Three new reports from the United Nations paint a bleak picture of what is to come in the near future as the world falls short in mobilizing to fight climate change. Nations are failing to create and implement sufficient plans to reduce warming, reports say, as global greenhouse gas emissions mount — a combination that puts the planet on track to warm nearly 3 degrees Celsius in less than 80 years to reach .
The UN released the reports Wednesday and Thursday detailing the state of the planet. For years, scientists inside and outside the organization have warned with increasing urgency that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is critical to minimizing extreme temperatures and climate catastrophe.
But according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report, there is now “no credible way” to achieve this.
“Losses and damage from the climate catastrophe are getting worse by the day, and global and national climate commitments are woefully lagging behind,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “…Under current policies, the world is heading for global warming of 2.8 degrees by the end of the century. In other words, we are heading for a global catastrophe.”
As newest @UNEP The Emissions Gap report makes it clear that we are heading towards an economy-crushing level of global warming.
We need #Climate Protection on all fronts – and we need them now.
We must close the emissions gap before catastrophe strikes us all.
— Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) October 27, 2022
The only way to change that trajectory is through “urgent system-wide transformation,” the agency said — but as the UN’s other reports show, such transformative changes are not on track.
On Wednesday, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change released its own report showing that countries around the world are currently on track to increase greenhouse gas emissions by 10.6% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. While this is an improvement on last year’s assessment – which forecast a 13.7% increase – it is still far more than the environment can handle.
The more greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere — particularly carbon dioxide and methane — the more solar radiation is trapped on the planet and the Earth warms. The report warns that nations’ efforts to reduce emissions are still “insufficient” to minimize global warming.
Even if all 193 parties that signed the Paris Climate Agreement meet their current commitments, the world still expects temperatures to rise by around 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.
“This year’s analysis shows that while emissions will stop increasing after 2030, they still do not show the rapid downward trend that science says is necessary over this decade,” the report said, adding that the agency said earlier this year determined that greenhouse gas emissions would need to be reduced by 43% by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Another ominous warning about climate change”
The third report, released on Wednesday by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, shows the importance of limiting these greenhouse gases. In “another ominous warning about climate change,” the agency noted that the planet’s three main greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — hit new highs in 2021, hitting levels of 149%, 262% and 124%, respectively, of the pre-industrial levels.
In another ominous warning about climate change, atmospheric concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – have reached new highs. This means that our planet will continue to warm.
🔗https://t.co/aCJ2WOsLJJ#climate condition #COP27 pic.twitter.com/ywcveodD4A
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) October 26, 2022
From 2020 to 2021, carbon dioxide levels saw an increase that was greater than the compound annual growth rate over the past decade, the report said. It accounted for most of the 50 percent increase in greenhouse gases that have a warming effect from 1990 to 2021.
Perhaps worse, however, was the finding of the “largest annual increase in methane concentrations” since the agency began measuring nearly 40 years ago. This is of particular concern given that methane is the second most common greenhouse gas, accounting for about 20% of global emissions according to the EPA and trapping heat more than 25 times more than carbon dioxide.
“We are nowhere near the scale and pace of emissions reductions needed to put us on track for a 1.5 degree Celsius world,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework on Climate Change. He said the agency had only received 24 new or updated climate plans since the COP 26 global climate conference last year – although all countries have agreed to step up their plans.
This failure, he said, was “disappointing”.
“To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them over the next eight years,” he said. “…Government decisions and actions must reflect the urgency, the seriousness of the threats we face and the shortness of time we have to avoid the devastating consequences of runaway climate change.”
According to Petteri Taalas, weather chief of the World Meteorological Organization, the UN reports show that the world should brace itself to see negative and severe consequences as the planet warms.
“We could face this negative trend in weather patterns that means floods, droughts, heat waves and tropical storms. … But the game we’ve already lost is the melting of the glaciers,” Taalas told CBS News at a briefing on the report Wednesday. “We have such a high concentration of carbon dioxide that the melting of glaciers will continue for hundreds of years, even thousands of years to come.”
“We’re on ‘Code Red’ now”
Leaders stressed that we can still – and must – act.
One of the most important issues that needs to be addressed, according to Taalas, is reducing the burning of fossil fuels, which are a major source of greenhouse gases.
“Methane has a relatively short lifetime of less than 10 years and its impact on climate is therefore reversible. As our top and most urgent priority, we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which are the main cause of climate change and the associated extreme weather conditions that will affect the climate for thousands of years through loss of polar ice, warming oceans and rising sea levels.” Taalas said in a press release, “We need to transform our industrial, energy, and transportation systems and our entire way of life.”
As the UN released its plethora of reports, climate scientists at Oregon State University published their own special report in the American Institute of Biological Sciences’ journal BioScience, saying, “We are now on planet Earth at ‘Code Red’.”
“Humanity is clearly facing a climate emergency,” they wrote. “The scale of unspeakable human suffering, already immense, is growing rapidly as the number of climate-related disasters escalates.”
As 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of a landmark 1992 climate warning by more than 1,700 scientists, the world continues to approach temperatures the Earth “has not experienced in the past 3 million years.”
With warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius, scientists have warned that we can expect more frequent – and more devastating – climate catastrophes. Earlier this year, a prolonged drought caused vital reservoirs and rivers in the US and Europe to reach unprecedented low water levels, while extreme heat brought record-breaking triple-digit temperatures. Heatwaves have hit India and Pakistan, while extreme flooding has killed more than 400 people in South Africa and more than 1,000 in Pakistan.
“We are now in the midst of a major climate crisis and global catastrophe, with far worse to come if we carry on as usual. Therefore, the stakes are higher today than at any time since the advent of the stable climate system that has supported us for more than 10,000 years,” the researchers said.
“…The future of humanity depends on the creativity, morality and perseverance of the 8 billion of us on the planet.”
CBS News correspondent Pamela Falk contributed to this report.
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