Sep 23, 2019 6:36 PM

We Are Nowhere Close to Meeting Our Climate Goals

A UN report says the world needs to triple the aggressiveness of its climate commitments to stave off environmental collapse.

It was unseasonably warm in New York City as world leaders convened at the United Nations headquarters for the Climate Action Summit on Monday. A global climate strike organized by the teen activist Greta Thunberg days earlier had set the tone: We need to implement far more aggressive decarbonization efforts—now.

“This is not a climate talk summit, we have had enough talk. This is a climate action summit,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said during his opening remarks. “The ticket to entry is not a beautiful speech, but concrete action.”

The summit highlighted the nations doing the most to fulfill their commitments as part of the 2016 Paris climate accord. That meant representatives from Saudi Arabia, Japan, and the US got no time on stage. Among the biggest contributors to the global carbon budget, they were excluded for not sufficiently committing to emissions reduction or for pursuing policies that actively undermine the Paris accord. President Donald Trump underscored his climate dismissal by attending for a mere 15 minutes. With dozens of world leaders descending on UN headquarters, Trump had scheduled a competing meeting at the UN for a “call to protect religious freedom”; in the end, he and Vice President Mike Pence made a brief surprise appearance at the climate meeting.

The tone of the climate summit was one of urgency. As part of the Paris accord, countries agreed to adopt nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, which outlined the steps they would take to limit greenhouse gas emissions within their borders. Even back in 2016, when the Paris agreement was formally signed, it was clear the contributions alone would not keep warming below a global average of 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. This is a so-called “tipping point” beyond which the fallout from climate change begins to rapidly accelerate. But so far, the world’s industrialized nations haven’t even hewed to this lackluster goal.

Since 2016, global carbon emissions have continued to grow. Last year, the US, which is the second largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions after China, saw its largest increase in carbon emissions since 2010. On Sunday, the UN World Meteorological Organization released a report that showed that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels grew by 2 percent last year to reach an all-time high. At this rate, the report notes, the world’s emissions will continue growing past 2030, making it extremely difficult to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 C, according to the UN climate panel.

Even worse, the report concluded the current NDCs will lead to an increase of 2.9 to 3.4 C by 2100. To have any hope of meeting the 2 C goal, the “current level of NDC ambition needs to be roughly tripled.” To keep average temperatures below the preferred (but still problematic) threshold of 1.5 C is “technically possible,” the report notes, but would require a rapid, global mobilization unprecedented in human history.

In light of this emissions gap, many countries are stepping up their NDCs. At the UN summit, Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed how Germany will phase out all of its coal plants by 2038. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the country has stopped issuing permits for offshore oil exploration, will plant one billion trees by 2028, and will use only renewable electricity by 2023. UN Secretary General Guterres called for countries to commit to carbon neutrality by 2050, and 60 nations signed on. But other countries, including China, did not extend their NDC commitments as many had hoped.

Speakers at the climate action summit placed a special emphasis on phasing out coal. Earlier this year, Guterres called on member states to not open any new coal power plants after 2020. Phasing out coal, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg told the UN delegates, is “the most important thing we can do.” The European Union has already committed to this goal, but neither China nor India has made such a plan. Still, the number of new coal plants added to the global grid each year has dropped drastically since the Paris agreement.

Yet this patchwork progress may be nowhere near enough. In an impassioned speech before the UN, 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg noted the UN’s current goal equates to a 50 percent chance of keeping average temperatures below 1.5 C. “Fifty percent may be acceptable to you,” Thunberg told the UN delegation, “but it is simply not acceptable to us who have to live with the consequences.”

“You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency,” Thunberg said while barely holding back tears. “But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that, because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.”

While none of the heads of state at the climate action summit spoke with anything near the emotional intensity of Thunberg, they all acknowledged that the best time to act on climate change was yesterday; the second best time is today.