The Earth is headed for 2.5° to 2.9° Celsius of warming far beyond the upper limit of the Paris Agreement's commitments, the U.N. reported.
The U.N. Environment Program's report on Monday raised the stakes for climate negotiators preparing to gather this month at COP28 in Dubai. The findings came as global temperatures and carbon concentrations hit new records and more extreme weather events pummel the planet.
Atmospheric CO2 levels were around 280 parts per million for almost 6,000 years of human civilization. Since the Industrial Revolution, they've risen to 418 ppm in 2022.
The average global temperature increased with CO2 concentrations and is now at 1.2° above pre-industrial levels. This year also is on track to be the hottest ever recorded.
The 196 nations signing the 2015 Paris treaty committed to hold warming this century to under 2° above pre-industrial levels, or preferably 1.5°.
UNEP's new "Emissions Gap Report" shows the distance between the pledged emissions cuts known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCS, and the amounts needed to meet the climate treaty targets.
"Unless nations go much further than current pledges, the world faces global warming of 2.5° to 2.9°," said Simon Stiell, a former government official from the Caribbean island nation of Grenada who is now executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, the platform for U.N. climate talks. "We need to keep 1.5° alive."
The report found some progress: A 2015 projection that emissions in 2030 would increase by 16% based on existing policies has fallen to 3%. Still, it was far from what will be needed to fulfill the treaty's obligations.
"Unprecedented annual emission cuts are required from now to 2030 to achieve the reductions required," the report said.
Emissions from CO2, methane and other warming gases would have to be cut by 28% by 2030 to stick to the 2° limit, and by 42% by 2030 to stick to the 1.5° limit.
Nairobi-based UNEP called on world leaders to close the gap.
"Humanity is breaking all the wrong records when it comes to climate change," UNEP's Executive Director Inger Andersen wrote in the report.
"The world needs to lift the needle out of the groove of insufficient ambition and action," she said, "and start setting new records on cutting emissions, green and just transitions, and climate finance – starting now."
A nearly 3° temperature rise by 2100 would bring more heat extremes, water shortages, collapses of marine ecosystems, species extinctions, potentially catastrophic sea level rise, declines in food production and fisheries, and a risk of tipping points in the Arctic and Amazon.
'A planet for the 99%'
Separately, an Oxfam International report found that world's richest 1% generated as much carbon emissions as the poorest two-thirds in 2019.
It said the wealthiest 77 million of the world's 8 billion people produced 16% of the world's 33.2 gigatonnes of global carbon emissions, an amount that was "the same as the emissions of the poorest 66% of humanity" or 5 billion people.
The richest group included billionaires, millionaires and everyone who earned more than US$140,000 a year. Their carbon emissions canceled the benefits of almost 1 million wind turbines and surpassed the amount generated by all car and road transport in 2019, the report said.
The report also said the rich group's emissions boosted the "mortality cost of carbon" by raising temperatures enough to cause the deaths of an estimated 1.3 million people. Oxfam called for climate equality – a planet for the 99 % – and recommended imposing a 60% income tax on the richest 1% to raise US$6.4 trillion a year for the world to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
“For years we’ve fought to end an era of fossil fuels to save millions of lives and our planet," said Oxfam's interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar. "It’s clearer than ever this will be impossible until we also end an era of extreme wealth."
The report on Monday was based on Stockholm Environment Institute's Emissions Inequality Dashboard, which combines data about income groups and national emissions from 1990 to 2019. The dashboard also has possible scenarios for future emissions inequality through 2100.
It also found that more than 91% of deaths caused by climate-related disasters over the past half-century were in developing countries.
At the COP15 climate summit in 2009, the wealthiest nations pledged to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 for the climate needs of developing countries. Oxfam said no more than US$24.5 billion was spent in 2020.
Rich countries off-track
UNEP's report found the wealthiest nations are failing to do what is required of them this decade and beyond 2030 to meet the treaty's legal obligations.
"Globally, governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement," it said.
"Immediate, accelerated and relentless mitigation action is needed to bring about the deep annual emission cuts that are required from now to 2030 to narrow the emissions gap, with unparalleled annual cuts required to bridge the gap, even without accounting for excess emissions since 2020."
The Group of 20 forum of the world's biggest economies was mostly to blame.
"Most concerningly," it said, "none of the G-20 members are currently reducing emissions at a pace consistent with meeting their net-zero targets."
The most optimistic scenario found the likelihood of limiting global warming to 1.5° is only 14%.
"Under current policies, the carbon budget for a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5° is expected to clearly be exceeded by 2030," the report found.
"Even the budget for a 66% chance of limiting warming to 2° is expected to be reduced by more than a third by 2030," it said, "leaving very little room for warming to be kept well below 2° if emissions continue at current rates."
