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Title: UN emissions report: The planet is falling well short of its climate
targets

Link: https://www.engadget.com/science/un-emissions...

The outlook for future generations isn't looking so great. The UN released
its annual Emissions Gap Report on Tuesday, and the news is mostly bad. The
worldΓÇÖs projected climate path falls far short of the Paris Agreement
targets. Although the 2025 projections are slightly better than last year's,
some of that improvement is due to the report's methodological changes. The
UN also notes that the upcoming US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will
basically cancel that out.

The UN measures progress based on projections of rising temperatures
(relative to pre-industrial levels) by 2030. The Paris Agreement's goals are
to limit that to 2 degrees Celsius (while pursuing a path to 1.5 degrees C).
The current projections are well above both numbers: 2.3 to 2.5 degrees C.

Those numbers compare to 2.5 to 2.8 degrees C in last year's report, but the
improvement is partially chalked up to methodological changes. The report
states that the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in January 2026 will
wipe out around 0.1 degrees C of progress.

WildfiresMatt Palmer / Unsplash

Getting the temperature rise down to 1.5 degrees C by 2100 is still possible,
but it appears increasingly unlikely. To get there, the world would need to
cut emissions by 55 percent by 2035. Meanwhile, to achieve 2 degrees C of
warming by 2030, those cuts would need to reach 35 percent. As the report
bleakly puts it, national pledges and the current geopolitical situation "do
not provide promising signs that this will happen."

"Given the size of the cuts needed, the short time available to deliver them
and a challenging political climate, a higher exceedance of 1.5 degrees C
will happen, very likely within the next decade," the UN says. The best hope
for reaching the long-term goals now lies in reversing that change after the
fact. However, that carries the risk of crossing "irreversible climate
tipping points," such as the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Of course, rising temperatures alone aren't the only things to worry about.
Cascading effects would include crop losses (and food insecurity), water
scarcity, wildfires, coastal flooding and coral reef collapse. You also can't
ignore the geopolitical implications, as desperate migrants flee
uninhabitable regions, crowding the more livable ones.

A small silver lining is that solar and wind energy development has exceeded
expectations, making their expansion easier and cheaper. The UN notes that
CO2 removal tech could eventually help supplement policy changes, but that
approach is "uncertain, risky and costly."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/science/un-emissions...
well-short-of-its-climate-targets-184255639.html?src=rss

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