Global climate pledges buy as just eight months of 'safety'

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ew global pledges to cut greenhouse gases have delayed by just eight months the moment when the world is expected to breach a threshold that keeps global warming at safer levels, the world's leading energy agency has found.

In a new report the International Energy Agency has warned collective emissions targets, along with the energy plans in those countries yet to set out new goals, puts the world on track by 2040 to release more than the total greenhouse gases than can be allowed and still have a strong chance of keeping global warming below two degrees - a threshold known as the carbon budget.

That is just eight months later than previous forecast, despite a new spate of targets and plans currently being pledged by countries, the agency said on Monday morning.

Countries have agreed to keeping global warming below two degrees through the United Nations. It is a goal that many scientists say would stave off the worst impacts of climate change, such as ever worsening droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Read Tom Arup’s Sydney Morning Herald story - “New climate pledges only buy eight more months before climate tipping point”.