The planet may cross the crucial global warming limit of 1.5°C in seven years, as CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels continue to rise, an international consortium of climate scientists warned this Tuesday, December 5, in its annual evaluation of the Global Carbon Project. Experts urge countries participating in the COP28 summit to “act now” against pollution generated by coal, oil and gas.
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At the UN climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, battle lines are being drawn over the future of fossil fuels, as big polluters try to dismiss calls for a deal to phase out high-energy energy generation. of carbon, responsible for most of the greenhouse gases caused by man.
CO₂ pollution from fossil fuels increased 1.1% last year, according to an international consortium of climate scientists in its annual assessment of the Global Carbon Project. Experts highlighted an increase in polluting emissions in China and India, which are now, respectively, the first and third countries with the highest polluting gases in the world.
The study estimated that There is a 50% chance that warming will exceed the Paris Agreement target, of 1.5 degrees Celsius for several years by around 2030. However, scientists pointed out uncertainties around the warming, due to greenhouse gases other than CO₂.
“It is becoming increasingly urgent,” the assessment’s lead author, Pierre Friedlingstein, of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, told reporters.
“The time between now and 1.5 degrees is shrinking enormously, so to maintain the possibility of staying below 1.5 degrees, or very close to 1.5 degrees, we must act now,” he stressed.
“Wrong address”
In the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, countries committed to limit temperature rise to well below 2°C, relative to pre-industrial times, and preferably to 1.5°C.
Since then, the more ambitious 1.5°C target has taken on greater urgency, as evidence emerges that warming beyond that limit could trigger dangerous and irreversible tipping points.
To maintain that limit, the UN IPCC climate science panel has indicated that CO₂ emissions must be halved this decade.
But this is becoming an increasingly difficult task as emissions continue to rise, the Global Carbon Project concluded.
Glen Peters, senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research, said carbon dioxide emissions are now six percent higher than when countries signed the Paris Agreement.
“Things are going in the wrong direction,” Peters said.
The outlook comes despite a promising rise in renewable energy, a key issue in climate talks at COP28, where more than 100 countries signed a call to triple renewable capacity this decade.
“Solar energy, electric vehicles, batteries, they are all growing rapidly, which is fantastic. But that is only half the story (…) The other half is reducing fossil fuel emissions. And we are simply not doing enough,” remarked the expert.
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