Governments aren’t doing enough to prevent climate breakdown

Governments and big business aren’t doing enough to protect us from climate and ecological breakdown, and our current climate goals aren’t sufficient. Even if we meet them, we’ll have locked in at least 2.5 degrees heating which would likely lead to civilization collapse.

Read a round up of the headlines below:

“The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.

Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.

He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.

Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money…

Current pledges for action by 2030, even if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the UN’s climate agency. Only a handful of countries have ramped up their plans in the last year, despite having promised to do so at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November.”

The Guardian, World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

There is “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”, the UN’s environment agency has said, and the failure to reduce carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

The UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO2 cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded.

Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in locations from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.

If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said.

Countries agreed at the Cop26 climate summit a year ago to increase their pledges. But with Cop27 looming, only a couple of dozen have done so and the new pledges would shave just 1% off emissions in 2030. Global emissions must fall by almost 50% by that date to keep the 1.5C target alive.“

The Guardian, Climate crisis: UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’

“The latest pledges by countries to tackle global warming under the Paris Agreement are "woefully inadequate" to avert a rise in global temperatures that scientists say will worsen droughts, storms and floods, a report said on Wednesday.

"If the pace of improvement from 2016 to today continues, the world will not only miss the Paris Agreement goals, but it will miss them by a long shot," the report said.”

Reuters, 'Massive gaps' seen in countries' plans to tackle climate change -study

“Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the federal government is not doing enough to take on climate change, according to a new survey.

A Pew Research Center poll published Tuesday found that 65 percent of U.S. adults didn’t think the government was doing enough to lessen the impacts of climate change.

There were big differences between Democrats and Republicans in the poll, with 89 percent of Democrats saying they didn’t think the government was doing enough but just 35 percent of Republicans saying the same.

Some policies, however, had broad support, according to the poll.”

The Hill, Almost two-thirds think federal government not doing enough on climate change

“The world is still on track for dangerous levels of warming, according to a new report from the Global Carbon Project. Emissions from burning fossil fuels are expected to reach record levels this year, more than 50% higher than they were when the Industrial Revolution began.”

NPR, Are climate change emissions finally going down? Definitely not