Chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is ‘virtually zero’ on current trends, UN warns
The chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is “virtually zero” on current trends, according to the UN’s environment body.
This year’s Emissions Gap Report finds that emissions of greenhouse gasses in 2023 were the highest on record.
More concerning, the rate of growth since 2022 was nearly twice as fast as in the decade preceding the COVID pandemic.
This comes despite decades of climate talks and a boom in wind and solar power.
The analysis finds that the current trajectory in carbon emissions puts the world on course for a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century – compared to pre-industrial times.
While emissions in many wealthy countries, including the UK, the US and the EU have peaked, they are not falling anywhere near fast enough to make up for rapidly growing emissions in places like China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.
A chart showing the likely scenarios for global temperatures in the event that CO2 emissions can be cut
‘Crunch time is here’
“Climate crunch time is here,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“We need global mobilisation on a scale and pace never seen before – starting right now, before the next round of climate pledges.”
The report urges nations meeting at the UN climate summit next month in Baku, Azerbaijan, to come forward with emissions-cutting commitments that don’t continue to ignore the agreement they all signed in Paris in 2015.
The Baku Olympic Stadium will host the COP29 conference.
Pic: Reuters
The Paris Agreement, signed by 196 countries, pledged to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and try and prevent it from rising beyond 1.5C.
The UNEP analysis of current carbon-cutting commitments finds only one country, Madagascar, has submitted a more ambitious one since last year.
And only a handful are ambitious enough to actually slow global warming.
If all current pledges were implemented in full the world would still warm by between 2.6C-2.8C this century.
Given many countries, including the UK, are yet to implement policies to fully meet their targets, the current trajectory takes the world closer to a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming.
“Central warming projections indicate that the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C would be virtually zero,” the report concludes.
A chart showing how emissions have increased over time
‘This is a battle we cannot afford to lose’
It’s not all bad news however.
An analysis of the cost of measures to reduce emissions finds there is technical potential for cuts of 31 gigatons of greenhouse gasses by 2030 – around half of the total emitted globally in 2023 – and 41 gigatons by 2035.
This “massive effort” to deploy zero-carbon electricity generation like wind and solar and reverse deforestation trends would bridge the gap needed to put the world back on track to keep warming below 1.5C.
However, years of inaction have made this challenge harder, the report finds.
Emission cuts must be 7.5% steeper every year until 2035 to meet 1.5C and 4% annually to keep to 2C.
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“Maybe we won’t get all the way to 1.5C but 1.6C is a lot better than 1.7C,” says Dr Anne Olhoff, the report’s lead author.
“Basically, every fraction of a degree matters and this is a battle we cannot afford to lose.”
Countries have until 2025 to submit new carbon-cutting pledges under the Paris Agreement.
But to deliver the cuts required, the main challenge – and one that will be central to talks at the upcoming climate summit in Baku – is technical and financial assistance from rich countries to poorer ones that don’t bear historical responsibility for global warming.
Progress, says Dr Olhoff, “hinges on immediate and relentless action.”
“Most of all, of course, it depends on political leadership.”
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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