. They face renewed pressure to do so urgently. The UN has said that without them, the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November will fail.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/26/co2-emissions-nations-pledges-far-away-from-paris-target-says-un

[Mickju]

1. The Paris Agreement is woefully inadequate.

But it isn't nothing. It's a first step, but ultimately I have no faith that we are not facing catastrophe.

[progree]

2. We have to cut emissions by half in order to stop CO2 atmospheric levels from increasing

https://earthsky.org/earth/rising-carbon-dioxide-co2-record-high-june2020

Geochemist Ralph Keeling runs the Scripps Oceanography program at Mauna Loa. He said:

"People may be surprised to hear that the response to the coronavirus outbreak hasn’t done more to influence CO2 levels. But the buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up. The crisis has slowed emissions, but not enough to show up perceptibly at Mauna Loa."

Even though terrestrial plants and the global ocean absorb an amount of CO2 equivalent to about half of the 40 billion tons of CO2 pollution emitted by humans each year, the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere has been steadily accelerating. (emphasis added by Progree)

In other words, about 20 billion tons a year are absorbed by plants and the ocean, and the rest of our emissions just keep building up in the atmosphere.

I forgot to mention that the CO2 being absorbed by the oceans are making it more acidic (more accurately reducing its level of alkalinity- its pH is 8.1 while neutral is 7)