D.he world climate conference in Glasgow is due to end today: Two weeks of little sleep and exhausting discussions are behind those who are supposed to save the planet. Has the world managed to escape the climate catastrophe?
The bad news first: No, the planet is still threatened by a climate catastrophe on a scale that many still can hardly imagine.
Hot summers, which put children and seniors in danger and make cities temporarily uninhabitable; Droughts that sweep supermarket shelves for weeks; Flood disasters that bury everything. And a Sea levelthat eats its way further and further into the coastal areas and forces the locals to flee. But: There is now a ray of hope.
The glimmer of hope may still be small. But this year’s UNClimate conference has enabled advances that have long been unthinkable. An overview of the successes and setbacks at COP26 – and an outlook on how things must continue to actually prevent catastrophic heating of the climate.
A good result for optimists
All in all, all the national promises of the past two weeks could stop global warming where everything is not too late: at 1.8 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial age. This is the result of the latest calculations by the International Energy Agency.
This is made possible by the respective climate goals of the countries for the year 2030 and 2050 as well as numerous new and existing commitments for a climate-neutral future. But as good as that sounds, the prognosis is shaky. The Climate Action Tracker (CAT) initiative, the most renowned climate research coalition in the world, has done its calculations over the past few days.
“In our analysis we see considerable gaps when it comes to the credibility of the national climate plans,” says Carl-Friedrich Schleussner from the Climate Analytics organization t-online. The climate researcher was involved in the evaluation of the national commitments by CAT.
Protests at the world climate conference in Glasgow. (Source: ZUMA Press / imago images)
“So far there has been about a whole degree of difference between what the countries have now promised and what they can achieve with their current policies,” said Schleussner.
Current measures are likely to lead to a temperature increase of 2.7 degrees. For him, a global temperature of 1.8 degrees is therefore a very optimistic scenario, although that is still well above the hoped-for 1.5 degree target. Because: promises are only worth something if they are actually implemented. And in time.
Progress at a snail’s pace
A look at the national climate targets for 2030 is enough to understand the skepticism of scientists. In contrast to climate milestones that are far in the future, the promises for the next eight years show that it will not go fast enough.
“We know roughly how big the CO2 budget is that we have left before we exceed the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius in heating. If we don’t cut emissions in the 2020s, we run the risk of using up the remaining CO2 budget soon, “said Schleussner. At the end of the climate conference, it looks as if the global community could fall off the cliff in 2030.
Even if all countries keep their Glasgow pledges for 2030, this could mean global warming of 2.4 degrees Celsius, according to CAT researchers. That would go beyond even the most generous goal of the Paris Climate Agreement – the global one Global warming stop at significantly less than 2 degrees. But it is still too early to bury the 1.5 degree goal.
Polar bears on a glacier at the North Pole: Drama threatens not only for them. (Source: imagebroker / imago images)
The 1.5 degree goal has not yet been lost
Climate researcher Schleussner has not yet given up hope. “Even if this conference cannot plug all the holes, the cut at 1.5 degrees can still be achieved. For this we need very specific plans on how we can significantly reduce emissions in this decade.” And fix it. Because although 2030 sounds like a distant future, there are only around eight years left.
Christoph Bertram from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research specifies: “In order to maintain the 1.5 degree target, improvements must be made by next year at the latest.” However, it cannot be ruled out that this will happen; after all, it also has in Glasgow has made some significant advances that until recently hardly anyone would have thought possible.
Some heavyweights give in
For example, after years of resistance, India managed to set out on the road to climate neutrality. The second most populous country on earth – and the nation with the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emissions – now wants to reduce its emissions to net zero by 2070. It is true that the goal is far behind the end points that many other countries want to set on the issue of emissions. Nevertheless: The new plans bring that Climate protection a long way forward.
In addition, there are some big new promises for which numerous states have come together in “coalitions of the willing”. Around 100 countries want to reduce their methane emissions by a third by 2030, 110 governments have resolved to stop the deforestation of the forests in their areas in the same period, more than 40 countries have to phase out coal-fired power generation and end public subsidies for fossil fuels Energies and Financing announced.
And 24 countries and some car manufacturers no longer want to produce or approve cars with internal combustion engines from 2040 onwards. The positive effect of all these joint initiatives could be enormous.
Promises are just promises
According to CAT, this could save as many greenhouse gas emissions as Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom cause in total each year. That gives hope. If it weren’t for the question of implementation.
When it comes to the forest promise, Indonesia, as one of the three most densely forested countries in the world, has already rowed backwards – having to achieve the specified target by 2030 is “inappropriate and unfair”. And the entire coal promise in the latest draft of the Glasgow final declaration only refers to “inefficient” coal-fired power plants – the next few hours will tell whether the passage will disappear entirely at the insistence of India, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
The rule is: Talking is silver, doing is gold. There is not much time left. Especially not in international climate policy.