Paris Climate Summit may get world at least halfway toward global warming target

IMAGE: RICARDO BELIEL/BRAZIL PHOTOS/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY ANDREW FREEDMAN19 HOURS AGO

Climate change news tends to come in two forms — depressing and downright dire. However, two new reports released Friday morning offer reason for optimism concerning the potential outcome of the upcoming Paris Climate Summit that begins Nov. 29.

A U.N. report analyzing the 119 separate emissions reduction pledges from 146 countries shows that, if implemented to their fullest extent, the emissions cuts would limit the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7 degrees Celsius, or about 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100, which is only 0.7 degrees Celsius, or 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit above the globally agreed target.

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During previous U.N. climate negotiations, world leaders agreed to limit global warming to at or below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by the year 2100, determining that any warming beyond that would set in motion dangerous and potentially unstoppable climate impacts, from melting ice sheets to extreme and deadly heat waves.

Emissions scenarios based on the INDCs through October 1, 2015, compared to what would be necessary to reach the temperature target.

IMAGE: UNFCCC

Since that goal was agreed to, studies have shown that dangerous climate impacts may already be occurring despite the fact that global average temperatures have only warmed by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The INDCs have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, by no means enough but a lot lower than the estimated four, five, or more degrees of warming projected by many prior to the INDCs,” said Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in a statement.

In addition, the INDCs submitted to date would lead to an 8% drop in per capita emissions by 2025 during and a 9% drop by 2030, the U.N. analysis found.

The pledges, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, cover 86% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including major industrialized nations like the U.S. and key developing countries including China, India and Brazil.

The report is limited by the scope of the INDCs themselves, since they do not specify emissions cuts beyond the year 2030, and more cuts would be needed to meet the 2 degree Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, temperature target. In Fact, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown that emissions will need to go below zero — meaning that more carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere than put into it — by 2100 in order to meet this target.

IMAGE: MASHABLE/BOB AL-GREENE

The report shows that the INDCs would slow emissions growth worldwide by about a third for the period from 2010 to 2030, compared to 1990 to 2010, with emission reductions of around 4 gigatons, or 4 billion tons, by 2030 compared to scenarios without these plans. However, emissions would still be higher in 2030 compared to prior years.

Figueres said that the new analysis is a reason for optimism about what leaders will come up with when they meet in Paris starting on November 29.

“Fully implemented these plans together begin to make a significant dent in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions: as a floor they provide a foundation upon which ever higher ambition can be built. I am confident that these INDCs are not the final word in what countries are ready to do and achieve over time–the journey to a climate safe-future is underway and the Paris agreement to be inked in Paris can confirm, and catalyze that transition,” she said.

The INDCs are not all created equal, with many of them including targets for cutting emissions relative to the business as usual path, and others expressing targets in terms of carbon intensity, which is the emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product.

Some of the INDCs are contingent on the steps other countries will agree to take at the Paris Summit and beyond.

The Obama administration, for one, has consistently downplayed the need to emerge from Paris with an agreement that would limit global warming to the previously agreed temperature target. Instead, the administration is seeking a mechanism within an agreement ensuring that countries meet frequently to stiffen subsequent targets.

A senior administration official told reporters on Oct. 21 that it's widely recognized that the emissions reductions that will be on the table in Paris won't be sufficient for meeting the 2-degree Celsius target, mainly because they only cover the period from 2020 through 2030. However, the official said his does not mean that the agreement will be ineffective.

"... The collective commitments are necessary but not sufficient to get us to where we ultimately are going to need to get," the official said. "That’s why it is so important that if we reach an agreement in paris, that agreement is based on a collective commitment by countries to use this process of setting bottom up targets… committing to updating them over time, that there is a political commitment to increase the ambition of those commitments."

Additional evidence backs up UN report

A separate report from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy found that the projected global emissions of greenhouse gases in 2030, assuming full implementation of the INDCs, would be between 53 and 61 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent.

For comparison, a business as usual pathway, with no cuts to emissions through 2030, would result in about 68 billion tons of emissions.

The INDCs would not reduce emissions enough to give a 50-66% chance of limiting the rise in global average temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the report found.

Annual global emissions would need to be reduced to below 42 billion metric tons to avoid warming of more than 2°C, according to this analysis, assuming that negative emissions can be achieved later this century.

Additional reporting by Juana Summers.