'Last Chance' to Limit Global Warming to Safe Levels, UN Scientists Warn

President Barack Obama speaks with with Chinese President
Xi Jinxing during the Paris climate talks last year.
Days before new climate talks open in Marrakech,
 a new study is warning nations that their current
carbon-reduction pledges are not aggressive
enough to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius

The next three years provide the "last chance" to limit global warming to safe limits in this century, the United Nations said, as it geared up for a conference in Morocco intended to carry forward the Paris agreement on climate change.

Unless nations move before 2020 to cut their emissions more aggressively than they have promised, the window of opportunity will close and the job that lies ahead will become more costly, it said.

 The annual "emissions gap" report compares the goals of the treaty to the pledges of its signatories. In it, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warned that unless reductions in carbon pollution from the energy sector are reduced swiftly and steeply, it will be nearly impossible to keep warming below 2 degrees, let alone to the 1.5 degree aspiration.

 Each year's gap report, produced by expert scientists using the latest available data, makes clearer than ever that the treaty commitments undertaken so far fall short of what is needed to keep warming below the UN's targets.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “'Last Chance' to Limit Global Warming to Safe Levels, UN Scientists Warn.”