BERLIN: The United Nations says current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on course to blow past the limit for global warming countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
The U.N. climate office said Wednesday that its latest estimate based on 193 national emissions targets would see temperatures rise to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century.
That’s a full degree higher than the ambitious goal set in the Paris pact to limit warming by 1.5 C (2.7 F).
The report found that emissions will also increase by 10.6% by 2030 from 2010 levels, a slight decrease from the 13.7% estimates last year.
Scientists say emissions of planet-heating gases actually need to be cut by 45% by the end of the decade.
“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world,” the head of the U.N. climate office, Simon Stiell, said in a statement. “To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”
The report was released ahead of next month’s U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where countries will again try to ratchet up their targets.