Climate blog

In advance of the COP21 United Nations climate talks to be held in Paris from 30 November to 11 December, every country was asked to submit proposals on cutting use of fossil fuels in order to reduce their emissions of greenhouses gases and so tackle global warming. The deadline for these pledges was 1 October.

A total of 147 nations made submissions, and scientists have since been totting up how these would affect climate change. They have concluded they still fall well short of the amount needed to prevent a 2*C warming by 2100, a fact that will be underlined later this week when the Grantham Research Institute releases its analysis of the COP21 submissions. This will show that the world’s carbon emissions, currently around 50bn tonnes a year, will still rise over the next 15 years, even if all the national pledges made to the UN are implemented. The institute’s figures suggest they will reach 55bn to 60bn by 2030.

To put that figure in context, the world will have to cut emissions to 36bn billion tonnes of carbon to have a 50-50 chance of keeping temperatures below 2*C, scientists have calculated. Current pledges will not bring the planet near that reduced output. Developed nations may pledge to make increasing use of renewable energy sources but as more developing nations become industrialised, carbon outputs continue to rise overall. And there is no prospect of nations now changing their carbon pledges before or during the Paris talks.

The world is therefore falling well short of its carbon target – though there are some grounds for relative optimism. A study of COP21 pledges by Climate Action Tracker, (CAT) an independent scientific group of European climate experts, indicates that if all pledges are implemented, then global temperatures will rise by 2.7*C. The group revealed that this is a significant improvement on the warming it predicted last year. “Our December update included pledges and informal announcements by China, the US and the EU, and we estimated an average global warming level of 3.1*C,” said CAT member Dr Louise Jeffery of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “The biggest contributing factors to the change in our temperature estimate have been China and India.”

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Send a message to the UK Prime Minister, urging him to lead the way in keeping global temperature rises to below 2*C, by signing one of the Climate Group's postcards and by joining the Time to Act Climate March in London on Sunday 29th November - book your place on the Marlborough coach, here...