Connect with us

Published

1 year ago

on

Ahead of every Cop climate talks, think tanks, campaign groups and United Nations agencies get their number-crunchers to produce a load of reports summarising where the fight against climate change is at.

These reports can start to induce deja-vu. We’re doing some stuff to tackle climate change, usually more than the year before. But not fast enough to avoid some pretty terrifying destruction.

“Broken record,” is the title of the UN’s latest emissions gap report. “Temperatures hit new highs yet world fails to cut emissions (again),” the subtitle.

So far, so gloomy. But the record may be about to come unstuck as some analysts predict emissions will peak in 2023.

By Cop29, we could be reading reports saying that this time the world has finally succeeded in cutting emissions – and not because a pandemic brought the global economy to a halt.

From then onwards, we will be damaging our planet less and less each year until we reach net zero and stop damaging it at all.

What is still to play for is how fast we reach that point and how much damage will have been done.

We’re nearing peak emissions…

A report by Climate Analytics finds a 70% chance that emissions will peak in 2023 and start falling in 2024, mainly thanks to electric vehicles, solar and wind power.

The International Energy Agency says similar, suggesting that fossil fuel CO2 emissions – a huge chunk of the total – could peak before 2025 and as early as 2023.

The US government’s Energy Information Administration is more pessimistic, predicting that solar won’t boom that fast and energy-related CO2 emissions will either continue to increase or plateau.

While emissions from producing electricity are going to come down, these gains will be partly cancelled out by still-increasing emissions from transport.

…but greenhouse gas levels keep rising…

But that doesn’t mean there will be less greenhouse gas in the atmosphere each year. Even if you pour less and less water into a bath, the bath still gets fuller each time.

The World Meteorological Organization reports that carbon dioxide concentrations in the air were 50% higher than pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2022. Methane and nitrous oxide levels also rose.

…as does the earth’s temperature…

The world is now on average 1.25C hotter than it was in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Last year, the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) said governments’ climate plans would put us on course for 2.4-2.8C of warming.

Since then, very few countries have increased their ambition and emissions kept rising, so they now say we’re on course for 2.5-3C of warming.

That’s if governments plans are fully implemented. But the report says that most countries aren’t doing enough to meet their promises.

…and the damage done…

Rising emissions mean rising temperatures which means rising destruction caused by climate change. This devastation is hard to measure but there are a few metrics we can use.

A study in the Lancet medical journal found that climate change made 127 million extra people go hungry in 2021, compared to the 80s, 90s and noughties.

They found it increased the potential of mosquitos to transmit dengue fever transmission by about a quarter and put 1.4 billion people at risk of vibriosis as warmer water helps bacteria in the sea thrive.

The insurance company Swiss Re says people are losing more and more of their property because of storms, floods and wildfires.

With all these impacts rising, it’s more important than ever to adapt to climate change. But Unep’s adaptation gap report finds developing countries got less adaptation finance in 2021 than they did in 2020. They need an estimated $194-366 billion. They got $21 billion.

…and investment in fossil fuel production

The world is still investing over $1 trillion a year in fossil fuels – almost double the level the IEA judges compatible with 1.5C of global warming.

Countries like the US, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Qatar are boosting oil and gas production, while India slows down the global decline in coal mining.

Demand for fossil fuels is about to peak

While the supply of fossil fuels is increasing, the IEA says the demand for coal, oil and gas has either peaked or is about to peak.

Coal is about to start a rapid decline, the IEA predicts, while demand for oil and gas stays at about the level it is now for a few decades.

That's not good enough to limit global warming to 1.5C but it does suggest continued investment in fossil fuel supply is economically as well as environmentally foolish.

One sub-set of the fossil fuel market where supply is forecast to outstrip demand is liquified natural gas. This is when gas is turned into a liquid, put on a ship and sailed to customers around the world.

The US and Qatar have led a rush into this market to replace the piped Russian gas that places like Europe used to rely on. When this new LNG export infrastructure is up and running in a few years time, the IEA predicts a glut.

Solar is booming...

Solar continues to be climate change's success story. For a few years now, the world has invested more in clean energy than fossil fuels and that gap is growing.

Chinese factories are pumping out solar panels so fast we don't know what to do with them. If they can be connected to the grids and replace fossil fuels as fast as they are being built, limiting warming to 1.5C becomes a lot easier.

...and so are electric vehicles...

Five years ago, less than 2% of new cars were electric. Now that figure is more like 10%.

In a few years time, the World Resources Institute predicts, that figure will pass 50% and get up to near 100% by the end of the decade.

It will take longer for all cars on the road to be electric and buses and motorbikes are lagging behind still.

But electric vehicles are taking a big chunk out of oil demand and of road transport's 10% of global emissions.

...and heat pumps

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Europeans and their governments scrambled to stop heating their homes with Russian gas.

That led to a boom in heat pumps, which run on electricity and are around three times more efficient than gas boilers. Sales soared 40% in Europe and 10% across the world.

The post In numbers: The state of the climate ahead of Cop28 appeared first on Climate Home News.

In numbers: The state of the climate ahead of Cop28

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Climate Change

NC Fires a Disaster Relief Subcontractor Founded by Former ReBuild NC Boss

Published

6 hours ago

on

May 20, 2025

By

A mid-level state official steered a contract for relief efforts in western North Carolina to the firm run by her former bosses at ReBuild NC. State officials had removed the agency from Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in the fall.

By Lisa Sorg

The North Carolina Division of Emergency Management last week fired a subcontractor that had been founded by top officials at ReBuild NC, the now discredited state agency that botched response efforts after hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018.

