A failure to slash global emissions is setting the world on a “catastrophic” path to 2.7 degrees Celsius heating, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned just weeks before crunch climate talks.
His comments come as a United Nations report on global emissions pledges found that instead of the reductions needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change, they would see “a considerable increase.”
This shows “the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7-degrees of heating,” Guterres said in a statement.
The figure would shatter the temperature targets of the Paris climate agreement, which aimed for warming well below 2C and preferably capped at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
“Failure to meet this goal will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods,” Guterres said.
Under the landmark 2015 Paris deal, nations committed to slash emissions, as well as to provide assistance to the most climate-vulnerable countries.
But the window for action is narrowing as nations slow-walk their responses.
Last month a bombshell “code red” for humanity from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that Earth’s average temperature will be 1.5C higher around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago.
“We have to act, all of us, we have to act now,” said US President Joe Biden on Friday, urging the world to bring its “highest” ambition to the UN climate conference in Glasgow in November.
“Those who have not yet done so, time is running out,” Biden said in the White House at the start of a virtual summit with nine foreign leaders.
With only 1.1C of warming so far, the world has seen a torrent of deadly weather disasters intensified by climate change in recent months, from asphalt-melting heatwaves to flash floods and untameable wildfires.
The IPCC says emissions should be around 45 percent lower by 2030 compared with 2010 levels to meet the 1.5C goal.
But current pledges by 191 countries would see emissions 16 percent higher at end of the decade than in 2010 – a level that would eventually cause the world to warm 2.7C.
“Overall greenhouse gas emission numbers are moving in the wrong direction,” said UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa in a press conference.
But she said there was a “glimmer of hope” from 113 countries that had updated their pledges, including the United States and European Union.
These new pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), would see their emissions reduced 12 percent by 2030 compared to 2010.