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The goal of the climate summit is to keep the 1.5 degree target. The world is currently heading towards a temperature of 2.7 degrees. A key climate researcher explains what’s at stake in Glasgow.
Glasgow – The renowned Swedish climate researcher Johan Rockström has warned of the impending drastic global warming towards which the world is headed with its current plans.
“With 2.7 degrees we would be entering uncharted territory. We would live on a different planet than today, ”said the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research of the German Press Agency at the world climate conference in Glasgow.
World is on a 2.7 degree path
The plans submitted to the United Nations so far are nowhere near enough to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to a tolerable level of 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.
According to the UN Climate Agency, the world is instead on a 2.7 degree path. This would mean such a rapid increase in the frequency of extreme events such as droughts, floods, fires, diseases or heat waves that these would make a decent life on earth almost impossible for mankind, according to Rockström.
In this scenario, 3.5 billion people would be living in regions whose average annual temperature would pose a risk to their health in the year 2070 – well before 2.7 degrees. In addition, one will have problems in this future to feed humanity at all. “You would practically live on a destroyed planet,” said the climate researcher. “To be clear: You don’t want to go there.”
Ambitions alone are no longer enough
At the world climate conference COP26 in Scotland around 200 countries are currently fighting over how the impending climate catastrophe can be averted. “We now have more scientific evidence than ever that we must do everything we can to achieve the 1.5-degree target,” said Rockström. In Glasgow he is hoping for specific final dates for saying goodbye to coal-fired electricity and the internal combustion engine. Since so much time has already passed, alliances between ambitious countries are no longer enough; all states have to move. At the climate summit, however, it was already clear in the first few days which countries were on the brakes. So the presidents of China and Russia did not appear in person. India announced climate neutrality, but delayed this plan until 2070.
“To be really successful, all the nations gathered here would have to update their plans to have zero net emissions by 2050 and to cut emissions by half by 2030,” said the Swede. “If we got that from all nations, that would be a reason to celebrate.” Dpa
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