UN: ‘Quick wins’ needed to keep climate goals within reach

Countries have procrastinated for too long and need to begin making steep cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions immediately, or risk missing agreed targets for limiting global warming, a senior United Nations official said.

The appeal by Inger Andersen, who heads the UN Environment Program, came days before governments gather in Madrid for an annual climate change meeting, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

“We need quick wins to reduce emissions as much as possible in 2020,” Andersen said, as her agency published its annual ‘emissions gap’ report showing the amount of planet-heating gases being pumped into the atmosphere hitting a new high last year, despite a near-global pledge to reduce them.

Over the coming decade, worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases will have to drop more than 7% each year to stop average global temperatures from increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius this century compared with pre-industrial times, the agency said.

Scientists say that target — contained in the 2015 Paris climate accord — would prevent many of the more dramatic consequences of global warming.

Even the less ambitious goal of capping global warming at 2C (3.6 F) would require annual emissions cuts of 2.7% between 2020 and 2030, the agency said.

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to review their efforts for cutting greenhouse gases by 2020.

Current national pledges would leave the world 3.2 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100 than pre-industrial times, with dramatic consequences for life on Earth, the UN agency said, adding that getting the world back on track to 1.5 C would require a fivefold increase in measures pledged so far.

The UN agency published a separate report last week, which found that countries are planning to extract more than twice the amount of fossil fuels from the ground than can be burned in 2030 if the 1.5C target is to be met.