As growing climate change impacts are experienced across the globe, the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall is unambiguous. Yet the Emissions Gap Report (EGR) 2022: The Closing Window – Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies finds that the international community is falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster.
What’s new in this year’s report
The EGR is the 13th edition in an annual series that provides an overview of the difference between where greenhouse emissions are predicted to be in 2030 and where they should be to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
The report shows that updated national pledges since COP26 – held in 2021 in Glasgow, UK – make a negligible difference to predicted 2030 emissions and that we are far from the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C. Policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century. Implementation of the current pledges will only reduce this to a 2.4-2.6°C temperature rise by the end of the century, for conditional and unconditional pledges respectively.
The report finds that only an urgent system-wide transformation can deliver the enormous cuts needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2030: 45 per cent compared with projections based on policies currently in place to get on track to 1.5°C and 30 per cent for 2°C. This report provides an in-depth exploration of how to deliver this transformation, looking at the required actions in the electricity supply, industry, transport and buildings sectors, and the food and financial systems.
The window is closing! The world is not on track to reach the Paris Agreement goals and global temperatures can reach 2.8°C by the end of the century.
The Emissions Gap Report 2022 finds that the world must cut emissions by 45 per cent to avoid global catastrophe. Solutions to transform societies exist, but the time for collective, multilateral action is now.
The Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window finds that the world is far off track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the most-ambitious target set out by the Paris Agreement.
I am not going to waste your time talking about the impacts of climate change. We all know them. We all feel them. We all know they are going to get worse. And still, as UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2022 shows, we still, STILL, aren’t doing anywhere near enough to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