NC Fires a Disaster Relief Subcontractor Founded by Former ReBuild NC Boss

Continue Reading

Climate Change

Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals 

Published

6 hours ago

on

May 20, 2025

By

Bill Hare is CEO and founder of Climate Analytics, and Claudio Forner is head of climate policy at Climate Analytics.

To address climate change, the answer should be relatively simple: governments need to decarbonise their economies by first focusing on stopping the burning of fossil fuels. But we are currently facing a crisis involving the land sector that could put the 1.5˚C warming limit at further risk.

The scientific community is clear that including land and forest carbon storage together with fossil fuels and other emissions in national single national targets – as some governments are doing – will likely allow for greater emissions of fossil fuel carbon. This will hinder our ability to limit warming to 1.5°C, and in the worst case it may become impossible. We explain why in a recent report.

Two examples illustrate the scale of this crisis. Australia and Brazil are relying on their reported land carbon sequestration to meet a substantial part of their 2030 and/or 2035 climate targets, significantly reducing the crucial cuts needed in fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

“It’s shameful”: Amazon Indigenous people call for oil drilling ban at COP30

Let’s be clear: the idea that land-based carbon removal/sequestration can “offset” CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is scientifically flawed. For all practical purposes, fossil fuel CO2 emissions are irreversible. They can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, whereas land-sector “offsets” or “sinks” are impermanent – especially when considering the increasing number of wildfires around the planet.

And this is not the only issue: there’s a range of other substantial problems that have been analysed in the scientific literature.

Under the Paris Agreement’s emissions reporting rules, governments are allowed to equate fossil fuel emissions and the drawdown of CO2 by some natural carbon sinks – like the boreal forests – as a one-for-one trade, as set out in this recent paper published in Nature. This means a country could appear to have ‘achieved net zero’ while still contributing to ongoing warming, as emissions continue to rise amid increased tree planting and forest protection.

Carbon fertilisation confuses the numbers

Many countries, particularly developed-country governments, are using ‘managed land’ definitions to claim that carbon uptake from their forests and other ecosystems is additional because of direct human activities, when much of it may be just passive carbon uptake due to atmospheric CO2 fertilisation and other effects caused by fossil fuel emissions. For example, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere lead to increased growth by plants and more carbon uptake – a phenomenon that is not the result of active forest management.

One recent estimate is that about 44% of the additional carbon sequestered in the terrestrial ecosystem since the 2000s is due to the carbon fertilisation effect which, in turn, is mostly due to fossil fuel emissions. A substantial fraction of this would be counted within government accounting frameworks for their reporting of what’s called ” LULUCF” (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry).

A clear example is Australia, which, in recent years, has continually revised both its historical and projected land sector emissions and in particular carbon sequestration, to the extent that it can now claim to have nearly reached its 2030 target, while barely taking any new action to cut fossil fuel emissions.

In the case of Brazil, its 2035 NDC is cast in net emission terms and does not differentiate between the contribution of its land sector and the fossil fuel sector, making it impossible to work out what, if anything, is actually going to be done.

Brazil calls on local groups to “inspire” governments in boosting climate action

This year, Brazil will be hosting COP30 – but the LULUCF accounting in its 2035 NDC is opaque, at best, while its energy sector emissions continue to rise. The Climate Action Tracker has always excluded LULUCF from its country analyses for all the reasons cited above, set out in detail here, and Brazil’s 2035 NDC is a perfect example of the rationale for this decision.

Forests: carbon sink or source?

There are similar issues with the countries that encompass the northern boreal forests. In this report on the contribution of these forests to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C warming limit, we found that global models assessing carbon emissions and sequestration from forests differ substantially from land sector emissions reported by governments.

Governments’ national inventories show the land sector as a global sink, but the global models show it as a source of emissions. The difference between the two is marked: roughly the equivalent to the entire emissions from the US in 2023.

We set out a clear list of recommendations in our report, starting with a call for governments to first focus on decarbonising their economies, and for them – and corporations – to set separate targets for land use sinks, to transparently communicate how much they intend on relying on sinks to reach their climate targets – otherwise known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Comment – COP30 must heed the elephant in the room: fossil fuels

Instead of deploying what increasingly look like creative accounting tricks, governments must get on with the job of prioritising fossil fuel emission reductions.

Alongside clearly accounting for LULUCF, governments also need to commit to ending deforestation by 2030 and set out how and when they plan to cut their emissions to net zero, including their planned use of carbon trading to help them get there.

Without enhanced transparency and a fossil-first approach to emission reductions, the land sector could drive overall emissions higher. But with concerted action to halt deforestation and restore carbon sinks, land has an important role to play in reaching net zero and keeping the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C warming limit within reach.

The post Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals  appeared first on Climate Home News.

Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals 

Continue Reading

Climate Change

Michigan Lawmakers Aim to Revisit ‘Polluter Pay’ to Enforce Cleanup of Toxic Sites

Published

6 hours ago

on

May 20, 2025

By

Environmental advocates help to rewrite legislation to rehabilitate brownfield sites.

By Douglas J. Guth

Michigan lawmakers are again aiming to boost state environmental cleanup standards and force polluting industries to rehabilitate brownfield sites. “Polluter pay” legislation, facing broad opposition from Republicans, failed last year but Democrats said they are engaging with industry stakeholders to craft laws that will target the worst sites and offenders.

Michigan Lawmakers Aim to Revisit ‘Polluter Pay’ to Enforce Cleanup of Toxic Sites

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2022 BreakingClimateChange.com