The world is just a decade away from increasingly devastating climate change unless dramatic action is taken immediately to slash CO2 emissions, scientists warn.
And recent UK government decisions to back more oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and delay the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will make that dramatic action harder to achieve as other countries can point to the UK as they water down their own plans to cut emissions, they argue.
Global carbon emissions have risen by 1.1 per cent to a new record this year, according to a report by the world’s main monitoring group, the Global Carbon Project.
But they need to be falling by at least 5 per cent a year to have a realistic chance of keeping global warming within 1.5°C, scientists say.
The world has warmed by between 1.2°C and 1.3°C since the industrial revolution, unleashing ever more dramatic storms, heatwaves and other extreme weather events upon the world as the temperature rises.
And while 1.5°C does not represent a tipping point in the climate change battle, it is the level of warming that the United Nations is aiming not to exceed in its legally binding 2015 Paris Agreement.
Furthermore, every tenth of a degree warming is seen as being highly significant as the effects of global warming become increasingly dramatic as the temperature rises.
But, as world leaders meet at the COP28 summit, in Dubai, this week to try to reach new agreements to tackle climate change, the researchers behind the new Global Carbon Project report say it now looks “inevitable” that global warming will exceed 1.5°C.
At current levels of emissions, they estimate there is a 50 per cent chance global warming will start to consistently exceed 1.5°C in about seven years as the world uses up it’s “carbon budget”.
And within a decade, the chances that global warming won’t have breached 1.5°C are “very small”, Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter University, who led the Global Carbon Project Study, told i.
Professor Friedlingstein is very concerned by the prospect of 1.5°C warming or more but he emphasises that even now climate change is causing huge problems, which will only get bigger as it rises towards that level.
“It now looks inevitable we will overshoot the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement, and leaders meeting at COP28 will have to agree rapid cuts in fossil fuel emissions even to keep the 2°C target alive,” Professor Friedlingstein said.
“The impacts of climate change are evident all around us, but action to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels remains painfully slow.”
“Every tenth of a degree matters – it’s not like below 1.5°C everything is fine and as soon as are above 1.5°C it’s the end of the world. Already we are experiencing extreme events much more than before. Things are not fine already and they will just get worse,” he said.
Professor Friedlingstein also said that government plans to water down its policies to get to Net Zero, such as delays to the phasing out of gas boilers risked making it harder to persuade countries around the world to make the massive cuts in their emissions that are needed to avert the worst of climate change.
“To put it simply, it won’t make it easier if one of the big countries in the world, at least in terms of diplomacy and influence, is not going in the right direction.”
“So the UK might still achieve its net zero ambition but it will be much harder than if they stuck to their initial plans. But this is not only significant for the UK.
“This is global war and everyone is looking at each other. And in terms of influence other countries might decide ‘well actually, if the UK decides to slow down, why should we not do the same? So there is the potential risk of a ‘domino effect’, where countries say ‘well actually, let’s wait longer and see what they do'”.
“And the UK and others also have a historical responsibility because most of the past emissions have been coming from these countries – so they should take the lead. Clearly what the UK’s doing now is not taking the lead,” Professor Friedlingstein said.
The latest report provides further evidence that after dipping early in the pandemic for the first time in decades, the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions – generated by everything from cars, planes and other forms of transport to electricity and heating, manufacturing and food – are clearly rising again, researchers say.
CO2 emissions from coal use are expected to grow 1.1 per cent in 2023, reaching a record high and exceeding the temporary peak in 2014. The growth in coal is driven by China and India, with drops in coal use in the US and the EU.
CO2 emissions from oil use, meanwhile, are expected to grow by 1.5 per cent, largely due to an increase in international aviation. CO2 emissions from oil use remain below their 2019 levels before the Covid pandemic hit in 2020.
CO2 emissions from natural gas use have grown a sustained 2 per cent per year over the past 10 years but this growth has stopped since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Emissions from gas use are expected to grow a small 0.5 per cent in 2023. The increased growth in China is largely offset by the decline in the EU.
Professor Corinne Le Quéré, from the University of East Anglia, said: “The latest CO2 data shows that current efforts are not profound or widespread enough to put global emissions on a downward trajectory towards Net Zero.
“All countries need to decarbonise their economies faster than they are at present to avoid the worse impacts of climate change.”
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “We are and will continue to be world leaders in clean energy, having cut emissions faster than any other major country and set into law one of the most ambitious emissions targets in the world.
“We have overdelivered on every carbon budget to date and these changes keep us on track to meet our legal net zero commitments. We routinely publish future emissions projections across all sectors and will continue to do so.
“Recent independent Climate Change Committee analysis shows our more pragmatic approach has no material difference on our progress to cut emissions.”
The Global Carbon Project research team also included the Cicero Centre for International Climate Research, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich and 90 other institutions around the world).