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Only 11 countries are reducing emissions and all will miss Paris targets
bne IntelliNews
Only 11 developed countries have reduced emissions and none of those are anywhere close to hitting their Paris accord obligations to prevent global temperatures rising more than 1.5°C before reaching zero in 2050. At the current rate of reduction, it will take more than 200 years for the developed world to reach carbon-zero and unless the lead- ing economies of the world commit to make real and deep structural changes and invest trillions of dollars over the next few years, the world is headed for a climate catastrophe.
That is the conclusion of scientists in a new study published in The Lancet.
Researchers have previously raised concerns about whether high-income countries, with their high per-capita CO2 emissions, can decarbonise fast enough to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement if they continue to pursue aggregate economic growth.
The Lancet paints a very grim picture. Scientists have found that the emission reductions in high-income countries are declining in absolute terms, but still fall “very far short”
of Paris-compliant rates. Absolute decoupling is reducing a country’s CO2 emissions while still increasing its gross domestic product (GDP), also known as “green growth.”
The scientists that compiled the report are from the Univer- sity of Leeds in the UK, the Autonomous University of Barce- lona in Spain, and the London School of Economics.
Politicians in high-income countries have typically responded to this problem by insisting that economic growth can be made green, but the report shows that these are platitudes and mask a failure to push through painful measures needed to make a real difference.
“It has long been understood that emissions can decline alongside growing GDP, specifically when the percentage increase in GDP is outweighed by a larger percentage reduction in the emissions intensity of GDP. Such absolute decoupling is of course necessary for green growth, but it is not sufficient,” the report says. “It is not enough to just reduce emissions by any amount; countries need to reduce their emissions to net zero, and fast enough to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The benchmark for green growth should therefore not just be about whether countries achieve absolute decoupling, but whether they achieve sufficiently rapid absolute decoupling to meet Paris climate and equity commitments.”
The Paris Agreement’s goal is to keep the rise in mean global temperature preferably to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Emissions should be reduced as soon as they can be, and reach net zero by 2050. Emissions would need to be cut by roughly 50% by 2030.
If the targets are missed then the results are unpredictable, but the raging storms and biblical flash floods already seen this summer, the hottest on record, are a mild foretaste of what is to come if the Paris imitative fails, say experts. And if the target is missed, the damage to the ecosystem is irreversible, say scientists.
Miles off target
Governments around the world are conscious of the need to reduce emissions and most have put some sort of green policies in place. The EU’s Green Deal is one of the most comprehensive and many governments have committed to zero-carbon goals by 2050. But The Lancet reports the pace of reductions falls far short of what is needed to hit the Paris targets.
Worryingly the UN also just published its global stocktake of the fight to reduce emissions ahead of the COP28 climate summit that also rang alarm bells. According to the UN the world has two years left to take drastic action to reduce emissions dramatically or face an environmental disaster. Hope is not lost, but the scale of the action and the price tag that will run into trillions of dollars means that the chances of success are already small and dwindling rapidly.
At the current rate of reduction, high-income countries would take more than a staggering 220 years on average to reduce their emissions by 95%, in the process emitting a whopping 27-times their remaining 1.5°C “fair shares” of the Paris Agree- ment reduction. The Paris targets are not being missed by a little. They are being missed by hundreds of miles.
“To meet their 1.5°C fair shares alongside continued economic growth, decoupling rates would on average need to increase by a factor of ten by as soon as 2025,” said the researchers.
Advanced economies are not yet on track to meet the Paris Agreement. / WClarke, Creative Commons
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