The world’s brutal climate change report card, explained

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The world’s brutal climate change report card, explained

[ https://www.vox.com/climate/23864312/cl ... op28-dubai ]

The first international climate change stocktake says trying is not enough.

By Rebecca Leber and Umair Irfan Sep 9, 2023, 7:30am EDT

(PHOTO: An oil refinery in France is one example of the kind of infrastructure that would need to transition to clean energy or capture its carbon emissions to meet global climate goals. AFP via Getty Images)

Just about every country in the world committed to keeping climate change in check in 2015. This week, the United Nations issued its first report card for this goal and found that the world is falling behind while time is running out.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, [ https://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9981020/ ... imate-deal ] countries agreed to pitch in what they could to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Their initial proposals were nowhere near enough, so the accord created a mechanism called the global stocktake to keep everyone accountable.

Unlike other UN climate change reports that are meant to be informative and shy away from policy recommendations, the stocktake [ https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/ ... 09_adv.pdf ] is explicitly meant to spur countries to act. It’s a blunt progress assessment, and it lays out how much further countries must go in their emissions commitments the next time they come to the negotiating table at COP28, [ https://unfccc.int/cop28 ] which will be held in the United Arab Emirates this December.

“The Paris Agreement has driven near-universal climate action,” the report notes, but “much more is needed now on all fronts.”

The task ahead is immense: According to the report, global emissions need to be slashed 43 percent by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, one of the main goalposts of the Paris agreement. But the world has already warmed about 1.2 degrees so far above preindustrial averages and is on track to pass the key threshold in the next few years. So when negotiators reconvene at the next climate summit, the stocktake will shape the discussion.

“It carries a lot of weight,” said European Climate Foundation CEO Laurence Tubiana, who helped negotiate the Paris agreement. “The [stocktake] is looking backwards, but even more importantly setting the direction for the next phase of climate policymaking.”

Among its recommendations, the report unapologetically calls for “phasing out all unabated fossil fuels” and for a “radical decarbonization of all sectors of the economy.” . . . . .

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